From the time that kids are in elementary school all the way through high school, they are expected to get a good education and go to college. The pressures of this expectation are huge. Kids have to increasingly do better on standardized tests each year (Major), leading up to the ultimate standardized tests known as the SAT and the ACT. These are the standardized tests that help determine what college kids will get into. Oddly enough, the arts are one of few subjects not tested on these standardized tests. A proctor cannot ask two kids to paint a picture of a sunset or a bug because the two paintings will be vastly different. Similarly, a teacher cannot ask two kids to perform scenes from a play because their interpretations would vary greatly. The arts, though difficult to test, serve a different purpose. The arts give kids an outlet to channel the stress in a time when standardized testing is the solution to anything and everything. The arts give kids a chance to excel in a subject that is not as boring and mind numbing as the standard core subjects can be. The arts just provide a break from the constant new, and typically challenging material that kids are bombarded with throughout the school day. Another purpose the arts serve is that they can heighten intelligence in other areas as well. Yet, the arts are the same subjects that almost immediately get dropped the second there are budget cuts at a school. This should not be the case. The hierarchy of subjects in the education system should not exist (Do Schools Kill Creativity). Math, though important, should not be at the top while the arts gather dust, neglected at the bottom of this subject hierarchy.  The arts are vitally important for kids in the education system, having numerous effects on the children who participate in them, all of which can help to improve their intelligence. Arts improve intelligence through increased visual-spatial ability, motor control, and memory. 

The arts increase visual-spatial ability. Visual-spatial ability can also be referred to as spatial reasoning. It is an ability that helps kids to be able to manipulate objects in their heads, understand maps and graphs or find their way through new surroundings (Cromie), and the arts elicit this ability. One art form that does this is music. In one famous study, known as the Mozart Effect, people attempted to look at the effect that music had on intelligence (Hetland 105).  A group of researchers found that after listening to ten minutes of Mozart's Piano Sonata for Two Pianos college students had better spatial reasoning. The researchers concluded that after listening to Mozart for ten minutes there was an eight to ten point rise in IQ scores (Hetland 105). Though this theory was allegedly debunked numerous times, especially by Harvard University when they conducted a similar study and were unable to come to the same results, the study remains controversial (Cromie). A possible reason as to why these results were unreciprocated can be explained from the book Your Playlist can Change Your Life. The book, written by well known authors, Galina Mindlin, Don Durousseau, and Joseph Cardillo, explains Flow Theory when listening to music. This elicits several responses in people's brains which allow them to be more organized, or less anxious, or even boost their immune system (Mindlin 9). The Flow mindset is described in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book, Flow, as "a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to absolute absorption in an activity" (qtd. in Mindlin 9). The reason why the Mozart Effect was unreciprocated is due to the fact the people who participated in the original study preferred Mozart. Mozart's Piano Sonata for Two Pianos was the type of music that put the participants into the 'flow' mindset, resulting in a spike of their IQ scores. Lois Hetland, a well known musician, professor, and writer, supports the Mozart Effect, claiming that it does exist (Cromie). However, she suggests that learning music in school can lead to a large effect on spatial reasoning (Cromie). Another study conducted in 1997 released results they found in a piano study, concluding that the consequence of being trained in the piano developed children's spatial reasoning skills greatly (Demorist, Morrison 35). The conductors of the study observed three groups of children who took piano classes, computer skills courses, or no special instruction at all. They found that the children who could play the piano had better spatial reasoning skills than the other children in both the computer skills and no special instruction courses (35). Music is not the only art form that elicits a response in children's spatial reasoning skills. Dance has been known to have a similar effect on spatial reasoning. Typically, dancers perform an already choreographed dance; they do not make up a dance for the first time when they dance at a recital. Planned movements, like the dancer's choreographed dance, begin in the motor cortex of the brain (Society for Neruoscience). The motor cortex is divided into different sections which each in control a different part of the body (Society for Neuroscience). The signals from the motor cortex travel down to which ever body part is supposed to be moving and that arm or leg responds accordingly (Society for Neuroscience). When these several regions of the motor cortex become active, this helps to speedily calculate the spatial orientation with a dancer (Society for Neuroscience). Dancers need good spatial judgment to ensure they do not run into other objects or other dancers in the middle of a performance. Art has an astounding influence on spatial reasoning as well. A study that attempted to discover if art students had an advantage over other students with geometric tasks discovered that arts students did much better on geometric reasoning tasks versus psychology students (Walker et. al. 22). The authors of the study concluded that visual arts training might actually improve spatial reasoning through visualization (22). Visual-spatial abilities not only impact children's success in other school classes, like Geography, Mathematics, Economics and Engineering, but also help them create future life skills, like having the ability to pack and use mirror images (Baxley). Visual-spatial abilities are important and need to be fostered within children to give them the skills that they'll use throughout their lives. The arts are a good way to start because they have such a beneficial effect on the spatial reasoning of the kids who participate in them. 

