Question Home

Position:Home>Performing Arts> Do you think as I that the performing arts and the arts in general need to be pu


Question: Do you think as I that the performing arts and the arts in general need to be put back into the school system!?
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
I am retiring this June after teaching middle and high school music since 1971 (with some time off to raise a family)!. I recently was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from our music department - and I would like to think - and have been told - that it was as much for FIGHTING for our kids and their programs as it was for teaching them!. It is a constant battle - I call us the *goat on a chain* (sent to lure the beast from the jungle)!. We are asked all the time to put on extra performances to court votes to pass our school budget - and then we get cut ANYWAY!!! I judge throughout Ny state (NYSSMA) and see that MANY fine things are accomplished all over - we hear 300,00 kids ALONE at NYSSMA each year - and we maintain the hierarchy of All-County, Are All-State (multi-county), All-State, All-Eastern (western, etc!. - quadrants of US) and National programs os bands, choruses, jazz groups, orchestras, wind ensembles, and more - ALL BY VOLUNTEERS!. We do this AFTER we teach all day - be cause we love this!. You could not afford to pay for the amount of hours it takes!.

What can everyone do to help!? ADVOCATE for this - a d get your local school budgets to pass!. Right now, times are financially tough for EVERYONE - and they cannot take it out on the gas companies, the food stores, or anyplace else - so they vote down school budgets!. Are there spots where a fatcat administrator can have their salary NOT RAISED for a year!? Maybe!. But the things that go FIRST are the arts!. I run my program every year for less than a dollar a student - it costs more money to put a uniform on a third-string football JV player than it does for me to teach my students!.

ALL methods of assessing educational progress find that student who DO music consistently score higher in EVERY scale of measurement!. No, it is not the *band kids are smarter*!. We MAKE them smarter by having them participate in music! The number one guarantor of the completion of medical school!? An undergraduate major in MUSIC - not biology, chemistry, etc!. We cannot make this up - it is a FACT (see the MENC site for the article)!.

If you LOVE the arts - and are not employed in a position to teach them - then raise awareness!. But a VH1 bracelet - donate to an organization that will match a deserving kid with FREE LESSON with one of us professional teachers who DONATE them!. Write to your school board!. Donate instruments of funds for instrument, for those that the school voard will not buy!. LARGE instruments cannot be transported on school busses - so kids cannot take them home to practice - they need a HOME instrument!. Every year, we have kids who rely on using a school-owned instrument (a violin, a tuba - everything in between) and WE TURN THEM AWAY because we do not have enough instruments!. Call your local school music teacher, and ask them what they need - you will be blown away with how FAR they can take your SMALLEST contribution!.

I can now take on all these additional projects because I will be retired: I can speak at school board meetings, and undertake political action that I was NOT ALLOWED TO DO when employed by the school board!. I have TIME to write letters, see my congressman, and generally take up the fight at a higher level!. Whatever YOU can do - no matter how small you think it is - PLEASE do this!. I know that some of my kids finished school and stayed out of trouble because of music - whether or not they became fabulous musicians or NOT, it still made a HUGE difference in their lives!. If you went thru this, you understand - and if you did NOT go thru music programs in school, then perhaps that is something that would have made you entire school experience - and then your life - rucher, fuller, and more successful!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Absolutely! Music and the Arts belong in the schools!

I urge you to visit Tom Chapin's website, dedicated to precisely the value of music and the arts in our society!. He wrote a song called, "Not On The Test"!. Listen to it!.!.!. but, more importantly, read the lyrics!.:

http://www!.notonthetest!.com/

Here is his opening Statement:

Why this song!?

As a kid who grew up in NYC, I am a great fan of America’s public education!. I attended P!.S!. 46 in Greenwich Village, then P!. S!. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, then on to Brooklyn Technical High School and S!.U!.N!.Y!. Plattsburgh!.

And now, as a father and a grandfather, I so appreciate the tough job that faces every teacher!. I believe they need all the help they can get: anything that excites a student, opens their eyes, and hearts and minds is a positive that makes a child invest in school!.

Music, art, drama and sports - these are what kept me involved when I was in school!. And these very things, that make a teacher’s (and student’s) job easier and more rewarding, are what’s been cut from curriculums across the country!.

