How Room Designs Affect Our Work and Feelings ks5uArchitects have long had the feeling that the places we live in can affect our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. But now scientists are giving this feeling an empirical（经验的，实证的）basis. They are discovering how to design spaces that promote creativity, keep people focused and lead to relaxation. ks5uResearches show that aspects of the physical environment can influence creativity. In 2007, Joan Meyers-Levy at the University of Minnesota, reported that the height of a room's ceiling affects how people think. Her research indicates that higher ceilings encourage people to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections. Low ceilings, on the other hand, may inspire a more detailed outlook. ks5uIn additions to ceiling height, the view afforded by a building may influence an occupant's ability to concentrate. Nancy Wells and her colleagues at Cornell University found in their study that kids who experienced the greatest increase in greenness as a result of a family move made the most gains on a standard test of attention. ks5uUsing nature to improve focus of attention ought to pay off academically, and it seems to, according to a study led by C. Kenneth Tanner, head of the School Design & Planning Laboratory at the University of Georgia. Tanner and his team found that students in classrooms with unblocked views of at least 50 feet outside the window had higher scores on tests of vocabulary, language arts and maths than did students whose classrooms primarily overlooked roads and parking lots. ks5uRecent study on room lighting design suggests than dim（暗淡的）light helps people to loosen up. If that is true generally, keeping the light low during dinner or at parties could increase relaxation. Researchers of Harvard Medical School also discovered that furniture with rounded edges could help visitors relax. ks5uSo far scientists have focused mainly on public buildings. "We have a very limited number of studies, sowe're almost looking at the problem through a straw（吸管）," architect David Allison says. "How do you take answers to very specific questions and make broad, generalized use of them? That's what we're all struggling with."
When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance, the arts are unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as mere entertainment, but certainly not an education priority（优先）. This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students. ks5uMusic tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their thinking and values, as well ad the social environment it came influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity as a society. ks5uMusic provides a kind of perception（感知）that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotive（情感的）meaning of the same phenomenon. We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all. ks5uThe arts are forms of thought as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific symbols. They are ways we human beings “talk” to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our curiosities, our hungers, our discoveries, our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away from them the meanings that music expresses. ks5uScience and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way we express human suffering, celebration, the meaning and value of peace and love. ks5uSo music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.
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