A closed door, an open window - Arts role in education.

Across my 7 years of working in schools as a specialised teaching assistant I saw one type of lesson drive more engagement than any other.

Those were the lessons involving some form of case study, something tangible, something removed from the papers, formulas, and tests - and placed in the world the students occupied and were passionate about.

This speaks to what I think is one of the educations systems biggest failings. In so much as that it is abstracting the notion of learning and as a result the lessons taught, away from reality, resulting in by rote learned answers and a removal of passion and independent drive from students.

I've worked with students who "couldn't" engage in class, or were thought to never have a chance of grasping x or y concept, and I've seen & aided them in achieving those goals others said they "couldn't" by making the learning tangible, and most importantly connecting it with parts of the world they wish to explore.

Now I'm not going to pretend this was the be all and end all of it, there are a number of individualised factors that go in to shaping a healthy working environment for these students. There's a lot of work from educational aids, through to art therapy and on to speech and language coaching, that goes in to giving students with unique challenges the right foundation to succeed.

But once they have that foundation, and for students who have fewer challenges, you want to give them an education they are passionate about.

A great lie in society is that we are ever done learning, and it is a lie compounded by the way our education systems are shaped.

It is inane that the most educational freedom you get is in the final years of university, not in the foundational years of your life that will fundamentally shape your approach and desire to learn and explore as you grow.

So what has this got to do with art?

To me, every artwork holds the potential to be this bridge, to provide that tangible link as an aid in a lesson. Whether that be as a window in to a time period on the history syllabus, a lesson in ratios in math, or a lesson about code in interactive and generative work. Almost any lesson can have an artworks canvas stretched across it to make it more inviting, entertaining, and crucially understandable.

This is not just theory, in fact we already see partial versions of this idea in practice, through programs such as the "Take one Picture" project by the British Museum, or the way in which we dive deeper in to literacy through example works, be it Shakespeare or Golding.

But as yet all these implementations are fleeting, or partial, or too centralised in the works they allow students and teachers to explore.

We must free ourselves from by rote learning and overbearing curriculums if we want to nurture a true and fully realised passion for self education, and in doing so grow as a society.

(The school of Athens - Raphael)