Dance classes improve test scores and more

Every year in late spring, my daughter’s school spends a week rehearsing, dancing, and performing for its World Dance Festival. Frankly, I wish dance was part of their year-round curriculum, because in addition to the obvious physical benefits, students who are dancers have been shown not only to be better and more self-confident, but to get better. test scores. . Coincidentally, that’s one of the main motivating factors in today’s school system, so shouldn’t more schools be considering implementing a dance program?

The potential benefits span the entire physical, emotional, social, and academic gamut. Here are some factual data to chew on (compiled from a study by the National Assembly of State Art Agencies titled: “Critical Evidence: How ARTS Benefit Student Achievement”):

• In a well-documented national study using a federal database of more than 25,000 middle and high school students, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles found that students with high artistic participation performed better on standardized achievement tests. than students with little artistic participation. In addition, highly artistic students also watched fewer hours of television, participated in more community services, and reported less boredom at school.

• In an experimental research study of high school age students, dancers scored higher than non-dancers on measures of creative thinking, especially in the categories of fluency, originality, and abstract thinking.

• Dance can also affect the way young offenders and other marginalized youth feel about themselves. One study showed that when a group of 60 adolescents, ages 13 to 17, participated in jazz and hip hop dance classes twice a week for 10 weeks, they reported significant gains in confidence, tolerance, and persistence related to dance experience.

• Dance has been used to develop reading readiness in very young children.

• According to the Center for the Development of Educators in Fine Arts, higher scores on academic tests, higher self-esteem, stronger social skills, and greater knowledge of content can be attributed to students who participate in groups. in dance classes.

Dance uses both the left and right hemispheres of the brain as dancers learn and memorize combinations of movement while expressing concepts and emotions, focusing and counting each beat of music while inhabiting a different world, in addition to the monotony of repetition. memory that school can often do. be. Spatial awareness, motor coordination, strength and flexibility also come into play, and the end result is … stronger, more confident human beings possessing greater cognitive abilities.

Isn’t that what education is supposed to be about?