This ASCD Study Guide is designed to enhance your understanding and application of the information contained in Arts with the Brain in Mind, an ASCD book published in May 2001. Written by Eric Jensen, this book describes what new findings from neuroscience and cognitive science research are teaching us about the need for the arts in our schools. The book presents many instructional strategies and classroom activities that promote the musical, visual, and kinesthetic arts in school, as well as recommendations for assessing arts instruction. Do the arts help develop the brain? Are there special age groups important for introducing the arts to children? The book considers these and other questions that explore the value of the arts in education.

This study guide presents many questions that may help "make the case" for including the arts—which are all too often disappearing from our schools or are being relegated to after-school activities. The questions and reflection points can be used by a person reading the book alone, but are best discussed with a colleague or members of a study group. The guide will provide the most benefit if you work on the study questions and activities after finishing each chapter. (However, many have found that by previewing the questions first, then the additional "mind set" helps activate the brain in searching and making connections.) Readers are encouraged not only to try some of the activities but to consider modifying or adapting them for use in their particular schools and classrooms.

Chapter 1: Arts as a Major Discipline

1. What are some of the essential questions to formulate when discussing the value of arts in society? Why do you think the author picked a narrow range of research to use in valuing arts?
2. What do you think the author means when he says that the arts may be a "brain developer"? (as opposed to a way to raise test scores or raise cultural levels)? What are the limitations and possibilities of this hypothesis?
3. What other benefits are there besides the possibility that arts may develop the brain? Have you personally experienced any of these benefits for yourself or your students? How do you value these benefits?
4. Do you agree or disagree with the author's criteria for what makes a subject worthy of being called a "major discipline"? What is the value in being "elected" or "confirmed" as a "major discipline" versus simply being called important or valuable?
5. In what ways has education changed over the past 30-50 years that may make arts more valuable in today's climate?
6. The author argues that we should cut the volume of content required in most primary or elementary schools by half to make room for the arts, as well as other, more "brain developing" areas like emotional intelligence. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
7. One of the examples of an arts-laden schools is the Waldorf model. What do you think would happen at your own school if arts were the primary and grounding basis for learning other disciplines? As an example, students might learn mathematics through P.E. or language skills through theater and drama.

Chapter 2: Musical Arts

1. The author claims that playing music may develop (over time) the whole mind and body (biological systems). How might music do that?
2. It seems that humans have a long music history. Do you believe humans are "wired for music"? If so, what is the evidence? If not, why not? Why might it make a difference if we knew that humans have a musical heritage?
3. What value of music is suggested in the first two years of our life? What value in the years two through five? What are some of the cautions about music all parents should know about?
4. It seems that there are differences in the developing brain based on when you learn to play music. What are those differences? Should they guide instructional practice? What do the studies on children 7-11 years of age tell us about the value of an early music education?
5. Is there any point to learning to play an instrument after age 10? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
6. What is the evidence that music enhances cognition? Is that enough reason alone to push for the value of music? How does music influence the brain cognitively?
7. Most everyone has heard of the relationships between music and math. What are some of the plausible reasons that the two have been linked? Are music and math brain areas the same?
8. Can you define the so-called "Mozart Effect"? What were the conditions of the actual experiment and what did it really suggest? What should other educators know about the this effect?
9. Can you name the single strongest component of Mozart that, so far, seems to be the one that improves student achievement scores? What kinds of music are strong in that quality? Could you or have you used that in your classroom?
10. Of all the music studies that show improvements in cognition, which ones have "sold" you the most on the value of music? Are there practical classroom applications for this research?
11. Many teachers have played music in the background of a class. Based on the research, do you think it's a good idea? If so, what type and when?
12. What are the correlations with music and Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores? Should those be "advertised" as part of the value that music can make? Or, do you think the links are far too "iffy" to be touted as credible?
13. In what ways could music enhance emotional intelligence? What do the studies in the book say is the specific benefit?
14. Can you cite examples of the negative side of music? When and where is it inappropriate?
15. Music might enhance our perceptual-motor skills, claims the author. If this is true, how would it do it? What are some of the other skills that music might enhance, according to the author?
16. In what way might music influence our stress level? How do you use music to raise your own stress (get you motivated) or lower it (to calm you down)? What kinds of music might be useful for a classroom of students who were too excited or too quiet?
17. How might music influence reading and memory? You recall learning the alphabet with a song and the words to songs because of the melody? The studies show correlations with words and music and memory, but how could this happen? Do you have a theory? Should more learning in a classroom be finalized with a rhyming song?
18. What are some of the cautions regarding music and hearing? Could music improve listening skills? How would that translate to classroom use?
19. Long-term policy decisions regarding music are complex. Are you sold on the value of music for the K-5 level? How about middle school or high school level? Should every child get a musical education? How much do you think is prudent? If you were a parent, what would you want for your child and why?

