A study of artistic abilities and their relationship with intellectual skills among children age 7-13 in Hong Kong

Throughout the primary and secondary schooling in Hong Kong, great emphasis has always been placed on the stimulation, nurturing and development of cognitive and intellectual skills of students. For many years, the academic achievements of students in the subjects of language and mathematics serve as an assessment for the youngsters' learning capabilities and their intellectual growth. When educational policy makers implement programs that develop cognitive abilities, they rarely include the subject of art because it is believed that art lies in the affective domain of feeling and emotion, as well as the psychomotor domain of physical skills and motor control. Coming to terms with the cognitive and intellectual nature of the art curriculum is a major challenge facing the teaching of art today. Only when the educators of Hong Kong start to recognize the importance of observation, memory, thinking, understanding, perceiving and individual judgment as aspects of learning in the arts can the subject of art be justified its role in the mainstream or core of the curriculum. This author, therefore, has attempted to investigate the correlations among children's achievement, in terms of test scores, of the two languages (Chinese and English) and the Mathematics versus those scores given to the Art & Craft (or Art & Design) subject offered to primary and lower secondary classes in Hong Kong. A drawing project was also administered by the author, together with the art teachers, to a class of P2, P3, P5, and SI students. This was executed to warrant the validity of the assessment of students in their performance in art, using the drawing exercise as an instrument in artistic evaluation. In this research design, data were collected, with the support of school principals, from the above four classes in terms of final scores of the spring semester, 1996 in the subjects of Chinese Language, English Language, Mathematics, and Art & Craft. Statistical analyses were run to look for any correlations which exist among these essential skills which stimulate students' creative and mental growth.