Description: Private tutor Kane shares his expertise in the performing arts sector and how this can positively enhance an individual’s academic performance.
Across the world theatres sit empty and in disuse, with neither audiences to revel nor actors to tread the boards. Live, in-person
performance has come to carry risks that none of us could have
imagined just a few short months ago.
However, despite its current suffering, the arts, now more than ever, are an essential part of the fabric of our society, and so too are they integral to a proper core education of young people growing up in today’s turbulent world. Whether on-stage, screen, or through other media,
the arts hold key benefits for pedagogical development that extend
into all aspects of academia, vital for a student’s success.
Here’s just a few ways that nurturing a passion for the arts can help students achieve their academic goals:
Confidence
First and foremost, an understanding and passion for the arts
drives development of one of the most invaluable assets a student
can possess: confidence.
Artistic performance, creation, and engagement gives children permission to experiment and make mistakes, which is where all of the best learning happens. How many of us as children have put on performances for our parents in the comfort of our own homes? Regardless of whether our theatrical careers ended there or continued far beyond to the best of the world’s stages, these are key developmental moments for building confidence, giving children the opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t in the realm of public speaking.
The arts allows young people to extend these practices beyond their own comfort zones, and use them as sites of negotiation, debate, and discussion from their early years, right through to university-level. Having the confidence to stand and make one’s case convincingly, whether in the classroom, in a public speaking forum, or sporting a white wig in a court of law, are all reliant upon the confidence of performance.
It is this crucial characteristic that a passion for the arts instils in a young person, demonstrating the necessity of pushing through nerves and doubt in order to achieve success: academic or otherwise. It is,
of course, a testament to the value of confidence in academia that
the world’s leading universities look for this very quality in interviewing potential candidates.
Inspiration & Aspiration
As educators, and even as students, it’s important that we understand that all of the best learning is borne of excitement, passion, curiosity, and healthy competition. It’s vital to understand the driving force behind a students’ desire for knowledge and personal development if for no other reason than a pragmatic one: to learn to leverage that impetus to our own advantage in incentivising education.
Granted, a student’s motivations certainly change over time during the long course of a student’s academic career; what is essential to understand is that the best students’ come to develop a drive that is more sustainable than simply ‘the next test’ — as crucial as these
metrics may be. Coming to understand our own motivations (and those of others) in this way creates an environment for learning that is not only more sustainable in the long-term but also likely to be a great deal more productive in terms of its end results.
How does this relate to the arts? Well, at the very heart of the arts is emotion and inspiration. The arts are about finding the human element in any story, and cultivating passion, which is an idea that can be extrapolated to any number of academic disciplines.
Let us consider, for example, the GCSE Literature exam in
Shakespeare that suddenly seems a great deal less daunting having
already been captivated by Royal Shakespeare Company productions
(many of which are now available digitally as a result of our current national circumstances), or, indeed, a newfound passion for classical music after hearing Mozart for the first time. The joy of the arts is that their subject manner is all-encompassing, whether politics, society, music, science, or language, there’s likely a work of art waiting to be found that can inspire passion and imbue aspirations into any student looking for it, providing role-models and aspirational targets.
Discipline & Dedication
Last, but by no means least, is one of the more overlooked benefits of an arts education. The arts, whether the study of literature, theatre, or film, is notoriously represented as a field dominated by passion — by no means untrue, but by no means wholly representative. The arts, whatever their form or function, hold many lessons for students with regards to the intense discipline and dedication required for such a competitive field saturated with talent, more important than ever in today’s highly competitive academic and working world. Even beyond the intense focus required to attain skills in the arts (the oft quoted 10,000 hours benchmark being an unscientific estimate of this required dedication), an arts education instils skills such as creative problem solving, self-discipline, persistence, and ‘stick-to-it-iveness’ that are essential in any future field of employment or study.
Cultivating a passion for learning and knowledge is a surefire way to boost any student’s educational and academic prospects, and the arts is an incredible tool to aid in that endeavour even beyond the few reasons I’ve outlined here. Look out for online productions and arts companies that are still releasing materials even under the current circumstances of past recorded productions, including the National Theatre, the Globe, the Old Vic, and many others.
Interested in working with Kane? Contact us today.