A strong argument can be made that educational systems need to redress the balance given to intellectual, interpersonal, social, and emotional components of learning so that children can acquire the holistic background necessary to cope with the demands of contemporary society. No longer are the traditional academic areas of numeracy and literacy - reading, writing, and arithmetic - adequate preparation for the careers of the next generation. In fact, many of the jobs and careers in which today's students will engage in the future have not even been created, because technology, industry, and resulting career options are evolving so quickly. This has profound implications for the field of education and the decisions to be made about which subjects and learning processes are considered important, and which ones are not.

Many educators are now emphasising a need for the curriculum to address 'multi-literacies' - new definitions of what it means to be literate within our contemporary society (Cazden, Cope, Fairclough, Gee, Kalantzis, Kress, Luke, Luke, Michaels & Nakata, 1996; Wright & Reardon, 1998). They are seeking to find the connections between the changing social environment facing children and teachers, and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that includes the integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where the textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the multi-modal, the behavioural, and so on. Such literacy involves a range of representational forms, such as visual images, the written word, and the 'grammars' of film, photography, gesture, dance, and music.

Today's teachers need a new 'metalanguage' for talking about language, images, texts and interactions, that describes meaning and human knowledge in many various (ie, symbolic) forms. Such knowledge, which requires an immersion in meaningful practices within a community of learners, involves teachers assisting children to learn how to learn.

Over 60 years ago, John Dewey, the founder of progressive education, spoke of learning how to learn. However, defining the process of learning in today's world is becoming exceedingly complex. Some writers (Ashman & Conway, 1993; Page, 1994; Slaughter, 1994; Wright, 2000) have emphasised the importance of teaching young children how to plan and solve problems, to enhance their control, imagination, and creative thinking. The importance of this form of learning lies in its emphasis on intellectual flexibility and lateral thinking; lifelong learning; whole-person and cross-disciplinary education; and a shift in emphasis from learning content to learning processes.

Focusing attention on the how, rather than the what to learn will require some fundamental changes to educational practice - not only to our social values about education, but also to many of the learning activities that occur within our schools. Rather than being isolated, individual, and passive recipients of change, children and adults must work together as active creators of their futures - a term that is described in the plural, as many futures are possible. Bruner (1986) expressed 'futures' well when he described the central concern of education as being one in which we:

Central to the goal of collaboration within learning contexts is the belief that children learn through personally valued experiences - in other words, educational experiences must connect with children's existing knowledge through the integration of feeling (intuitive-artistic components of learning) and knowing (discursive-scientific components of learning). It is by promoting the interdependence of emotions and knowledge that education through the arts becomes important. In many ways, the unique qualities of the arts incorporate aspects of learning that are closely linked to the ideals of education for the future: flexible problem-solving, open-ended processes and collaborative, and social interaction. The arts involve thinking, perceiving and feeling processes which tap into alternative ways of knowing about ourselves and the world in which we live.

Anyone who has had intimate experiences with the arts (eg, as a creator, performer or teacher) would appreciate the special ways in which thinking and communicating occurs via multi-modal information processing (Eisner, 1994). Participation in the arts provides numerous opportunities for the integration of thought, emotion, action; thinking with the body; turning action into representation; using artistic cognition; and communicating via symbolic forms.

Learning through both verbal and nonverbal domains or modes, such as language and art, enhances our understanding. Dual coding theory, which was posited nearly two decades ago, describes how the encoding of information in two ways is better comprehended, recalled and elaborated (Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991). Such cognition consists of two separate but interconnected systems - a verbal system that specialises in processing language, and a nonverbal system for processing world knowledge of objects and events, such as images, music and dance (Sweet, 1996). Expression becomes a process of conveying ideas, feelings, and meanings through the selective use of multiple communicative possibilities.

In the arts, a great deal of what is learned is initiated by the nonverbal modes of understanding which, in turn, are enriched by the verbal modes. These special ways of learning involve the integration of both domains, and enhance our understanding of ourselves, and our world around us. Each of these special types of learning is described below.

