The Arts: Educating and Enriching Our Lives

The Arts, which involve visual arts, music, dance, and drama, have been in existence for as long as humans walked the earth. The Arts will always remain a huge part of cultural society, for, no matter how technologically advanced the world becomes, nothing can replace the experience of viewing or interacting with the arts. In today’s world, the words “teaching”, and “learning”, may spark one to simply deduce “textbook education.” My definition of “textbook education” is what students attain in the books. The black and white knowledge. The true and false answers. The things students understand to be correct and incorrect answers. But what should occur when a child comes across a situation when judgment is needed? A legitimate scenario holding ambiguity the books could not prepare students for. That is where, I conceive, visual arts, music, dance, and drama comes into play (no pun intended). The arts are not so much a result of stimulation and natural talent, as they are a person's ability for creative thinking and imagining, judgment, problem solving, and a host of other mental processes. I feel that the arts represent forms of understanding every bit as effective as the logical/mathematical and verbal forms of understanding, which have been the traditional focus of education.

I believe being involved in the arts is the sole way people can fully express themselves, and define their cultural beliefs. They can accommodate people, young and old, in acquiring multi- cultural comprehension. The arts encourage cross-cultural communication, and teach us empathy, humanity, passion, and openness towards antithetical cultures, and understanding of the acts of societies around us will help us to be more tolerant, educated and understanding, thus thriving as a planet.

The arts are a large subdivision of culture, composed of various creative disciplines. These disciplines not only define the ingeniousness of the people involved in them, but also the psychological