Now we are teaching by rote again - where the test, and only the test, becomes the reason to teach and study!.

It’s no secret that American industry has outsourced most factory jobs to other countries to take advantage of cheaper labor costs!. So why are we putting so much effort into a form of education in which there is no creativity!? This is the time that our youth should be taught to think ”out of the box,” not be put into a tighter one!

This is the larger context that John Forster and I wanted to address in a satirical song for NPR’s “Morning Edition!.”

-Tom ChapinWww@QuestionHome@Com

I never played and instrument and I couldn't sing either but when I was going to school we also had music appreciation classes and learning the history of music and being exposed to types of music I had not heard at home was really interesting for me!. Music plays such a large part in the fabric of our lives that to leave it off the school agenda is like trying to function without some vital organ!. Its not like we are sacrificing it for rocket science!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

props to hombre de san juan! i love that tom chapin bit!

heres a different side of the equation,!.!.go back to the ''70's
before recent the downward slide of education in america!.
music was well funded and programs were solid in most schools!. the only time students fund raised was for trips-not to buy instruments or get money for busses because districts no longer support those!
students graduated from schools and actually knew they were ready for university etc!.
nowdays, they know how to sell candy,!.!.!.they know that society doesn't have faith in them or their teachers, politicians pay lip service to the importance of education, yet the governor of california is trying to borrow against lottery funds (meant for education only) to balance the state budget!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Of course it should!. It even promotes the economy in the music industry because the new students learning, would have to buy an instrument!.
Not only for that, it keeps the mind healthy instead of handing around in the streets bored, getting in trouble for ridiculous reasons etc!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I have been telling my sons new school for 2 years that with music and ART a child would excel in other subjects!. AND also behavior skills!. EVERY kid can draw and every kid can play an instrument if it's BEthoven on the piano or hitting pots n pans together!. THEY ARE BORN with this talent!.!.KIDS love to COLOR on the walls!. THEY draw when they are born, my grandchildren head to my piano EVERY time they come to my home!. I'm am yelling because AFTER destroying my sons ART work after my brother (36) passed, my son did a 10 page journal about his only uncle and the teacher, 3 grd!. LUNGQUIST of pine HALL school of nc picked it up on the last day and trashed it!. HE WAS drawing an angel on the back, then I'd be able to finally read it, but I'LL never read it!. TRASHED!. My son, has not been drawing as well and was wonderful before, he draws faces like aliens now!. never did that bofore and mean faces some/both sexs!. Of course, I encourage my son as I always have, but she hurt him!. They take home cooked food out, God out, n the ARTS!. NOW what are our schools like!? Clinton said one thing right, "IT TAKES A VILAGE to raise a child and it Does!. This teacher Lungquist got teacher of the year from votes from the other teachers, she and the lady principle was from the same city, They held my chld back a year, he was in the 6 pt range of passing!. it was left up to the teacher n principle!. he had done jus' ok throughout the year!. passing math good, english jus' gettin by!. he didn't like his teacher, INJUSTICE!. she was mean to him she was snobbed mean to me and i bent over backwords to take it n be nice to her!. they teamed up on me They wrote a note about me signed, God help you, directed to the teacher!. I HAD DONE NOTHING but call the school cause he didn't wanna go n i thought i'd see who was sick like his symptoms or ask if there was another 3rd grd!. class!. I HAD BEEN LIED TO there was another, but mixed, 2nd n 3rd they think their lil' small school is elite, went there as a child myself!. "special" wanted to put my child in speach theropy, i said no, "they get extra money for that!. THIS IS THE SOUTH!. we HAD LIVED IN KANSAS for 25 yrs!. Speach theropy!?!?!?!? NO NO NO not here! if uzzzzz knozzzzzz a' whaaaaaaaa iiiiiiiiiza menzzzezzeezs my other 2 kids didn't use the r or ch good but grew out of it!. so no point in labling my child their word!. LD he wasn't he is smart!. too smart to just be going to the 5th grade!. should be in 6 and somebody should do something about this teacher and principle!. they hurt my son!Www@QuestionHome@Com

Absolutely!.!.!. I owe practically everything to the early music training I got in school and by taking it away, it's no surprise that AmeriKa has young people who think playing an instrument is Guitar Hero3 rather than learning to play a REAL instrument!.Www@QuestionHome@Com