Thought, emotion, and action. Bruner (1986) described learning as a multifaceted process in which emotions, thoughts, and actions do not occur in isolation, but are aspects of a larger, unified whole. He suggested that by drawing heavy conceptual boundaries between thought, action, and emotion as regions of the mind would only require us to construct unrealistic conceptual bridges to connect what should never have been separated. He argued that people "perfink," that is, they perceive, feel, and think all at once, and act within the constraints of what they perfink (p. 118). Therefore, intellectual involvement in the arts often draws upon unique forms of cognition, communication, and the process of thinking with the body.

Thinking with the body. For young children, the link between thought and action has been well documented for decades. Almost 50 years ago, Piaget (1951) described sensorimotor intelligence as thinking with the body. This involves action, and helps develop concepts - general ideas that are learned through a number of instances or experiences.

When involved in the arts, our bodies are actively and intimately engaged in aesthetic thinking that is focused on sensitivity to beauty through perceiving, imagining, acting, feeling, expressing, and judging. This union of body and mind is most obviously demonstrated in dance, drama, and musical performance, but is true also of the work of the painter, sculptor, or potter; there becomes a union between bodily-kinaesthetic understanding and thinking, feeling, and doing. This is why the arts can engender a sense of freedom, release, fulfilment, and wholeness - sometimes to the "point of ecstasy" (Reid, 1983, p. 25). Through such integrated understanding, children and adults alike, are able to express (represent) their knowledge.

Turning action into representation. There are three ways in which humans can represent the world, or capture reality through experience: by enaction, imagery, and through constructing symbolic systems (Bruner, 1996). The first mode, the enactive or procedural, is crucial in guiding motor skills. Action takes on an all-encompassing role by linking thought with emotion. Through action, adults and children can portray or depict their thoughts and emotions through example. For instance, in pretend play, children represent ideas and feelings when capturing the reality of, say, power and strength (eg, super-hero play) or nurturance (eg, domestic play). Through movement and the use of props, such as capes and dolls, they enact or represent through action.

The second mode involves imagery. Images are like stopped action frames, or visual impressions of actions. Young children's power to render the world in terms of images provide them with a kind of preconceptual structure in how they operate in the world. For example, they create images using a range of symbols, like scribbles, doodles, pictures, designs, maps or diagrams. Imagery is also involved at a more expressive and abstract level in music (eg, imaging a glassy pond while listening to a particular piano concerto), dance (eg, imaging the delicate, random movements of a butterfly) and drama (eg, imaging the body-stance and gestures of a sun god).

The third mode - symbolising - involves representing or showing a likeness between one thing and another. Portraying, or symbolically representing, is part of the artistic processes involved in drawing, gesturing, making music, dancing and many other forms of knowing and communicating.

However, because the arts involve the senses, thought, emotion, and action are often expressed very differently than in areas such as philosophy, science, language, technology or mathematics. In the arts, the real work often is done independent of verbal or other forms of articulation and involves different layers of thought and consciousness. When painting a picture, composing music, refining a poem, or evolving a dance, representation involves a process of imitation, where we:

Using Artistic Cognition. Like all disciplines, the arts involve cognition, and gaining insight and understanding by all available means. Some of the mental activities involved in the arts are shared with other pursuits - like attending to detail - while others are unique to the arts, such as sensitivity to patterns in music. Artistic cognition involves the ability to 'read' and to 'write' using arts symbol systems (Gardner, 1993). In music, for example, an artistic reader can discriminate different styles, such as jazz, rock, or classical. An artistic writer can use sound abstractly to suggest different moods, create impressions and effect psychological states (as you find in the background music of films in which feelings, such as suspense or action, are intensified through the soundtrack). Hence, the arts involve a special form of cognition and communication, drawing upon symbols and working to a system of signs.

