Abstract
Much has been written about the benefits of learning to play an instrument, creating an image on canvas, or moving in coordinated gestures. Students develop self-discipline, persistence, collaboration, problem-solving, and public performance through the arts. Such abilities are needed not just by artists; they are of immense benefit to any person engaged in any profession. Whether as majors or non-majors, students who take courses in the arts are given a valuable opportunity to not only learn content but also develop new ways of thinking, communicating, and evaluating. Classes in the arts broaden a student’s understanding of human nature, offer new ways to think about the unknown and the familiar, new concepts and old ideas, and one’s own and diverse cultures. Fine arts classes teach students to hear and to see, to be comfortable with ambiguity, to examine an issue from multiple perspectives, and to develop sound methodologies for working through confusing and sometimes controversial issues.
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Notes
- 1.
For an extensive discussion of the benefits of arts education (including dance, drama, visual arts, and music), see Richard R. Deasy, ed., Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Achievement and Social Development (Washington D.C.: Arts Education Partnership, 2002). This compendium of more than 60 studies and essays examines the benefits of arts education and the transference of skills from one area (arts) to learning and behavior in other academic and social contexts. See also Louis E. Catron, “What Theatre Majors Learn,” accessed December 20, 2015, http://lecatr.people.wm.edu/majorslearn.html;; May Kokkidou, “Critical Thinking and School Music Education: Literature Review, Research Findings, and Perspectives,” Journal for Learning through the Arts 9, no. 1 (2013), accessed January 4, 2016, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4dt433j3; “Long Term Benefits of Music Study,” accessed December 20, 2105, http://www.wheaton.edu/CSA/Lessons/Long-Term-Benefits-of-Music-Study; Lisa Trei, “Musical Training Helps Language Processing, Studies Show,” Stanford Report (November 15, 2005), accessed December 20, 2015, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/november16/music-111605.html; “20 Important Benefits of Music in Our Schools,” National Association for Music Education, last modified July 21, 2014, accessed December 20, 2015, http://www.nafme.org/20-important-benefits-of-music-in-our-schools.
- 2.
Rimma Osipov, “Do Future Bench Researchers Need Humanities Courses?” AMA Journal of Ethics 16, no. 8 (Aug. 2014): 604–609, accessed January 4, 2016, http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2014/08/ecas3-1408.html.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
See Paul Rodenhauser, Matthew A. Strickland, and Cecilia T. Gambala, “Arts-Related Activities Across U.S. Medical Schools: A Follow-Up Study,” Teaching and Learning in Medicine 16/3 (2004): 233–239.
- 5.
Irwin M. Braverman, “To See or Not to See: How Visual Training Can Improve Observational Skills,” Clinics in Dermatology 29 (2011): 344.
- 6.
J. Donald Boudreau, Eric J. Cassell, and Abraham Fuks, “Preparing Medical Students to Become Skilled at Clinical Observation,” Medical Teacher 30, nos. 9–10 (2008): 859, accessed December 18, 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10/1080/01421590802331446. For a recent assessment of such use in law enforcement, see Sarah Lyall, “Off the Beat and Into a Museum: Art Helps Police Officers Learn to Look,” New York Times, April 26, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/arts/design/art-helps-police-officers-learn-to-look.html?_r=0. Art historian Amy E. Herman , Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life (New York: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), explains such work with the New York Police Department in venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- 7.
Sheila Naghshineh, Janet P. Hafler, Alexa R. Miller, Maria A. Blanco, Stuart R. Lipsitz, Rachel P. Dubroff, Shahram Khoshbin, and Joel T. Katz, “Formal Art Observation Training Improves Medical Students’ Visual Diagnostic Skills,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 23 (2008): 995.
- 8.
