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Sunday, May 12, 2013

Music Enhances Problem Solving and Creativity


It's been a while since I've added a poster or posted some music and arts advocacy quotes, but end-of-year assessments and reflections have me thinking about the benefits of music education as it relates to creative thinking and problem solving. So here's a new poster and some favorite quotes I've collected:

“Too often students are given answers to remember, rather than problems to solve.”       
      Roger Lewin

“When faced with a problem to solve, students in music and the arts produce more possible solutions, and their solutions are more creative, according to a nationwide study.”        
         N. M. Weinberger, Arts Education Enhances ‘Real Life’ Personal Skills, 
            MuSICA Research Notes, Spring 2000.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”     
         – William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)          (I've adopted this one as my mantra.)

“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers.”          – Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

“The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.”
            Elliot Eisner in The Arts and the Creation of Mind –  
            What the Arts Teach and How it Shows
                        (Absolutlely love this. So true!)

“…the ability to be creative – a key 21st Century Skill – is native to the arts and is one of the primary processes learned through arts education...  arts promote work habits that cultivate curiosity, imagination, creativity, and evaluation skills. Students who possess these skills are better able to tolerate ambiguity, explore new realms of possibility, express their own thoughts and feelings and understand the perspectives of others… Students’ capacity to create and express themselves through the arts is one of the central qualities that make them human, as well as a basis for success in the 21st century.
       21st Century Skills Map – The Arts, 2010,
            Partnership for 21st Century Skills, www.p21.org

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