Communicating via Symbolic Forms. The dominant means of communication and understanding in any form of life is seen to be through language. In schools, for example, the curriculum is usually word-bound, and oral discourse becomes the key method that children use to make meaning (eg, stating academic knowledge in their own words). Students are judged to be conversant with a subject if they have used oral or written language to demonstrate understanding (Marzano, Brandt, Hughes, Jones, Presseiser, Rankin, & Suhor, 1988). However, the valuing of verbal competence only within schools (or in life in general) diminishes the significance of nonverbal forms of understanding (spatial, visual, kinaesthetic, and musical) (Abbs, 1987).

Malaguzzi (1987) commented on the limits of words, particularly in relation to the education of young children.

Understanding, thinking, and learning through experience do not occur only through words, or language. It is important to remember that language itself is more than just audible, articulate meaningful sounds. More generally, it is a systematic way of communicating using conventionalised signs, sounds, gestures or words. The languages of the arts have a strong inclusion of these non-word-based forms of communication. Hence, the arts can express and externalise ideas, feelings and beliefs, and convey meanings and messages that evoke responses in ourselves and in others.

Because the arts involve the senses, cognitive processes such as perception, awareness, judgment and the expression of ideas occur through ways of knowing, other than purely linguistic, as in reading, writing, and studies in technology (Eisner, 1978; Gardner, 1983). Some writers, like Vygotsky (1962), have linked the term cognition with a kind of inner speech - thinking ideas in your head through the use of words. However, people process information and become aware of themselves and their environment in ways that do not always involve words. Kress (2000) expresses the potentials and limitations of semiotic modes in relation to the role of language as a means of communication and representation.

We know, for example, that information may be taken in and understood through sight, sound, touch, taste and movement. These processes may be more obvious in young children who may not always be able to express themselves clearly through words. For example, babies and infants use simple forms of communication before verbal language is developed. Infants request, indicate, and associate themselves with other people through gesture, vocalisation, body language, and the regulation of gaze.

In a similar way, for people of all ages, the arts are not merely preverbal or subverbal - they are supraverbal. In other words, they involve symbolic modes of thinking, understanding, and knowing, and express ideas in a unique manner. It is commonplace to hear the arts described as 'languages' through which we discover, express, and exchange meanings that are otherwise unavailable (Plummeridge, 1991), thereby enabling people to say things to each other which cannot be expressed in any other way. This does, of course, present a problem. While we can enjoy and appreciate artistic experiences, it is often difficult to explain in words precisely what it is that we have come to know or understand as a result of such an experience. This may occur because the arts can mean many things to different people, at different times, and in varying contexts (this is particularly evident when you contrast the art works of various cultures, and observe how people from different cultures respond to the works from 'foreign' cultures). The arts can express and externalise ideas, feelings and beliefs, and convey meanings and messages that evoke responses in ourselves and others. For example, we can be emotionally moved to the point of tears in a rock concert or at the ballet without being able to say exactly why.

Art forms (ie, the visual arts, dance, music, and drama) have suggestive qualities to which we attach special meaning. Even when words are part of an artwork or performance, their meaning may not be communicated literally, or exactly, but through devices such as metaphor and analogy. For example, red, orange and yellow colours can create an impression of heat in a painting, and flowing movements in dance can establish a calm mood. Meaning that is derived from a work of art often is grasped intuitively, which evolves from our interpretation of the work's formal structure, our response to its emotional impact and our inferences about the artist's intentions (eg, the meaning of his/her symbolism and what it represents). Such interpretation of meaning occurs in a similar way, regardless of whether the work of art was created by an adult or a child.

As with the works of adult artists or performers, children's creations involve the use of signs, sounds, gestures, and words - symbolic forms of communication that often are expressed through experiences such as drawing, block building, dancing, play, musical experimentation or clay modelling. Current views of education see these forms of symbolic communication as languages, each having the potential to be used in sophisticated ways (Malaguzzi, 1993; Plummeridge, 1991; Wright, 1994, 1997a).

