When it comes to the history of education, art education has played a rather insignificant role in the schools of the United States. According to Jenifer Milner, the history of art education shows that in the last thirty years there have been cycles of “boom and bust,” periods of promise and great productivity followed by long periods of withdrawn support or neglect. Today, as insufficient funding for education becomes more of a problem, classes such as art and music are put on the back burner or thrown away altogether. The idea is that these classes are not as important to a child’s education as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Many believe that the drive towards traditional schooling is a necessity for children to survive in the world today. Those adversaries, who want to diminish the art programs in schools believe that a child’s education should not permit individual creativity and self expression. The belief is that individual creativity and self expression will hinder a child’s performance in other classes. However, there are many advocates of art education who believe that without art children will be lost. Their belief is that art not only builds self-esteem an

Most advocates believe that giving children the opportunity to participate in art education is the greatest gift one could give to a child. Students who participate in the arts are given the opportunity to explore their individuality and build self-esteem through their work. Many also believe that the arts not only benefit a child’s individuality and self-esteem, but greatly influence the performance in other classes. For example, drawing or painting can give students who cannot yet read or write an outlet to express their imaginations. Many studies are being done to prove these beliefs. Even though there really is not any hard evidence to show that this belief is correct, many still believe that it is true. In the article “The Arts and Academic Achievement: What the Evidence Shows,” Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner, explain that “There is a danger in such reasoning [beliefs]. If the arts are given a role in our schools because people believe the arts cause academic improvement, then the arts will quickly lose their position if academic improvement does not result.”

The belief that art education can cause academic improvement maybe true, but many art educators believe that this is not the way to get art education more recognized. In the article “In Defense of Failure,” an art educator, Jessica Hoffman Davis, explains that because of the evidence, that the arts do not help students in other subjects, she had to look for some other aspect of art to prove that it is important. Davis then looked at the failure aspect. She concluded that failure is the biggest supporter to the arts. Davis believes that failure is an important part of developmental growth for students by allowing a student to fail at a project and then fix it without doing poorly in the class. While in other subjects, students do not get to explore and fix their problems. Most believe that art is more demanding and requires more thinking in problem solving, yet

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