Not necessarily dancing
I'm the first to agree that we in the arts need to step up the articulation of our advocacy. I've mentioned a few times lately that we're open to a sound trouncing if the best arguments we can make are economic.
I've been reading the RAND study Gifts of the Muse - which should be a primer for anyone seeking to expand the advocacy toolkit.
It's very dry.
The RAND folks are working very hard to give us enough traction to budge a sociopolitical structure that demands measurable metrics to prove our worth to society. Ironies begin to develop early on. The RAND study is a meta-study - it evaluates and exegesizes studies done by others. It cites another meta-study which threw out 1,103 of 1,135 studies on the cognitive benefits of arts for lack of sound methodology.
Those 1,103 crappy "studies" were like as not generated by over-worked, underqulailified arts teachers or administrators trying to meet some terrible reporting metric imposed on them by a project grant. Least-aways, that's my guess. I'm personally responsible for at least three.
As you trundle along (looking for reasons to update your Facebook status instead of digesting RAND's excellent-but-chewy report) you see this amazing tension develop between scientific methodology and the intrinsic benefits of the arts - very Aristotle. Very un-Zenlike.
My personal favorite WTF:
I have only sympathy, affection, and respect for the folks at RAND and their funders; they're among the few out there trying to get some legs under real arguments for the arts. Sometimes, though, the harder we try to make rational arguments in favor of our species-old pasttime, the farther away we get.
Every now and then, look a skeptic straight in the eye and say "arts are important because they are, dammit - you know it, and I know it - quit screwing around." Then hit him with the RAND study.
I've been reading the RAND study Gifts of the Muse - which should be a primer for anyone seeking to expand the advocacy toolkit.
It's very dry.
The RAND folks are working very hard to give us enough traction to budge a sociopolitical structure that demands measurable metrics to prove our worth to society. Ironies begin to develop early on. The RAND study is a meta-study - it evaluates and exegesizes studies done by others. It cites another meta-study which threw out 1,103 of 1,135 studies on the cognitive benefits of arts for lack of sound methodology.
Those 1,103 crappy "studies" were like as not generated by over-worked, underqulailified arts teachers or administrators trying to meet some terrible reporting metric imposed on them by a project grant. Least-aways, that's my guess. I'm personally responsible for at least three.
As you trundle along (looking for reasons to update your Facebook status instead of digesting RAND's excellent-but-chewy report) you see this amazing tension develop between scientific methodology and the intrinsic benefits of the arts - very Aristotle. Very un-Zenlike.
My personal favorite WTF:
"in dance therapy, for example, there is typically movement in response to music, but this is not necessarily dancing."Hrm.
I have only sympathy, affection, and respect for the folks at RAND and their funders; they're among the few out there trying to get some legs under real arguments for the arts. Sometimes, though, the harder we try to make rational arguments in favor of our species-old pasttime, the farther away we get.
Every now and then, look a skeptic straight in the eye and say "arts are important because they are, dammit - you know it, and I know it - quit screwing around." Then hit him with the RAND study.
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