Malaguzzi and other teachers in the Italian-based early childhood programs in Reggio Emilia acknowledge non-language-based communication of young children's learning, and emphasise that verbal language can be derived from non-verbal languages. They use the expression The Hundred Languages of Children to illustrate how the human species has the privilege of expressing itself through a plurality of languages (in addition to the spoken); that every language has the right to realise itself fully and, in the process, enrich the other languages (Malaguzzi, 1987).

Just as Howard Gardner's popularisation of the notion of Multiple Intelligences as shifted people's thinking toward a broader definition of the meaning of the word intelligence, the Reggio Emilia meaning of a Hundred Languages has shifted people's ideas of literacy to be more broadly encompassing. However, the term 'languages' could, more appropriately, be thought of as the use of a range of symbols and symbol systems.

Symbols. In the 20th century, trends in philosophy and psychology have shifted away from a focus on the external behaviour of humans to an interest in the activities and products of the human mind. Inspired by influential thinkers in the early and middle part of the century, such as Alfred North Whitehead, Susanne Langer, and Ernst Cassier, there was an increased interest in how people use symbols to express and communicate meanings, and how this capacity distinguishes humans from other creatures (Feldman, 1980; Gardner & Wolf, 1982; Goodman, 1976; Wright, 1997b). The ability to use symbols has been identified as central to evolution and the creative achievements of human beings. Through symbol use, people have devised myths, languages, arts, mathematics and science, and other symbol systems.

Symbols. A symbol is any element that calls to mind persons, objects or events that are not present. Vehicles of symbolisation can be physical marks (eg, drawings or other graphic images), but symbols can also be abstractions (eg, words, gestures, play, visualisation, fantasy and dreams). When the physical quality of the symbol is similar in appearance to the real object it depicts (ie, its referent), representation occurs. For example, a child's drawing of a circle with protruding arms and legs can stand for (refer to, or denote) a 'human.' When a symbol is represented abstractly, it can be expressed through imitation and other means of communication, such as gestures, textures, shapes, sounds, images, or movements.

All artists - painters, composers, dancers, actors - whether they are publicly acclaimed geniuses or preschool aged children, work with artistic materials or actions and turn them into representations. What is important to the observer is that these symbols seems to be universally recognisable. For instance, children as young as seven years are able to describe music in terms of weight, size, stiffness, outward or inward direction and the degree of activity (Swanwick, 1988). Two- to four-month-old infants can match the pitch, loudness, melodic contour, and rhythmic structure of their mother's songs far more easily than they can respond to the core properties of their native language, and can engage in sound play that exhibits creative or "generative" properties (Papõsek & Papõsek, 1982).

Symbol Systems. Symbol systems are collections of symbols that have come to be used in organised and systematic ways through cultural practice. For survival and productivity, humans have developed a number of symbol systems. Four that are used almost worldwide, but in differing ways, depending upon the culture, are language, mathematics, picturing or graphics, and music.

Clearly, children in different cultures may learn different languages, but they also learn to value culturally-specific art forms, accept specific styles of artistic expression, and learn what types of artistic forms and processes are accepted (or rejected) within their particular culture. For example, it is highly likely that Chinese children would be exposed to traditional art styles, such a brush and ink landscapes, more frequently than abstract art; Greek children would likely have more opportunities to hear and dance to music with complex metric groupings, such as seven's, than would many Australian children; and, it is likely that many European children would have more opportunities to view live opera than would children from Fiji.

Symbol systems have special qualities and languages, depending upon the domain that is involved. Humans acquire not just one language or symbol system during their childhood years, but several, in the process of learning. They learn ways to use words in face-to-face conversations, in written communications, in arguments and songs, in writing and in speech, and in poems and recipes (Wolf & Davis Perry, 1988). They also learn how to read maps, use windows on a computer, interpret people's body language, and employ number, gesture, and drawing and a range of other symbolic methods to understand and to communicate this understanding.

