Lithgow: Arts education is essential

Well-known actor John Lithgow's presentation on Wednesday afternoon at IRA's 51st Annual Convention offered the entertainer and children's book author a forum to make a passionate case for weaving arts education into the rest of the curriculum.

Lithgow, a Harvard graduate and Fulbright scholar, has followed his screen, stage, and television work with a second career as the author of six children's books and the producer of a wide variety of materials meant to entertain young people while introducing them to the arts.

Recently, Lithgow said, he did research on the way the emphasis on test scores has "swept away" many subject areas, including the arts, in many schools. He denounced this trend, saying it was taking the creativity and fun out of schooling, and creating a "stultifying atmosphere of fear" in the classroom. This brings about "a distaste, rather than an appetite, for learning," he said. "Is this really what they want?"

Then Lithgow offered an alternative—an approach called "arts integration," which he called a "hard-headed, result-oriented, pedagogical tool" to have education about the arts work in synergy with the rest of the curriculum.

"Cutting the arts out of a school's curriculum is cutting out its heart," Lithgow said. "When it comes to educating young children, the arts are not a luxury—they are a necessity."

Finally, Lithgow amused the audience by reciting the text of one of his newest books, Mahalia Mouse Goes to College, to be released in 2007, about a mouse who overcomes her own trepidation and the a certain anti-mouse prejudice to succeed in her college career.