The arts enhance motor control in children. Motor control is basically how the brain activates and coordinates different bodily movements. Motor control is needed extensively in various art activities, and as such, with practice, children's motor skill capabilities grow. For example, in art class kids need motor skills to do numerous activities. Painting, cutting paper with scissors, molding clay, even weaving yarn are all skills honed in art class. With each use of these skills, kids are improving control of the small muscles in their hands ("Art-An Opportunity to Develop Children's Skills"). Many preschool programs use scissors in activities frequently because it develops the dexterity children will need for writing (Lynch). Musicians hone their motor skills as well. They need to be able to read music and translate that into an action (Altenmuller, Wiesendanger, and Kesselring 28). A piano player has to possess the ability to read the notes, and then play the right fingerings on the keyboard and then know if the notes sound correct. If there is unintentional dissonance, then odds are that the player hit the wrong key. One study conducted in 1997 attempted to compare the eye-hand span and perceptual span in skilled pianists versus non-skilled pianists (Altenmuller, Wiesendanger, and Kesselring 29). The eye-hand span is the amount of time in between the moment when the note is seen on the musical score and when it is played on the keyboard (29). The perception span is the "region around the note from which useful information is extracted" (29). When a musician reads a piece of music, they have to interpret the notes surrounding the one note they are looking at as well, so they will have an idea of what to play next or how the rhythms in the song work. The authors of the study found that the perceptual span between the two groups was about the same while the eye-hand span between the two groups was about a half a beat for less skilled pianists, but about two to three beats for the skilled pianists (29). The authors found that these results indicated that the skilled pianists were taking that extra beat or two to reflect on the note they had just played, or the next two or three notes in the sequence (29). The skilled pianists developed the ability to translate several notes into a "complex motor program" which is demonstrated through the fast movements of piano playing (29). Most skilled musicians are not skilled because they were born that way. It takes time and practice, and with this time and practice, skilled musicians have better developed the motor control skills required for playing an instrument. This time and practice is needed for other art forms as well. Think of all the hours dancers put into practicing their steps and movements before even making it to the stage. Every single motion has to be perfect. Many of them start at as young an age as three or four years old. Jay Seitz suggests that at that age, children lack the ability to express tension or weight in their movements and lack balancing capabilities, but have developed other abilities like jumping and marching (40).  By the time children are five and six years of age, dancers can coordinate their movement around objects, skip, and have the ability to successfully complete the first and second positions of ballet (Seitz 40). This evolution in motor skill capabilities suggests that these motor skills can be learned through art forms and applied in other areas. 

Memory grows increasingly important to individuals as they get older. Though important to young people to help them remember dates and times for their History test, memory links itself with a person's identity and personality when he or she is older. This is often why dementia diseases like Alzheimer's frighten so many of the elderly. Who wants to forget their children or what they ate for breakfast yesterday morning? With studying in the arts, memory actually improves, and similarly to motor control, is practiced. Think of the actors and actresses who appear on stage spouting lines of Shakespeare from memory. It probably took those students a lot of time at rehearsals to memorize the lines for their characters, and that's not accounting for the possibility that the production is a musical. Then the students would have to memorize the lyrics and tune to the song as well. A trial conducted to see the effect of drama classes on memory took 124 adults from the age of 60-85 and separated them into three groups (Hough, and Hough 455). One group took theater classes, another group took visual arts classes and the third group did not take any special course (455). The conductors of the trial found that though the visual arts students had the best memory when subjected to problem-solving tests, and word recall, both the drama and visual arts students scored significantly better than the adults receiving no instruction what-so-ever (455).  Musicians rely on their memories when expressing their art form as well. Besides the fact that they have to remember the fingerings and positions for how to play each note, they often have to remember certain parts of their musical scores, like what their part sounds like, and how to play it. Never mind the fact that they also have to remember what all of the symbols and letterings mean that are thrown in the score as well; a sharp versus a flat, or Mezzo Piano (mp) versus Fortissimo (ff). There is a reason for this. Altenmuller, Wiesendanger, and Kesselring, authors of the book, Music Motor Control and the Brain, state in their book, "Sluming et. al (2002) found that in musicians there's an increase in grey matter in the frontal cortex known to accommodate neural networks involved in several important memory processes" (33). So musicians have developed more grey matter in their brains and that substance is responsible for the transfer between musical performance and verbal memory(33). Music does not only effect musicians, however. Music has been known for helping with memorization of materials, just in general. The alphabet song is a prime example of how people improve their memory of letters by setting them to music. Another example that demonstrates this is advertising.  Every cute little jingle heard on TV is just another way for the advertising companies to get their viewers to keep thinking about a product. There's a reason that people tell you to listen to music when you are studying. In the 1960's, Dr. Georgi Lozanov and Evelyna Gateva researched ways to improve memory, including music. They had tremendous success, especially in the use of background music during lectures, vocabulary, and readings (Brewer 5).  It is possible to increase memory retention using music, even in a classroom environment. In another study, music was played in the background while the participants watched a movie. The participants were then questioned to see what they could remember. If a participant could not remember what happened at a certain part of the movie, the researchers would play the music that had been playing in the background. With the musical context added, the participant would be able to remember the forgotten information (Taylor 760). Memory retention is significantly increased with the help of the arts. 

Arts increase visual-spatial ability, motor control, and memory, thereby enhancing intelligence. These effects are not just important for the arts either; they carry over into many other aspects of our lives and teach us valuable skills. Musicians need to be good at math so they can count measures of rest and count in time like 12/8. Drama has been known to have a good influence on reading, writing and speaking (Cromie).  Why then are the arts so often neglected? The arts should be supported, not condemned. Any subject that has this much of a profound impact on the brain should be treated with the same importance as Math or English. With these effects, it is a wonder as to why more kids are not enrolled in arts courses. The arts are so beneficial to children and teach them so much, that they should not even be considered when dropping a program due to budget cuts. Money should be funded to the arts for every single skill that they teach children, too many to be listed here.  Education nowadays is so difficult on children, that they need an outlet to escape it. There is so much pressure that pushes down on them at all times that the arts are one of the only forms of expression they have left. When the school takes that away, all that is left is endless, challenging core subjects that make kids want to bang their head off the wall. Art has earned its place among the subjects in a school, and it deserves to stay that way. 