Like language and mathematics, each discipline in the arts also has its own symbol system. In the visual arts, drawing systems, for example, have their own set of rules which involve showing how the full-sized, three-dimensional, moving, coloured world can be translated into a set of marks on a flat surface. Because each symbol system has its own special qualities, problem-solving in one symbol system may not necessarily be translated directly to another. Children's ability to handle space in drawing, for example, is not equivalent to their ability to master rhythm in music, or to learn the rules of story telling. This is because symbols are subject to classification: objects and events are sorted in systems. Understanding a representation involves knowing some of the ways in which symbols are classified (Wolf & Perry, 1988), for example, by:

Symbols are not just tools of thought, but aspects of thought itself. In other words, symbols provide a way of representing reality and integrating ideas. Below, for example, are excerpts from a three boy's story as he drew a picture of his concept of the Future.

Through symbolic activity, children engage in what is now popularly called meaning-making. They create meaning by imaginatively representing thoughts and feelings such as role playing being a bride, drawing pictures of objects, people and events, romping like a monster, or making spooky music. Children also learn how to interpret general symbols (eg. identifying fast-food outlets or toy shops), the symbols used by other children (eg. recognising an animal in another child's drawings or the meaning of another child's puppet play), and the symbol systems of the adult world (eg. illustrations in books, pictures in art galleries, or performances by professional musicians and dancers).

In a general sense, the trajectory of development in each intelligence begins with patterning, such as being able to discriminate tones in music, or to appreciate three-dimensional arrangements (like a cube) in space. While these early developing capabilities appear universally, they may be advanced in those children who seem to have promise in a particular domain (linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic or inter- and intra-personal). Such abilities will be shown in particular ways, like exceptional aptitude in story-telling, exploring sounds, painting, dancing or sociodramatic play

Increasingly, the development of intelligences becomes dependent upon children's ability to grasp various symbol systems and their accompanying notational systems. For young children, in particular, the cross-over of symbolic domains occurs naturally - verbal and non-verbal cognitive processes are interconnected. Through cross-modal learning and the encoding of information in multiple ways, the arts enhance children's understanding and help them comprehend, recall and elaborate knowledge about objects and events. The arts help us convey ideas, feelings and meaning through the selective use of multiple communicative possibilities.

Consequently, a strong argument could be made for placing the arts at the core of the curriculum in the early childhood years, and perhaps beyond this period, as music, dance, drama and the visual arts involve the integration of both verbal and non-verbal domains in special ways, through: the unification of thought, emotion and action; thinking with the body; turning action into representation; using artistic cognition; and communicating via symbolic forms.

It is an important challenge for schools, and society in general, to emphasise the need for the curriculum to address multi-literacies and new definitions of what it means to be literate in today's world, and the world of the future. We must acknowledge the significant role of the arts in integrating the various modes of meaning-making, and celebrate the important supraverbal, abstract, and symbolic contributions that the arts make toward multi-modal learning and communicating. Otherwise, schools will remain fixated on the traditional, narrow focus of teaching reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, and neglect to address the broader issue of preparing today's children for coping with the demands of contemporary society.

The emphasis of education for the future, which stresses the role of intellectual flexibility, lifelong learning, whole-person and cross-disciplinary education, must take stock of the significance of integrating the intuitive-artistic with the discursive-scientific components of learning. Then, we will begin to dismantle the popular and theoretical common-sense assumptions that language and written text are the primary means of communication and representation - the base of true 'literacy' - and begin to acknowledge the importance of honouring the full range of symbol systems in education.

A broad concept of multi-literacy does not mean that words or written text must always be the basis for making relationships with other modes of learning. Multi-modal learning can begin with visual, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic and other forms of verbal and non-verbal meaning-making, which may or may not always relate to words-based forms of understanding. Only when we begin to recognise the significance of artistic forms of learning and knowing will we begin to redress the misappropriation of the arts within the curriculum, and acknowledge the supraverbal form of literacy that is inherent in the disciplines of music, dance, drama and the visual arts.