Art is Social Studies: Teaching the Renaissance Using Raphael’s School of Athens

abstract One of the most effective methods for teaching social studies events, concepts, and issues incorporates the fine arts into lesson plans. The fine arts, such as photography, architecture, paintings, tapestries, and sculptures reflect the core cultural values, political ideals, and religious beliefs of a civilization and offer excellent opportunities for students to engage in multicultural education. The arts allow students to develop high level thinking skills, such as symbolic and abstract thought, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Creating lesson plans using the fine arts allows educators to assess the didactic and reflective, and affective domains thus fusing knowledge, thinking skills, and the centrality of emotions, values, beliefs, and moral issues into a cohesive lesson. Raphael’s School of Athens is an excellent painting to teach the Renaissance, one of the most influential movements in history. This painting incorporates the crucial philosophical and scientific ideals and values that undergird the Renaissance as a transformative movement into modernity.