Dive Summary:
- Taking students to an art museum improves skills such as critical thinking, but culturally enriching field trips are on the decline, a study reports.
- A survey showed that more than half of schools eliminated planned field trips in the 2010-2011 school year, and those that remained were less about trips to museums and cultural sites and more about trips to movie theaters and sporting events.
- The study finds that cultural field trips offer disadvantaged students in particular an opportunity to learn.
From the article:
... The large majority of students who had visited the museum were able to recall information about the paintings they had seen. For example, the researchers found that 82 percent of students who saw Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter knew that the painting emphasized the importance of women entering the workforce during World War II. Students who visited the museum were better able to think critically about pieces of art they had not seen before, as well, according to blindly scored essays all participants wrote in response to seeing Bo Bartlett’s The Box for the first time. ...
