An integrated arts curriculum fosters creative and critical thinking skills.

Given the challenges facing of our educational system, it is significant to note that one of the reactions in the traditional model is to focus more on math, science and reading at the expense of the arts. This often produces student boredom and even greater academic failure, which prompts calls for yet more testing and discipline.

 Four years into the No Child Left Behind federal education reform law, studies show that arts instruction has decreased in one out of four public schools. Tight educational budgets are also squeezing the arts out of the spotlight. All of this at a time when learning experts across the country are churning out research showing that an education in the arts "ensures an enriched cultural appetite, stronger analytical skills, higher achievement in other subjects and ?down the road- greater success in the workplace."

According to a recent study by Stanford University professor Shirley Brice Heath, "Young people who participate in the arts for at least 3 hours for 3 days each week through at least one full year are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement and three times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools."

Dee Dickinson, head of New Horizons for Learning, a Seattle-based advocacy group says, "a solid foundation in the arts gives children a significant academic leg up? that they are typically at the top of their class in other subjects.

As for long term benefits. Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, contends that "a strong arts education provides students with the best preparation for success in their future careers." He says the future workers will require a whole-mind way of thinking. They will rely more on design, empathy, inventiveness and big-picture thinking. "And the best way to surface and sharpen those abilities is by studying the arts."

At KMS the arts are integrated into the core of our curriculum. We take advantage of a child’s innate creativity to foster flexible, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

For references and additional research.