Change of Heart
(Artistic Alternatives to Violence)
Teaching Methodologies:
Thorough integration of the visual and performing arts into the education
of young people has been demonstrated to help them to better understand
what they are learning academically, to motivate them to actively participate
in their education (reflected in attendance and test scores), and to learn
to solve problems creatively and engage in higher order thinking. The arts
help to give people the opportunity to understand their inner selves more
fully and express their thoughts and feelings; and then communicate them
to others, thus promoting self-confidence and good self-esteem.
Howard Gardner’s groundbreaking theory—in application—allows young people to
discover their own individual ways of receiving, assimilating and utilizing
information. Each of the nine identified intelligences has been demonstrated
to be actively functioning within each human psyche, albeit with certain
intelligences being dominant to greater or lesser degrees in different
individuals. Teaching to students’ psychological strengths not only allows
them to experience success in learning, but as well to become motivated to
strengthen their less dominant intelligences in order to continue to achieve
the goals they may set for themselves. (More about the
Theory of Multiple Intelligences).
As arts-in-education and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences become
integrated into a school’s academic and behavioral curriculum, it becomes
increasingly clear to all involved what proven and accepted mental health
strategies need to be implemented to continually provide the optimum
psychological and physical environment to insure that "no child is left behind."
These include:
- The fostering of self-respect and respect for one another.
- The self-awareness to practically and non-judgmentally recognize one’s
strengths and one’s weaknesses.
- The psychological support of teachers, parents, school staff and
instructional personnel, counselors and mental health professionals, and
the community-at-large.
The ultimate aim for public education is to graduate young men and women
who not only have the skills and knowledge to "make their way in the world,"
but who also have a functional understanding of who they are, the technology
of goal setting and accomplishment, and the communicative ability to actively
contribute to their society.
It is to the benefit of the entire community that this ultimate aim be achieved.
In addition to the benefits to the children themselves, as noted above,
others who will inevitably benefit from the Change of Heart program include:
- Parents: their children will grow up to become the kinds of men and women
they have aspired for them to be.
- Teachers will have the knowledge, the skills and the resources to assure
that each child may grow to his or her highest potential while in school.
- The Educational Community will have the documentation and statistical
success to confidently fulfill the mandates that they are given by the
Government and the public, thus being able to attract the ongoing funding
they require.
- The Scientific Community will have the documented research to assist
in solving the challenges in mental health and mental illness, and those
specific interventions needed to be applied universally.
- The Government will benefit in the lessening of youth violence and
criminality, drug abuse, teen-aged suicide and the spread of social conflict.
- The Business Community will benefit from having easy access to healthy and
well-balanced young men and women able to creatively solve problems and
achieve goals in order to increase revenues to the benefit of all concerned.
Therefore, representatives from each of these groups need to be involved
in the planning and development of any comprehensive Change of Heart program
to insure its comprehensive success.
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