[Science Solitaire] Science speaks for the arts

Maria Isabel Garcia

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The arts are an essential part of pursuing the sciences

“My son studied acting in Harvard and wants to be an actor which also includes being a stand-up comic.  My daughter is a violinist and when she named her son, my grandson, after my favourite jazz musician, I almost cried. I am really happy that I exposed my children to the arts.” These were words coming out of a scientist-friend of mine who said them with such pride and satisfaction that his children saw themselves “becoming” in the arts. 

Unfortunately, it is an all too common story that there are parents who do not support their kids when they go to the arts. At best, they see the arts only as an “enrichment” of the more “productive” forms of learning or as frills; or worse, just a respite from the kind of rigor that so-called more “precise” forms of learning offer.  Then there are those educators and policy makers who immediately scrap the arts when there is a budget crunch, thinking that the students would not be missing something critical to their education.  

I work in a science museum where it is a given that the science to be presented has to be correct. But for us, that is not enough. We have also always characterized our strategy of presenting science as “the arts rescuing the sciences”. We have to find a way to not just intellectually connect, but also to emotionally connect with our audience, to cultivate their sense of wonder or at the very least, to tickle it.  So as anyone who works in any science museum in the world will tell you, we owe a debt of gratitude to the arts for this.  But science is as generous as the arts. Science, with its own tools, has been uncovering what is it about the arts that makes people good in so many other things including the sciences?

A recent study by researchers from the Michigan State University revealed what innovators in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) had in common when they were kids.  And this was they all had significant exposure and participation in the arts. This study already looked at adults who had patents, published studies, and businesses in STEM-related fields. They all had “sustained” exposure or participation in the arts in childhood (until 14 years old). This included musical training, visual arts, dance, acting, creative writing, architecture and even art-related metal work and electronics. They found that the innovators they studied had eight times more exposure to the arts than the general public.

The researchers think that all the intuition, creativity, imagination and problem-solving involved in the arts are the very domains that need to be activated for success in the pursuit of STEM-related endeavors. In other words, the arts are not peripheral to learning but essential to it. It does not detract from learning science, technology, engineering or math BUT in fact, develops and strengthens your other mental faculties for these disciplines.  

This is also supported by a landmark research published as Learning, Arts and the Brain done by a consortium of universities including Harvard University, University of Toronto, University of Toronto at Scarborough, University of Oregon, University of Michigan, University of California Berkeley, University of California Sta. Barbara, and Stanford University.  

Their major findings mainly point to the arts leading to a high state of motivation that in turn sustains attention. This ability to attend and to focus is versatile, i.e., it spills out to other areas of learning and not just the arts. Musical training was also linked to geometric abilities, reading, sequential learning as well as the ability to manipulate content of both short and long-term memories, which is obviously not needed for the arts alone. Observational skills, naturally required in STEM-related fields, are demanded in dance as dance is translated to complex actions.

Angela Duckworth is a psychologist and math teacher who wanted to find out why is it that her smartest students were not necessarily the ones who were successful. “Successful” meant those who finished their coursework and really got the most out of the learning. She found that it was “grit” that determined success in her students. “Grit” is persistence and motivation- the realization that when they fail, it need not be permanent and they could be more successful by learning from it. Grit, she found, exists with a strong sense of being motivated.  And motivation, is, as we have learned in the study done by the consoritum, is something the arts generously breeds.

Neuroscience has opened the curtains on what happens to our brains and to our adult lives when we engage in the arts early in life. And from what it has revealed so far, it shares the cockpit with science, to our journey to becoming human – as persistent, creative, imaginative, thoughtful creatures.

Maria Isabel Garcia is a science writer. She has written two books, “Science Solitaire” and “Twenty One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire”.  Her column appears every Friday and you can reach her at sciencesolitaire@gmail.com.

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