Chapter 3: Visual Arts

1. What do the visual arts encompass? How many of them are you using on a daily basis? What experiences do you have in their value?
2. Many believe that because visual arts have been around for so many years, that it strengthens their case. How do you feel about arts with this anthropological twist? Does it confirm why some students have an "urge" to draw?
3. What does the author mean when he says that seeing can be an active process, not passive? How does the brain "construct and create" a view of art (or the world)?
4. What role do hands play in visual arts? Why is their role important? What side of the brain do visual arts activate?
5. Is there any evidence that visual arts can influence cognition? Why do you think visual arts might help in thinking? What is it about drawing, for example, that might develop cognitive skills?
6. There are other roles for the value of arts. What value do you place on aesthetics, motivation, and self-discipline in the classroom?
7. Visual arts are often used as a strategy for improving learning in students with learning delays. What does it offer for these students? Can if offer value to students in general education?
8. In what ways do you see visual arts being taught in your curriculum? Is there room in the curriculum for it? How broadly do you define visual arts—are mind maps a form of it?
9. If you had to choose between integrating visual arts and offering it as a separate "subject," which would you choose and why?
10. What is the value of the arts in a world where technology, efficiency, and speed is highly valued? Is there a place for it in your school? In what ways might you integrate it in your work?

Chapter 4: Kinesthetic Arts

1. What are some of the old assumptions about kinesthetic learning that caused recess and physical education (PE) to be reduced or eliminated in many school districts? Can you paraphrase the author's hypothesis for this chapter regarding the value of movement?
2. Is there a "movement center" in the brain? How much of our brain do we use for movement?
3. We mostly think of learning as being cognitively explicit, but it is more commonly implicit. What are the distinctions between explicit and implicit learning? What advantages does implicit learning have over text-based explicit learning?
4. What are three or four of the neurobiological benefits of kinesthetic arts? What role do you see for theater in your own work?
5. Can movement programs enhance reading and creativity? How do you think this plausibly happens? Have you seen any results of such programs in your own classroom?
6. One of the biggest skill sets to come from performance arts is emotional intelligence. How do you feel about the value of it? Do you thinks students should be taught emotional intelligence skills overtly or learn them from other activities like drama?
7. How do you see the role of industrial arts after reading this section? Does it serve many valuable purposes, or is it just a way to keep certain kids in school?
8. Play is touted as being highly important. What is it about play that makes it so valuable to the human learner? What kinds of play do you already use in the classroom? What kinds could you add?
9. What does the author mean by "settling time"? In what ways could you find enough time to include it?
10. Do you see the same value in daylight that the authors of the study on it found? How do your students respond to it? What adaptations could you make to create a brighter classroom?
11. Some teachers believe that kids coming back to the classroom from band, PE, and recess are too "charged up." Do you find this to be true? Is that a good sign or not? What should be done about it?
12. Activity can reduce stress? Is that even an issue in your classroom? How about for you personally? In what way?
13. A final benefit of exercise is listed as neurogenesis. Exactly what is it? Should schools be interested in enhancing neurogenesis? Or is that subject better left to the scientists to explore?
14. Based on this chapter, are you more or less sold on the value of physical activity? What changes should be made in schools nationally? Would you make PE mandatory? Why or why not?

Chapter 5: Arts and Assessment

1. What are some of the critical issues in deciding if and how assessments fit with arts? How do you feel about those issues?
2. Give your best case for why teachers should be assessing arts.
3. If arts were assessed, what are some of the most effective and still highly flexible ways to do it?
4. What is meant by the "long view" when it comes to assessing the arts?
5. Give your best case for what teachers should not be assessing in arts.
6. How do you feel about pass/fail standards for arts in schools? What problems might we have with them? How might those issues be resolved?
7. The author talks about schools using an "efficiency model." What does that mean? What is another model that could work, instead? To what level can you support arts as a mandate in schools? Why do you feel that way? What would you say to the critics of your decisions?
8. In retrospect, did the book make a compelling case for the value of arts? If not, what would you have like to have added? If so, where does that lead you—what will be your next action steps?

Contact Eric Jensen at the following address:

Box 2551, Del Mar, CA 92014; Phone: 1-858-642-0400; E-mail: eric@jlcbrain.com; Fax: 1-858-642-0404; Web site: eric@jlcbrain.com.

Arts with the Brain in Mind was written by Eric Jensen. This 139-page, 8" x 10" book (Stock #101011; ISBN 0-87120-514-9) is available from ASCD for $18.95 (ASCD member) and $22.95 (nonmember). Copyright 2001 by Eric Jensen. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.