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"The lesson of REAP is that where things are studied a lot, you see results."

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BC: On the topic of how and to what degree the arts affect cognition, I wonder what your ideas are about the data from REAP (Reviewing Education and the Arts Project) recently published in The Journal of Aesthetic Education? Their results tend to downplay the connections between the arts and learning.

Catterall: REAP's results are all positive, ranging from large and significant in music learning and spatial-temporal reasoning, to small and non-significant in areas like dance and non-verbal communication. In general I found the analysis was good, but the interpretation was highly biased toward the preferences of the authors-particularly in their not wanting to defend the arts for their ability to produce learning in other areas. My work supports extrinsic benefits, as do many other studies, including some of the studies reviewed by REAP. You know, one way REAP came out was as a back cover piece in Education Week, and a group I'm involved in has crafted a reply to that-a critique-which will come out later in January, also as a back cover piece.

BC: You mentioned earlier that music and drama are the arts showing the strongest ties to learning, and REAP's results, in fact, seem to corroborate this. Do you think the reason we're not seeing gains in areas besides music and drama is that these are the areas that have been studied the most?

Catterall: We do see smaller gains in under-studied areas. What more studies would bring is anyone's guess. Ultimately, though, the lesson of REAP is that where things are studied a lot, you see results. One of the ways the authors play down results is to say that the fairly well documented effects on spatial reasoning may not matter for academic achievement. That's a pretty off-putting statement for anyone who has done any research in spatial reasoning. In 3,000 studies we've found spatial reasoning is important in planning, spoken language, organizing thoughts, understanding relationships. All sorts of things.

BC: What is most important for the public to understand about arts education?

Catterall: That arts education should be a part of every child's education and that access to arts experiences should be fairly distributed. Our society needs its artists and it needs to support artistic endeavors. I think the most important thing about arts education is that it is part of being a whole person. Arts education should be in the curriculum along with other things people learn-things that have more obvious connections to the workplace-because the arts are simply enjoyable and potentially very productive. They should be part of the basic tool kit in our society. The public should understand, secondly, that there is spillover: it is clear that involvement in drama and theater is a lab for verbal skills and probably interpersonal understanding-reading and writing, and so forth. It seems clear that certain kinds of music training help grow and organize the brain in certain ways. We don't know much yet about the visual arts and dance. We're seeing some evidence of nonverbal development through drama, for instance. Another thing is there's an effect the arts have-we think it's an effect-in which the kids who get involved with the arts are doing less negative things with their lives. They're not watching as much television. They're using time constructively. It's not that the arts should be ground into everyone, but they ought to be among the things people can choose. And among the things teachers could use in their curriculum. There's a lot of room for choice and preference Not every teacher should integrate the arts. Some would be interested, some would not. Some would get interested if they were exposed to it; and we're seeing this happen in some programs. There's no one shoe that fits everyone. The problem is that this shoe isn't on the rack.

BC: If you could grant one wish to the U.S. educational system, what would it be?

Catterall: To allocate resources, particularly at the elementary level, that could make these choices possible for kids.