Sir Ken Robinson: Dance may ‘help raise test scores’

Offering kids the widest possible subject range in their education is the greatest means to provide them with the tools they’ll need for their future. So if this is the case, why are many schools eliminating physical education and the arts from their curriculum and replacing them with additional math, science, and language courses?

This is the focus of an article recently published in the Ideas.Ted platform written by world-renowned education expert, Sir Ken Robinson.

In “Why Dance Is Just As Important As Math,” Robinson allows that math, science, and languages are extremely important, but he argues that movement and fostering imagination are just as significant. Why, he asks, are “dance and theater … mostly seen as second-class citizens?”

Creativity and exercise, Robinson points out, make kids happier, better able to concentrate, collaborative, more confident, and disciplined. They enhance kids’ memory and socialization skills, and have been shown in multiple studies to improve achievement in math, science, and language courses.

Dance isn’t more important than math. And vice versa. When we give kids the chance to gain more skills through various areas of studies, they’ll have a better chance of becoming the next Chris Hadfield, J.K. Rowling, or Ed Sheeran.

And for those of you picking kids up from school at the end of the day, there’s one added bonus. A kid who may have burned off a little extra energy might be a little less likely to use up all of yours.