Tourney Round 2, Debate No. 12: Art and/or Music are Important in Grade School

First, a small quibble. Grade school refers to more than just K-5. In fact, grades up through 8th are numbered. I understand your confusion, but I think you're getting "grade" school mixed up with "elementary" school, which is K-5. If I'm reading correctly, your three arguments are, (1) Art- and music-dependent jobs make up only a small portion of the job market, (2) the State education system does not require art or musical ability, and (3) art and music are better taught not alone but in integration with other subjects. I believe I have already addressed the argument you make first. I have already conceded that art and music related jobs ARE a small portion of the job market. Several times, in fact. However, I fail to see why that means they should not be taught in grade school. The mission of the school system, as I'm sure you know, is to educate a student for every field he is capable of going into. A ten-year-old does not know with certainty what he wants to do in life, and that's why we teach a wide variety of subjects throughout the course of a K-high school education. This is why there are shop classes in high school: to prepare students for jobs they may or may not get in the construction industry or something like it. The majority of these students won't go on into these industries, yet we still have shop classes. Why? Because the students who DO need to be prepared, and because shop skills are handy for everyone to have. Notice the parallel here? Art and music skills are handy to have in life, even though most people won't go into art or music. Unlike shop classes, however, art and music are skills that can be almost infinitely fine-tuned, and, most importantly, they require an early start. Saying that art and music should not be taught in grade school is like saying mathematics shouldn't be taught in high school: 99% of the necessary math skills to do 99% of the jobs in the world are taught in grade school, which makes Algebra and Geometry seem unnecessary. However, we still teach them, and for the same reasons I expressed above. Art and music may make up only a small portion of the job market, but it's larger than the "mathematics" teachers job market, which I presume is basically math teachers and professors, and accountants. However, we still teach Mathematics in school. Art and music, therefore, being different but not unimportant skills, should be taught in school. Art and music ability are not mandated by the state because they are skills which are hard to measure. It's hard to imagine a art- or music-based variant of the SAT test, for example. You see what I'm driving at? It's not because these skills are not thought important, it's because they are hard to measure. In fact, I think it's safe to say that if the school systems thought art and music were unimportant in grade school, and thus making this a strong argument for you, they would not teach it! In fact, most every elementary school offers art education at least, and probably music as well. So, a lack of state standards for art and music is not actually relevant. In your third argument, you appear to equate art with creative, right-brain-centric, learning. This is not the case. In fact, creative thinking and art are both right-brain activities, but they are not the same thing. I reject your assumption that children can learn what they are now learning in art classes from "creative" teaching and learning methods in other subjects. To accept your premise, right-brain-stimulation would have to be the only motive for art education. However, art builds up skills that are neither right or left brained. The Right brain-left brain issue is not actually part of our debate, but I hold that right-brained teaching methods are distracting to left-brained children and vice versa, and I agree with you wholeheartedly that separate methods should exist. This, however, has very little bearing on the debate at hand. It is possible to teach art in a right-brained way, and to teach mathematics in a left-brained way, and so to treat the issue as simply one of method is irrational. The website I cited was merely meant to show the importance of right brain education, and in actual fact, the right-brain "controls artistic abilities." (http://toys.about.com...) In conclusion, art and music are skills which, like mathematics, have limited direct application in finding a job or choosing a career, but which are extremely beneficial in the long run. (Musical students consistently test higher on IQ tests than non-musical students.) Music and art have been and continue to be taught in grade school. My opponent has thus far not provided any compelling reasons why it should not be.