See studies by Charles L. Bardes, Debra Gillers, and Amy E. Herman, “Learning to Look: Developing Clinical Observational Skills at an Art Museum,” Medical Education 35 (2001): 1157–1161; Jacqueline C. Dolev, Linda Krohner Friedlaender, and Irwin M. Braverman, “Use of Fine Art to Enhance Visual Diagnostic Skills,” Journal of the American Medical Association 286 (2001): 1020–1021; Nancy C. Elder, Barbara Tobias, Amber Lucero-Criswell, and Linda Goldenhar, “The Art of Observation: Impact of a Family Medicine and Art Museum Partnership on Student Education,” Family Medicine 38 (2006): 393–398; Johanna Shapiro and Lynn Hunt, “All the World’s a Stage: The Use of Theatrical Performance in Medical Education,” Medical Education 37 (2006): 922–927; Deborah Kirklin, Jane Duncan, Sandy McBride, Sam Hunt, and Mark Griffin, “A Cluster Design Controlled Trial of Arts-Based Observational Skills Training in Primary Care,” Medical Education 41 (2007): 395–401; Naghshineh, Hafler, Miller, Blanco, Lipsitz, Dubroff, Khoshbin, and Katz, “Formal Art Observation Training”; Pamela B. Schaff, Suzanne Isken, and Robert M. Tager, “From Contemporary Art to Core Clinical Skills: Observation, Interpretation, and Meaning-Making in a Complex Environment,” Academic Medicine 86 (2011): 1272–1276; Andrew Jacques, Rachel Trinkley, Linda Stone, Richard Tang, William A. Hudson, and Sorabh Khandelwal, “Art of Analysis : A Cooperative Program Between a Museum and Medicine,” Journal for Learning Through the Arts 8/1 (2012): 1–10, accessed January 7, 2016, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/36n2t2w9; and Gary E. Friedlaender and Linda K. Friedlaender, “Art in Science: Enhancing Observational Skills,” Clinical Orthopaedics in Related Research 47 (2013): 2065–2067.
- 9.
Lawrence T. O. Bell and Darrell J. R. Evans, “Art, Anatomy and Medicine: Is There a Place for Art in Medical Education?” Anatomical Sciences Education 7 (2014): 371–372.
- 10.
Braverman, “To See or Not to See,” 345.
- 11.
Boudreau, Cassell, and Fuks, “Preparing Medical Students,” 858.
- 12.
Wellbery and McAteer, “The Art of Observation,” 1629.
- 13.
Eugene V. Boisaubin and Mary G. Winkler, “See Patients and Life Contexts: The Visual Arts in Medical Education,” The American Journal of Medical Sciences 319, no. 5 (May 2000): 292.
- 14.
Wellbery and McAteer, “The Art of Observation,” 1629.
- 15.
Ibid., 1626.
- 16.
Linda Honan Pellico, Linda Friedlaender, and Kristopher P. Fennie, “Looking is Not Seeing: Using Art to Improve Observational Skills,” Journal of Nursing Education 48, no. 11 (Nov. 2009): 648–649.
- 17.
Sona K. Jasani and Norma S. Saks, “Utilizing Visual Art to Enhance the Clinical Observation Skills of Medical Students,” Medical Teacher 35, no. 7 (2013): e1329, accessed December 20, 2015, https://doi.org/10.3109/0142158X.2013.770131.
- 18.
For a list and discussion of these goals, see Boudreau, Cassell, and Fuks, “Preparing Medical Students,” 859–861. The authors focus, in particular, on the need to articulate what one sees, to be aware of cultural determinants, and the potential for bias.
- 19.
Jacques, Trinkley, Stone, Tang, Hudson, and Khandelwal, “Art of Analysis .”
- 20.
Naghshineh, Hafler, Miller, Blanco, Lipsitz, Dubroff, Khoshbin, and Katz, “Formal Art Observation Training,” 992.
- 21.
Jasani and Saks, “Utilizing Visual Art to Enhance the Clinical Observation Skills,” e1328. See also Alexa Miller, Michelle Grohe, Shahram Khoshbin, and Joel T. Katz, “From the Galleries to the Clinic: Applying Art Museum Lessons to Patient Care,” Journal of Medical Humanities 34 (2013): 434.
- 22.
Miller, Grohe, Khoshbin, and Katz, “From the Galleries to the Clinic,” 434.
- 23.
Jasani and Saks, “Utilizing Visual Art to Enhance the Clinical Observation Skills,” e1330.
- 24.
Miller, Grohe, Khoshbin, and Katz, “From the Galleries to the Clinic,” 435.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Shapiro and Shallit, “A Night at the Museum,” 599–603.
