Albert Einstein once said that mystery "is the source of all true art and all science. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead." When Pearl Schaeffer and Raye Cohen first partnered with the School District of Philadelphia four years ago, there was no mystery about the city's education system: it was in trouble. 80,000 students skipped over a week of school, and 46 percent dropped out. Schaeffer and Cohen knew something had to be done to make students stand in rapt awe once more.
After creating the
Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership in 1996, the pair successfully petitioned for a U.S. Department of Education grant 10 years later to prove that art could be used across disciplines like science and math to engage under-performing students. This week, the group announces a $1.1 million grant to expand the program, providing regular employment to 50 area artists trained as teachers, bringing the right kind of mystery back to math and science.
"If students are having difficulty in reading, understanding sequencing of events in a story," says PAEP Education Director Raye Cohen, "there would be an art project that would be discretely based on the idea of understanding the sequence as you go through that art project and the teacher and the artist would then reinforce that this is the same skill set as reading a story."
Building on its 2006
Arts Bridges report, PAEP has created
Arts Link: Building Mathematics and Science Competencies through an Arts Integrated Model. With this 4-year grant, the group will not only educate teachers and artists in its new model but will honor state standards in mathematics, science, and reading skills for students in grades 2 through 5.
"The Arts are a means of allowing students to learn in multiple ways," says PAEP CEO Pearl Schaeffer. "When you allow arts to overlay a science project or a math project, students tend to learn better and retain information better. That's what we've been seeing and we are now going to test it out to get some hard data."
Source: Pearl Schaeffer and Raye Cohen, PAEP
Writer: John Steele