When the budget cuts start, the first victim is usually the arts.
The people who make the financial decisions think that the arts don’t matter.
How wrong they are. Why do they prioritize the budget for assessment over the budget for singing, dancing, and the joyful activities associated with the arts?
Do they think that students come to school just to be tested? Don’t they understand anything about the need for expression, the need to feel joy in creating and designing and singing and acting together?
Students know. Teachers know. Parents know. Why don’t the politicians and the policymakers know? Weren’t they once children?
Life without the arts, school without the arts, is nasty, brutish and way too long.
In districts across the country, the arts are in jeopardy because of budget cuts and misguided priorities. Districts are digging deep to pay for more tests even as they axe the arts.
One district that is fighting back is Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. Upper Darby is facing massive budget cuts, and the arts are on the chopping block. Parents and community members created a video that is joyful to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8RNhMo4Ks
Every district should create a video to showcase the talents of its students. Kids are amazing. The bands and orchestras and string groups and jazz groups and dance groups and drama groups are better than anything you will watch on television tonight.
Can your district do what Upper Darby did? Maybe it will educate the budget cutters if we can get them to watch.
Do not let them kill the younger generation’s creative spirit, its joy in performance, the sheer exuberance that the arts unleash. We are the adults. We owe it to them to prioritize what matters most, to them and to us.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for writing about saving the arts. Isn’t it what makes us human? As an Alum from UD I appreciate you lending your voice and time to the future of children in Upper Darby.
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Children are being told there’s no time to dream, nor finger paint, while racing to the top. I can’t imagine poor first graders, who can’t spend too much time at dabbling with the crayons, because they have to learn to read, or else “fall behind.”
But, let’s be utilitarian for a moment. Yes, the arts encourage kids to dream, but maybe ed reformers aren’t so concerned with that. Young brains need art to fully develop; music helps kids learn math.
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Thank you so much for your voice of reason and focused, clear message.
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How many students have stayed in school because of the Arts! Supported creativity, individuality and a motivator to succeed. Thanks for putting the video out there. These videos should be on TV everyday in every city.
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There are talents among all of us. Isn’t education for helping those students find them? What kind of adulthood and childhood will they have? Weather it be a profession in the arts, a hobby or just pure enjoyment and a better quality of life. I just found a video on another fb page, Artists Supporting Art in the Public Schools, that confirms even more the importance of keeping the Arts in the curriculum.
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Very true and a great idea. Moreover, though, is the impact creativity, innovation, and autonomy have on our nation’s economic role. We are a nation that creates new ideas and sells solutions. This is why politicians need to appreciate the economic benefits of the arts. It’s not all just for feel-good moments.
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This movement to restructure education is based on the concept of Total Quality Management. It is a concept designed for industry that was first introduced in Japan by an American citizen. It helped to rebuild their economy after WW II, but later failed. This information may be found in “Megatrends” a book written by John Naisbitt, an advocate who sold his idea to U. S. A. Congressmen. Published by Warner Books, A Warner Communications Company,
Most of the people supporting TQM are involved with social forecasting, and they are advisors to America’s leading corporations. Alvin Toffler, author of Fluture Shock and The Third Wave was one of the advocates of this movement. He apparently has been replaced by others.
For historians, prior to this book is a book written by J. L. Moreno. M. D. Beacon House Inc. Beacon, N Y. 1953, titled “Who Shall Survive?” Dr. Moreno’s book is based on a limited (very limited) amount of research on women in an insane institution. The book contains over 700 pages of double-speak. He sold his idea to Franklin D Roosevelt and when he was president, FDR tried to implement some of the idea to fix the depression we were in at that time. WWII fixed the depression! The book is based on a planned society and a planned economy. Really far out stuff, that seems unreal today, but it was written in their books, so one must assume that is what they believe.
School-to-Work Act is based on a planned global economy. Children will be trained according to the economic needs of the country. That is what part of restructuring education is about. Read their documents that may be found in the government printing house. I did! The Core Curriculum includes career skills for young children.
Such philosophies leave no room for creative ability, and these people have no interest in developing artists or individuals. The current movement is only interested in “profit” for the vested interest in my opinion. Such philosophies have no need for democratic principles found in our Constitution. Take care!
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It is a tragedy when arts programs are cut from schools. Yes, they are joyful and they allow some students an opportunity to develop their special gifts. More importantly, the arts should be an essential, integral and basic part of everyone’s education because of what they teach and how they are taught.
The arts have their own intrinsic value and we should not need to bolster our argument with anything else (after all, when did you ever encounter an argument for math education that claimed it supported learning in any other subject?). But we aren’t there yet so to go beyond the argument of teaching the arts for their own sake…
The arts teach, encourage and reward divergent and creative thinking. Because there is no one right answer that can be bubbled in on a test for a point, students must consider the strengths and weaknesses of their contributions. This is commonly called critical thinking and problem solving, it’s essential to innovation and it’s what employers need from employees.
At some level we all understand the value of the arts. They are so much a part of how we think that it is embedded into our language. Who has not heard that “one picture is worth a thousand words?” Hans Christian Anderson, who had no trouble expressing himself in words said “Where words fail, music begins.” Not everything can be expressed in words or numbers and denying students the opportunity to develop other forms of expression is to deny some of them their own voice.
When children find their voice, they find that they have something worthwhile to say and it keeps them in school and motivated. Studies show that schools with arts programs have higher graduation rates and more graduates going to college. Here in Houston we don’t have to look very far to see this in action. About five years ago Fidelity Investments decided to make an investment in some Houston ISD schools. They bought new instruments, funded music lessons with symphony musicians and even a composer-in-residence. Lives changed. Students who were on the verge of dropping out of school were recruited into the band. They not only found a voice, they found their own sense of self-worth. This fostered enough motivation for them to not only stay in school but to go on to college. Did they become musicians? Some are following that path, some are not but that is irrelevant. Whatever they decide to do with their lives, it is certain to be positive.
The country of Venezuela understands the power of music education for all children. La Sistema is a country-wide intensive music program that trains children on orchestral instruments at all levels. Youth orchestras at all levels perform and the very finest perform all over the world. Children are no longer condemned to lives of poverty, but realize that they have a voice, self-worth and choices. Is La Sistema growing musicians? Yes, but more than that, it is growing doctors, engineers, scientists and other highly trained professionals that the economy of Venezuela needs as these music students go on to college.
In the fast changing highly technological world of the 21st century,we need to teach our children many different ways to understand the world. The arts are complex, sophisticated abstract ways of understanding that must be developed. These ways of comprehending do not happen on their own and they are not unique to the artistically gifted. They are universal.
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