Rebalancing the Effects of Standardised Education with the Arts

As the curriculum has grown over the past century or two, incorporating more subjects, more years, and more students with every new generation, standardisation has been a realistic approach to put the education system to work with the maximum effect. As studies show how the majority of pupils respond and learn, how the most pupils prefer particular methods and how various techniques have been shown to have high efficiency from teacher to pupil ratios, methodology has been set to make the most out of the statistical benefits.


In large scale decision making, using statistic is the only way to generate good approaches to problems raised. Because as individual people, we cannot mentalise the amounts and processes involved, we turn to tools to help. Mathematical analysis is but one of these tools. There has therefore been a standardisation process over time which has resulted in the best fit system that attempts to teach as many pupils with as little resources as possible, over the fewest amount of teachers.


Of course, those who want to improve the education system are always showing how more is better and over time, standards alter and things change in a two steps forward one step back process which seems to dominate most political and social long term motions. It is not a one sided story, but for a lot of places, standardisation has led to teaching becoming ever more dry and impersonal. Testing and formality have created a culture of factory schooling, which creates the product of a hard working knowledgable young adult at the end of a very long fifteen years.


Perhaps some of this is necessary, with limited resources and a knowing of what is going to be required of an adult in the real world, a good education is vital to success. In large civilian environments such as the UK, education systems are the only practical way of ensuring everyone gets what they deserve. To counter act the effects of the drying out of the school experience, and the impersonalisation of the teaching method, the arts are able to reach out to the individuals in ways other academic subjects do not.


By reaching out to the personal thoughts and feelings of the students via the medium of art exploration, the school system is able to keep a hold of the person inside the pupil and learn about them individually. This bond between pupil and school is essential in the motivation and appreciation of the process. When students lack motivation, confidence, or desire to learn, finding the person inside the pupil is the only way of reaching out and sparking the interest needed to do well.


This is why it is absolutely essential to maintain art lessons until the end of school years, keeping the individual in the loop maintains the personal relationship that fuels the learning process. If a student begins to feel like a product, they'll suffer in every aspect of their learning experience. Keeping people focused and interested is a difficult job for any professional, and any tools to help are surely much needed and appreciated.  
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The Cycle: Management of Successful Arts and Cultural Organizations