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El-Hadj Loudni, Ph.D (CEO Founder)of the NNATV2007 The National Native American Television.Signed by Debra Bowen Secretary of State.State of California USA on February 20 2007. Informing the world about Native American Indians culture history and issues.Promoting Native Indians Artist, Actors, Directors and Producers.

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The importance of arts in children's lives

Category: Writing and research

The experiences of childhood, pioneering research shows, help form the brain’s circuits. A baby’s brain is a work in progress, with all the neurons waiting to be wire into a powerful mind. As Sharon Begley points out in her article for Newsweek, “If the neurons are used they become integrated into the circuitry of the brain by connecting to other neurons; if they are not used, they may die.” That is why is so important to give young children the opportunity to experience the arts. Carla Shatz from the University of California, Berkeley talks about “windows of opportunity.” According to this theory that is becoming the current paradigm, there are time limits or critical periods for the brain to create itself. The arts play a decisive role in every learning window. The art curriculum should be central in early children education in order to give children the right input at the right moment. If we do not offer the right experiences to children when they are wiring their brains, they can miss the learning windows. These theories started developing in the early seventies by Wielsen and Hubel experiments about local brain distribution of knowledge and skills. They showed how sewing some kitten’s eye made impossibly for the brain to develop the neuronal connection needed to see. After the healthy eye was open, the cat was blind. Nevertheless, the same did not happen with an adult cat. That proves the short early period in wich circuits connect the retina to the visual cortex. Lenneberg, in his classical study biological foundations of language, states that the whole brain is an integrated system with constant activity in all its structures. Paraphrasing Lenneberg, any change on the brain will be a change affecting the whole brain. (76) The traditional approach on Early Children Education pointed out the importance of the arts for children because of the self esteem component, the development sensitivity and creativity that implies and the consideration of the innate ability to children to respond to art and express themselves. Besides the traditional approach, new researches amply the unquestionable importance of arts in early children education by considering art a crucial component to form brain circuits during the “windows of opportunity.” By examining the so-called windows, the importance of the arts shows itself very clearly. The window for the skills of math and logic is placed from birth to four years. Circuits for math are close in the cortex to those related to music. Music lessons can help develop spatial skills. Rhythm and beat are essential in learning to read and write. Following the Newsweek article, researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany found that exposure to music rewires the neural circuits. The examination of the brain of some string players showed a bigger amount of the cerebral cortex devoted to the fingers. How much time devoted to play daily was not relevant to the case, but how early was the music introduced to the players. The earlier they were introduced, the more connections they had. Like other circuits formed early in life, the circuits formed by music endure much like the muscle memory to ride a bike. At UC Irvine, Gordon Show was conducting a research in wich preschoolers being instructed in piano and singing improved their spatial reasoning. Mozart could help to learn math. UC team says that when children exercise their cortical neurons by listening to music they are strengthening circuits used for math. The arts will also play a very important role to develop the emotional intelligence. Daniel Stern calls attunement to play back a child inner feelings. That is what a care giver does when mirroring a child emotion. The brain uses the same paths to generate an emotion and to respond to one. Art is known to be an excellent vehicle to generate emotions and to play them back and sharing with others. Art gives young children more opportunities to wire their circuits to be able to feel intense joy excitement and all kind of emotions. Children need to be physically active in the classroom to learn better. Drama and creative movement will be very helpful to made children better learners. Children who exercise regularly do better in school. Creating a multidimensional model of whatever the children need to learn will activate more zones of their brain and will change a regular lesson into an unforgettable experience. Including painting, sculpting, singing and drama will trigger the related circuits of the brain empowering the learning ability. Visual arts are full of patterns, rhythm and movement that will stimulate and wire the cortical zones devoted to perception. Painting and drawing will circuit the brain to develop eye hand coordination. Working on visual arts will teach persistence and devotion to the task as well as patience and self-discipline. We should consider the developmental level of the children to offer them activities that match their needs and abilities. Young children are sensory oriented. Art will allow them to experiment sensory pleasure. As we can read in the book Who Am I in the lives of children “Trough their artwork children can disclose their private thoughts, feelings and ways of perceiving.”... “ The sophistication of the finished product is determined by the child’s strength, motor coordination and cognitive development” . . . Infants and toddlers experience the world and art as color, texture, form movement temperature and taste. Art is not distinguished from other sensory experience and is enjoyed the same way”(351). So, as The Creative arts, A process Approach for teachers and children book repeatedly says , it is obvious that when working with infant toddlers and preschooler, even kindergarteneers and young children the process is more important than the art product.

