The Arts and our Youth

Continuing a post I did just the other day on quality education in America, I want to touch on another sore point between me and the educational system in this country -- music and art, more commonly referred to as, "the Arts."

 

The Arts really add nothing to the education of our young, so if the budget gets tight we can deprive our children of this useless, elective, crap.  You can hear the collective grunts and screams coming from the jock gorilla cage if the meat axe comes any where near the sports programs, however.

 

But, wait!  If the budget really gets tight, the school systems, grudgingly, will be forced to put their cherished sports programs on the chopping block, as well.  What?  Heaven forbid!  Not sports!  What will all the non-jocks do without the school sports program?

 

The "Three R's" is all we should concern our students with --reading, righting, and rithmatic!  Righting?  Rithmatic?  Hey, I didn't come up with this catchy phrase, and its driving my spell check to an aneurism.  The phrase, unfortunately, is a reflection of our countries current view of education, stupid, and not even cute.

So, why save an arts program that nobody can afford?  Why not just pay attention to the basics?  Won't narrowing our curriculum to focus on the basics produce smarter citizens? 

I'm not the brightest guy in the world, and I'm the first to admit it.  Right now I live for the people who read my blog, and the few criticisms I get on the posts.  Usually the critique is due to them totally missing the point of the post, or the quoted material.  I try to keep it simple and figure that common sense will take care of the rest, but then, what is "common sense?" 

I have an friend with an engineering degree that says "common sense" doesn't exist.  There is nothing "common" about it.  I would have to agree.  If it were common then the majority of people would exercise the ability, and we know that isn't happening, just look at Congress.  I have to say, my engineering friend is one of the few I have seen come out of college without having his "common sense" sucked from his brain.  The fact he was years in the Navy, and Air Force, may have had an impact on that as well, though.

I think the arts allow us to retain some of this ability, and sharpen our other senses which allow us to learn, which make us want to learn.

I was never good at music or languages, or math, science.  Come to think of it, I'm amazed I graduated from high school much less get into a career field that allowed me to play in the "top ten percent of the Air Force" sand box. 

 

I loved drama and would have done some acting, but... I suffered from stage fright as a kid.  My art teacher tried to stifle my abilities to draw and paint.  Good teacher?  Hmmm.  I went on to draw, paint, and carve wood. I still enjoy photography, and have written an adventure novel just for my own enjoyment.  Most of this I taught myself.  But, I wonder, where would I be if my abilities had been nourished by my teachers?  What might I have accomplished? 

 

Have you ever asked yourself, "What if?"

I pulled the following off www.DoSomething.org as an example of what is out there to assist in answering this important issue to me:

11 Facts About Arts in Education

 

1. Students who study art are 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement and 3 times more likely to be awarded for school attendance.
2. Arts and music education programs are mandatory in countries that rank consistently among the highest for math and science test scores, like Japan, Hungary, and the Netherlands.
3. The No Child Left Behind Act clearly mandates The Arts (music, art, foreign language, etc.) as a core academic subject.
4. One study group showed that third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students who were taught a foreign language every day in school outperformed the students who were not exposed to a foreign language on their Basic Skills Test.
5. While nearly all schools in America are required to offer coursework in languages, the amount of instruction provided for those subjects does not come close to that of math, science, and English courses.
6. Federal funding for the arts and humanities rolls in around $250 million a year, while the National Science Foundation is funded around the $5 billion mark.
7. Researchers find that sustained learning in music and theatre correlates strongly with higher achievement in both math and reading.
8. In a study of a high-poverty schools in Chicago, the schools that were participating in the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) made huge strides in closing the gap between high- and low-income students’ academic achievement.  
9. Multiple studies have concluded that curricular and extracurricular art studies and activities help keep high-risk dropout students stay in school.
10. New brain research shows that not only does music improve skills in math and reading, but it promotes creativity, social development, personality adjustment, and self-worth.
11. Research suggests that studying a second language is essential to the learning process, creative inquiry, and critical thinking. Foreign language studies have proven to increase problem-solving skills and overall cognitive development.

Thank God for "Band Camp!"