Creative Classes: An Artful Approach To Improving Performance : NPR: Over the years, there have been a lot of claims about the benefits of the arts on the mind: Listening to Mozart makes you smarter; playing an instrument makes you better at math. One program — funded in part by the federal government — is putting these theories to the test. The , spearheaded by the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, is using an intensive arts curriculum to try and improve eight low-performing schools.
They're located in Denver; New Orleans; Des Moines, Iowa; and on a reservation in Montana, among other places, and they all serve students from poor families. Some were considered to be the lowest-performing schools in their states.
"They were schools where kids seemed defeated and resigned," says the committee's executive director, Rachel Goslins. "There wasn't a lot of motion or purpose or energy in the halls. They were schools that had failed for a long time."