At this point we can reconsider what is art. This not a simple question. When we talk about arts, we refer to painting, dancing, music, and sometimes poetry and literature. Visual arts are the first coming to our mind. If we go a little further in our thinking, we will arrive to creativity. Art and creativity are clearly associated. Picasso’s statement clearly illustrates the relationship of children arts and creativity. The years from four to seven seem to be the golden age for creativity in the arts. At that age, children paint and draw paintings that are interesting and appealing. When children are reaching eight, most of their work becomes less expressive and more stereotyped. Explanations, as the growing specialization of the brain, the lost of interest as the thinking goes stronger seems weak to answer the lost of a powerful ability. It does not seem possible for children development to have a window of opportunity for creativity. Howard Gardner in Artful Scribbles says that the decline in drawing ability is due to lack of instruction. High creativity involves a playful contemplation, but also high persistency and concentration. Creativity in on the heart of arts surrounded by their anonymous workers, knowledge of the technique and the media, availability of materials, discipline and a task oriented mind. If we consider Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence described in his book Frames of mind, we can see the problem solving approach and fashioned products directed to better define intelligence. With this new view of multiple intelligence the art gets the central point in the creative process instead of the position of considering art just a pastime that was prevalent in other narrower definitions of intelligence. As it has been said before there is a strong connection between visual art and spatial intelligence. “This intelligence includes being sensitive to color, line, shape form space and the relationship between them.” (The Creative Arts, 142) Everything leads to the same conclusion, teaching art should be one of the most important parts in Early Children Education and it should start as soon as possible in the lives of children to benefit them the most.

2 b Or Not 2 b A Second Language Speaker

When children immigrate to a new country, we should give them time to be able to gradually learn the new language; meanwhile, instruction should be provided in their native language to allow those newcomers to keep up on academics.

A new initiative written by Ron Unz proposes to restrict bilingual education in California. The Unz plan will place the new students in classrooms where teachers will speak only English to them. After one year of English immersion, they will be transferred to mainstream classrooms.  The Unz proposition contradicts Stephen D. Krashen, a well-known theorist about second language acquisition. Stephen Krashen  points out how important it is to have a low anxiety environment in order for the children to learn a foreign language. He says that we learn language through acquisition, by being exposed to meaningful messages. He also talks about the transferability of skills from one language to another.
Over the years the public school system in the United States has not provided an adequate education to students from subordinated language minority groups. As reported by Eduardo Hernandez Chavez from the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Elmira, California (California State University Sacramento)  in the book compiled by the State Department of Education “These groups have, in general, the lowest academic achievement, the highest attrition rates, and the lowest record of college enrollment in comparison with all other groups (144).
A bilingual education model, based on research about second language acquisition will simplify the transition between two languages allowing the children to develop at their own paces their whole potential. It will also enable students to be equally adept in two languages.     

Displaced children are vulnerable to suffer a cultural shock. If they are placed in a classroom where everyone speaks another language, they will have a very hard time. They will be frightened and unable to cope with the new situation. It is true that very smart or talented outgoing children will do well in that classes, and they will learn English quite fast (as they learn everything). Most of the children will experience high doses of anxiety. This high affective filter, following Krashen theories, will block their ability to acquire the second language. If they do not understand the language, they will naturally fall behind in academics. As Linda Mitchell, a bilingual resource teacher and member of the Salinas Elementary teacher’s council, says in The magazine California Educator “Bilingual education works in most of cases. Students learn skills in their home language and can transfer their skills to English once they have learned English, but if you just submerge children in English for one year, and ex pect them to succeed in core curriculum, it won’t work any better than what we are doing now. That’s sink or swim, and saying, “We are going to plop you here and hope you make it” (13).

We should consider the idea presented by Donn Byrne in his research “In the early stages of language learning it may be better to have talk going on in the mother tongue, or in mixture of mother and English, than to have no fluent talk going on at all. This is not always possible when there are mixed language groups, but when fluency is the aim of exercise-any way of promoting frequent and rapid exchange should be encouraged ”(80). In order for a message to be meaningful it has to have meaning for someone, that is, it needs to be understood. If children are placed in a regular class, for sure they will be exposed to the language, but they will be exposed to messages that will make no sense to them. The primary language will stop its development, the second language will progress with difficulty because it is not specially delivered to make sure it is understood for people with little or no any knowledge about it.If time is spent to let the children adjust to the new situation, they will react better, and the anxiety levels will go down, allowing the new language to be acquired. As is pointed out in by Harold B. Allen “ A series of studies carried out at McGill University has been concern with such topics, and various findings have increased our confidence in a social-psychological theory of language learning. This theory in brief, holds that an individual successfully acquiring a second language gradually adopts various aspects of behavior wich characterize members of another linguistic- cultural group. The learner’s ethnocentric subjects tendencies and his attitudes toward the other group are believed to determine his success in learning the new language.” ( Pg. 38). Immigrant children need to become confident speakers of the second language. Therefore, schools should listen to research results and give them time to learn. This process will take time. Meanwhile, instruction should be delivered in the primary language. A strong English as a Second Language program should be set up as the fundamental part of the plan. The time spent in teaching, for example, the children to read in their primary language, will not be wasted. We learn to read only once, the ability to read will be transferred to the second language. In that way the children will end up having mastered the language and having the right academic level in the rest of the subjects.

Works Cited. Allen, Harold. Teaching English As A Second Language. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.,1965. Donn Byrne, English Teaching Perspectives. Longman Group Ltd UK, 1980. Honig, Bill.Studies On Immersion Education.California State Department of Education, Sacramento,1984. Krashen, Stephen .The input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications.. Longman Group Ltd UK, 1985. Mitchel, Linda. “Everyone learns a Second Language.” California Educator. March 1998: