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Thinking with the body— or somatic knowing— is key to the crossing over into each of the arts disciplines, and provides a meaningful connection to other disciplines within the curriculum. Somatic knowing opens the doors of expressive communication, and non-verbal avenues for making and communicating meaning— those very aspects of learning that futurists believe should be enhanced in our world, culture and schools today, such as critical, imaginative and creative thinking; intellectual flexibility; lifelong learning; and whole-person and trans-disciplinary education. Education should not be based solely on the use of numbers or the eloquent regurgitation of factual information using linguistic-based or information-technology-based knowledge alone. Education should provide a central role for those experiences that move us and reach the deepest part of our interior world— our human spirit— which is liberated through the integration of visual, spatial, aural and bodily-kinesthetic ways of knowing. Through the arts, we understand multi-modality “in a new key.
— Susan Wright