- 27.
Jacques, Trinkley, Stone, Tang, Hudson, and Khandelwal, “Art of Analysis .”
- 28.
This question allows students to become aware of their own biases and to view the work from a different perspective.
- 29.
Jacques, Trinkley, Stone, Tang, Hudson, and Khandelwal, “Art of Analysis .”
- 30.
Ibid. Herman, Visual Intelligence, 98, develops strategies for seeing based on the acronym COBRA (camouflaged, one, break, realign, ask).
- 31.
Jan C. Frich and Per Fugelli, “Medicine and the Arts in the Undergraduate Medical Curriculum at the University of Oslo Faculty of Medicine, Oslo, Norway,” Academic Medicine 78, no. 10 (October 2003): 1038.
- 32.
Boudreau, Cassell, and Fuks, “Preparing Medical Students,” 859.
- 33.
Philip Darbyshire, “Understanding the Life of Illness: Learning Through the Art of Frida Kahlo,” Advances in Nursing Science 17 (1996): 51–59; Deborah Kirklin, Richard Meakin, Surinder Singh, and Margaret Lloyd, “Living With and Dying From Cancer: A Humanities Special Study Module,” Medical Humanities 26 (2000): 51–54; Paul Lazarus and Felicity M. Rosslyn, “The Arts in Medicine: Setting up and Evaluating a New Special Study Module at Leicester Warwick Medical School,” Medical Education 37 (2003): 553–559; Lisbeth Blomqvist, Kaisu Pitkälä, and Pirkko Routasalo, “Images of Loneliness: Using Art as an Educational Method in Professional Training,” Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing 38 (2007): 89–93; Fatemah Geranmayeh and Keyoumars Ashkan, “Mind on Canvas: Anatomy, Signs, and Neurosurgery in Art,” British Journal of Neurosurgery 22 (2008): 563–574; and Arno K. Kumagi, “Perspective: Acts of Interpretation: A Philosophical Approach to Using Creative Arts in Medical Education,” Academic Medicine 87 (2012): 1138–1144.
- 34.
Pellico, Friedlaender, and Fennie, “Looking is Not Seeing,” 650.
- 35.
Mark Perry, Nicola Maffulli, Suzy Wilson, and Dylan Morrissey, “The Effectiveness of Arts-Based Interventions in Medical Education: A Literature Review,” Medical Education 45 (2011): 146.
- 36.
Renée C. Fox, “Training for Uncertainty,” in The Student-Physician: Introductory Studies in the Sociology of Medical Education, ed. by Robert K. Merton, George G. Reader, and Patricia L. Kendall (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957; reprinted 1969), 210.
- 37.
Caroline Wellbery, “The Art of Medicine: The Value of Medical Uncertainty?” The Lancet 375 (May 15, 2010): 1687.
- 38.
Ibid., 1686.
- 39.
Ibid., 1687.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
Jeffrey I. Campbell , “Art and the Uncertainty of Medicine,” Journal of the American Medical Association 312, no. 22 (Dec. 10, 2014): 2337.
- 42.
Braverman, “To See or Not to See,” 345–346.
- 43.
Glenn C. Newell and Douglas J. Hanes , “Listening to Music : The Case for its Use in Teaching Medical Humanism,” Academic Medicine 78, no. 7 (July 2003): 715.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Peter Van Roessel and Audrey Shafer, “Music, Medicine, and the Art of Listening,” Journal for Learning through the Arts 2, no. 1 (2006), accessed January 4, 2016, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/501997g9.
- 46.
Kokkidou, “Critical Thinking and School Music Education,” 4.
- 47.
Ibid., 5.
- 48.
Ibid., 6.
- 49.
Van Roessel and Shafer, “Music, Medicine, and the Art of Listening.”
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Kokkidou, “Critical Thinking and School Music Education,” 6.
- 54.
Newell and Hanes, “Listening to Music,” 715.
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Lieberman, I., Parker, M. (2018). The Value of the Arts Within a Liberal Arts Education: Skills for the Workplace and the World. In: Hensel, N. (eds) Exploring, Experiencing, and Envisioning Integration in US Arts Education. The Arts in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71051-8_9
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