An artful approach

Sunday, March 9, 2008 | 3:07 a.m.

As public schools have increased the amount of class time spent on reading and mathematics, the amount of time devoted to teaching children about the arts has decreased by more than a third.

The February report by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington think tank that promotes public education, says the amount of time spent on teaching math and reading in elementary school averaged 513 minutes a week before President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act went into effect in 2002. After the act, the amount of time spent on those subjects increased to 699 minutes a week, on average.

The extra time, the study says, was taken from instruction in other topics, with art and music taking one of the biggest hits — down to 57 minutes a week on average compared with 154 minutes before the act.

One fourth grade teacher told The Washington Post that although teachers have a responsibility to ensure academic excellence, “we only get that if we develop the whole child.”

And that includes the imagination part as well as the reading and math parts.

Certainly, we want children to be proficient in reading and math. They cannot get along without those skills. But the arts offer children the chance to develop concentration and observation skills — abilities that also serve reading, math and science. The arts also help children tap their creativity, which is an important skill for problem-solving.

The arts aren’t just time-fillers. They are important components of a child’s education and should be preserved.