Why Our High Schools Need the Arts

Authors

  • Julie A.M. Smitka Peel District School Board - and - Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v59i2.55602

Abstract

The arts have always had a profound impact on our lives: whether it be to express an idea, emotion, or as a way to communicate. Our worldly artistic experiences and knowledge date as far back as the Pre-historic period. So why is it that music, dance, drama, and visual arts, all cultural subjects so steeped in human history are, for the most part, always on the cutting block in educational curriculum? Why is artistic importance in the curriculum always viewed as mundane and devalued by so many policy makers?

 

Following her best selling book Why Our Schools Need the Arts, author Jessica Hoffman Davis brings us Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. In arguing for an increase in arts courses within the educational curriculum as a way to engage all students and to alleviate the drop out rates of disenfranchised youth, Hoffman Davis offers vivid accounts from students, teachers, administrators “to provide the reader (the high school student, concerned parent, school administrator, teacher, arts education advocate, and/or policymaker) with the necessary information and perspective with which to argue for a prominent place for the arts in the reformation of high school curriculum” (p. 5).

Author Biography

Julie A.M. Smitka, Peel District School Board - and - Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto

Julie A. M. Smitka is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and is a Junior Fellow at Massey College. Julie formerly taught visual arts in England and has been teaching in the Peel District School Board in Ontario since 2005. Her research interests include the arts in schools, embodiment studies, student-teacher relationships, and phenomenology.

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Published

2014-04-15

How to Cite

Smitka, J. A. (2014). Why Our High Schools Need the Arts. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 59(2), 333–336. https://doi.org/10.11575/ajer.v59i2.55602

Issue

Vol. 59 No. 2 (2013): Summer

Section

BOOK REVIEWS

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