Electives aren’t Elective for Artists and Diplomats

As funding gets tighter and tighter, more and more schools are inclined to cut funding for music, the arts, foreign languages and a whole host of other courses that are “nice” but “not necessary.  It makes practical sense, the argument goes.  Kids surely need to measure a triangle or identify adverbs before they learn another language or how to paint, right?  As you may have guessed, I believe that this reflects a value judgment more than a universal truth. 

As standardized testing increases and only makes schools accountable for Reading and Math scores, everything else (including science, history, shop, gym, and other more traditional “staple” courses) goes out the window.   But what about things you can’t test? What about kids with a special aptitude that we are not fostering that are instead written off as failures because they don’t know the Pythagorean theorem?  What about the classes that reinforce or deepen core skills? What about the classes that teach practical skill over theory?  It’s not all fluff, and the treatment of electives as superfluous should be of grave concern.  This post will look at (but not exhaustively) some benefits from these elective courses, look at how they might be incorporated into other courses when budget shortfalls and shortsighted policymakers combine forces to cut these courses, and will hopefully start a conversation about how to rethink how we approach electives for the sake of our kids.

Electives Reap Large Reawards

The most obvious benefits of electives are for people who are not entering a field directly tied to math or reading, and these are not all starving artist careers.  If your child wants to be a diplomat, foreign language should be a centerpiece of their education (sorry Madeline Albright).  If your child wants to be a physicist, well, a good start would probably be a physics class.  If your child wants to be a product designer, architect, medical researcher, lab technician, etc., they’d benefit from science classes in a lab or drafting classes in a studio.  If your child wants to be a chef or baker, perhaps home economics classes would shine at the forefront.  If your child wants to be a carpenter, mechanic, plumber, electrician, furniture maker or construction worker, shop classes would be key (right along side some science and geometry).  If your child wants to be the next Yo Yo Ma, a healthy dose of musical instruction will be key.  

That said, the benefits of elective courses goes above and beyond the obvious exceptions to students that don’t fit the school-college-knowledge worker path.  All students can benefit from elective courses. Here’s how:

Studying a Foreign Language

·      Carolyn Taylor-Ward’s Ph. D. dissertation found that students who had learned a foreign language in the third grade consistently outperformed their peers who had not on standardized tests, including on the English reading/writing portion. 

·      A Stanford University study found that high schools with a higher proportion of students enrolled in foreign language classes tended to have higher levels of annual performance (except in the case of schools with the highest incidence of poverty or English-language learners).

·      A Canadian study noted that students of foreign language tend to acquire and remember all information faster than their peers and tend to perform better in tasks requiring critical thinking. This holds true even for kids with cognitive disabilities.

·      Given the need to reach a global audience (or a more diverse American audience), when competing for a job, a candidate with a foreign language will—all other skills equal—be more likely to get the job and to help a company or agency reach a broader array of stakeholders.

Studying Art and Music

·      The American Youth Policy Forum just completed two studies that found that students, particularly poor students, that study the arts tend to do better on standardized tests.  Further, they found that 80% of students in schools with arts programs get all As and Bs while this is only true of about 65% of students with no arts education. 

·      Students of the arts may be more likely to go to a good college because as the amount of time a child studies art in high school increases so do BOTH their SAT Mat hand Verbal Scores. 

·      A Georgetown University Masters thesis found that children who take arts classes stay in school longer and are less likely to drop out of school.

·      Children in Tucson schools have proven far more engaged and focused when taking music and dance classes, and they also are using their whole bodies, which is of critical importance as diabetes and childhood obesity burgeon across the U.S.

Studying Shop and Home Economics

·      A recent Education.com article highlights several benefits of shop classes, which teach kids to focus, to carry out a project, to develop a concrete skill that can be directly used as a job, and to work in teams.  Additionally, these classes reinforce “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) course content.

·      Retooled shop classes like those mentioned above in Tucson have actually involved 21^st century processes and provide direct training for a high-tech manufacturing sector that is expected to add some 110,000 jobs in the next five years.

This is just a sampling of some of the electives we are watching go out the window, but their potential to improve the critical thinking, career prospects, practical skills, and EVEN standardized test performance, grades, student retention, and college readiness of our children should give you pause before allowing such classes to be cut.  That many are directly tied to greater improvements for the poorest students is of critical importance to closing the so-called “achievement gap” between white and minority students.

Electivizing the Core: Solutions in a Budget-Scarce Scenario (Act on it!)

The benefits above suggest that schools rich in these elective programs create students that master other subjects better, are more job-ready, are better able to think creatively and work in teams, and have a stronger love of learning.  I think the best solution is to do what Tucson did and directly increase the use of such programs from the top down and from the bottom up.  That said, for schools or districts that find increasing funding to such programs politically or economically impossible, there are some possible solutions that increase use of electives without touching the core curriculum:

1.     Use foreign languages to teach all subjects.  Children will learn English at home or around their town, so if they are taught every subject except possibly English or another foreign language in say Spanish or Arabic from a young age, that child will be much more likely to be bilingual and to master their course content at the same time.

2.     Use public-private partnerships to have companies sponsor high-tech shop programs.  These programs could occur afterschool or during holidays and could be tied to internships that more directly bridge the gap between the education system and job market and that need not be “remedial” or “fluff” courses.

3.     Encourage and support teachers in using elective-based lesson plans:

a.     A colleague of mine had her understanding of Africa’s changing map and history awakened when her father made her draw maps of Africa annually and she SAW the geopolitical changes that were occurring and was inspired to understand why what she was drawing had changed.

b.     Use shop, drafting or art lessons to illustrate principles of geometry.

c.      My Sophomore British Literature teacher had us act out scenes from literature or make newspapers or songs to illustrate a particular work or concept.

d.     My 1^st Grade teacher taught geography by asking us to learn key phrases in the languages of different countries, preparing or sampling food from those countries, dancing or celebrating holidays in those countries, etc. through a unit called “Tommy’s Travels.” Our mythical peer Tommy traveled around the world, and we’d reenact what he might have encountered.

4.     Use volunteer organizations like Habitat for Humanity or KaBOOM! to build these kinds of hard skills in students while improving their community and strengthening their ability to carry out a project, 

5.     Invite programs like Junior Achievement or Future Problem Solvers (both of which I did and found incredibly rewarding and helpful for engaging in teamwork and creative thinking) into Social science, science, or English courses.

Speak out!

Can you share a personal experience from a “non-core” or “elective” class that shaped your life?

What kinds of lessons have you used, experienced or heard of that creatively integrate arts, language, shop, problem-solving or other alternative classes into other subjects or parts of the school day in a creative way?