The Importance of Art in Schools Especially During COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t a straightforward healthcare crisis that most like to think it is. Its impact is widespread and deep, especially among children.
While the disease seems to spare the kids from severe conditions or hospitalization, they don’t escape the claws that contribute to multidimensional poverty. According to UNICEF, at least 150 million children do not have access to essential services, particularly education, because of the pandemic.
In Indonesia, a whopping 68 million kids from preschool to high school are forced to abandon the four walls of their classrooms and shift to home learning, and yet not everyone has equitable access to tools such as computers and the Internet.
Even worse, unlike adults, children may not have the same mechanism to deal and cope with the events, increasing their feelings of isolation, confusion, pain, and anxiety. It isn’t surprising then that thousands also complain about stress and burnout.
These kids need as much support as their parents and teachers, and schools can provide them via a medium most are familiar with: art.
The Healing Power of Art
What is art? Technical experts may define it as creativity or imagination born to life through technical proficiency or skill a person may learn to master over time. Gustav Klimt, the Austrian who gifted the world with The Kiss, used to say that it is a line around one’s thoughts.
Meanwhile, Keith Haring, who led the 1980s graffiti subculture in New York, described art as a medium that should liberate one’s soul, provoke imagination, and encourage others to go further.
Then, for some, they equate both creativity and art to a child. The father of cubism, Pablo Picasso, once said that every kid is an artist while Jean-Michael Basquiat wanted to make paintings as if they were made by a child.
The child is capable of making art simply because their imagination is vivid, unadulterated, and limitless. They are also fearless, unafraid of the judgment of others as the ultimate goal is to make these visions into reality regardless of how they want to interpret them.
And this is good news as art can be any child’s best company, particularly in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic:
1. Art Can Help Adults Understand the Inner Workings of a Child’s Mind
Often, children do not know how to express themselves well, especially to adults like their parents and teachers. It could be because they also do not understand what is going on, cannot find the right words, or are anxious to reach out. This situation often leads to a disconnect with adults when kids begin to show signs of stress and burnout.
Art can then become the intermediary between the kid and the parent (or even the school) as the latter can delve deeper into the former’s mind’s inner workings.
In 2020, the University of Guelph-Humber created a program that encouraged children to send their artworks made during the pandemic. The submissions were both astonishing and horrifying: dark images with characters haunted by specters and shadowy figures, pictures depicting the words “I am alone” or “I am broken,” and artworks that display a wide range of negative emotions from sadness to anxiety, as well as allusions to self-harm.
These are probably images that adults will find uncomfortable seeing. But for the people behind the program, these are beneficial in two ways: one, kids are able to express their difficult feelings, and two, adults can have a better idea about the struggles the young ones are facing and are, therefore, in a better position to help.
In a similar activity in Australia, Jocelyn Brewer, a psychologist, noted that art could help children navigate the world around them. It lets them create a visual representation of how their mind processes the situation without adding any more labels such as emotions that may only complicate their understanding or sow more confusion.
2. It Reduces Stress Hormones
For many people, it doesn’t take much to feel the fight-or-flight response. Throw someone in an unfamiliar situation or environment, and their stress levels usually go up. Sadly, these biological changes do not discriminate, which means even kids experience them too.
How can art help? In 2016, Drexel University revealed a study that showed making art could help lower cortisol, one of the most common biomarkers for stress. Usually, the higher the cortisol level is, the more likely the person is stressed.
In the research, 75 percent of those who participated in an art activity registered lower cortisol levels based on the saliva samples they provided. Even better, they already experienced such an outcome by doing artwork for less than an hour.
It didn’t even matter whether the individual is an art master or not. Stick figures could provide the same level of benefit.
A lower cortisol level can have additional benefits besides making children feel more relaxed. For one, it may help maintain their immunity as multiple studies already show that stress can increase chronic inflammation and negatively impact the body’s immune system. In other words, art may help kids fight infection from flu to COVID-19.
Doing art can also be a mindfulness-based activity, so it doesn’t just calm the person but also helps relieve the individual of anxiety, overthinking, and rumination.
Mentari Intercultural School believes that art can help children cope, understand their environment, communicate more effectively, and deal with the stress brought by the pandemic.
Most of all, it can help them feel less alone as they can share this collective experience with friends and let themselves be heard by anyone who sees their work.
We want our students to be free even when they spend most of their time at home. Thus, we have officially launched art virtual exhibitions in MISJ and MISB campuses participated by our elementary and high school students.
Parents and kids can open these links and see for themselves the visual stories the kids want to relay to adults.
