While foreign finance ministers and central bankers met a few weeks ago at the G-20 summit to discuss the state of the world's finances, it was something that Mrs. Obama, not Mr., said that made my ears perk up.
Speaking at the Pittsburgh Creative & Performing Arts School, Michelle Obama gave an 11-minute address about the importance of the arts in our schools. I appreciated her expressing the conviction that the arts aren’t somehow an “extra” part of our nation’s life, but should be an essential part of it.
Mrs. Obama's sentiments couldn't have come at a more appropriate time. With state budgets under attack, we in the arts are bracing for a familiar song: whether or not to fund arts in the schools. When times get tough, the arts programs are always among the first to be eliminated from the curriculum.
Cutting arts funding is a short-sighted move whose consequences contribute to the deepening cultural disconnect occurring in our society.
Specifically, a generation raised without awareness of the arts, without the opportunity to experience the arts themselves by making music, making drawings, making poems, is a disenfranchised one. Art is the essence of who we are and our society is strengthened whenever young people are given the opportunity to directly share this legacy.
Whether this mission is accomplished through advocacy for arts-education funding, through music or arts programs in school, or through impassioned performances, we must continue our commitment to keep art and music as living traditions.
I am, of course, an advocate for classical music, whose twelve hundred year unbroken continuum allows us to intensely experience what it meant to be alive in 1200 or 1600 or 1900. I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to experience those world views. But, this can only be done by giving young people the keys that open up the whole world of music to them. These were the keys my parents and very importantly my teachers in public schools offered me.
The problem is that we, as a society, have abandoned the responsibility of exposing our young people to the very language of music. Today, the amount of music instruction in both elementary and secondary classrooms is decreasing; many recent reports highlight the disparity between public rhetoric about the value of arts education and the stark decline in curricular offerings across the nation – a phenomenon exacerbated by the growing pool of classroom teachers whose own education and teacher preparation programs included minimal offerings in the arts.
Music is about the human spirit, about our common heritage. When younger people are given a chance to experience classical music, they like it.
We must advocate for this in our schools, but also not sit idly by as artists. The biggest responsibility that we have in the performing arts organizations have today—a responsibility we have no option but to accept—is to help young people understand how music works and what it means. Those who know this music, know the arts, can experience a deeper sense of life itself.
Michael Tilson Thomas hosts Keeping Score Season II, premiering October 15, 22, and 29, 2009 on PBS (check local listings). www.keepingscore.org
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But, the laws of nature do not allow any vacuum to exist … So,what has started replacing under-fund
It should be obvious that unless our today’s community leaders and the funding policy makers live up to tomorrow’s standards and thus, demonstrat
Who will be accountabl
Full article: http://com
As bad as situation with arts is, it is still far more tolerable than situation with science and mathematic
Mainstream media does not completely shut down arts (as it had shut down science). After all, between long list of TV patterns like a rich crook or a 'celeb' or an athlete, kids are at least exposed to some music, or, - as remotely as it comes to arts - to movies.
How many our kids want to become a journalist or an actor (or even a writer - of some easy genre) or a musician, - as compared to becoming a scientist or inventor? (especiall
By the way, why do you propose to choose between the arts and sciences, when education policy needs to be research-i
To find out why we need to talk about advocacy for the arts and music education I propose that you run your own experiment
In fact, only through the systematic exposure to the arts and music experience
We have 13,000 homeless FEMALE veterans - and their children along with them.
The U.S. is way down the list of achievemen
I agree that fine arts in school is a good thing. And, for Michelle Obama - wealthy from her husband's books (which we now know to be fantasy) - it is wonderful.
However, where would you prioritize fine arts?
Before housing? Before healthcare
Before skills that can eventually get the students productive jobs - that is, if POTUS can ever get around to sponsoring anything like a jobs bill?
Everything is important. Though I do have more sympathy to the case of Math and Science in schools than to Arts. At this point the first is clearly much more neglected than the second.
Neglected not only in schools but as part of culture and as part of society.
(But, of course, the point is that both Sciences AND the Arts/Music have to be equally balanced and well-repre
El Sistema has created not only jobs, but entire industries
If you need an example of what happens when you have no interest in art or culture, look at George W. Bush.
The more we eliminate the arts, the more education fails.
(Obviously
the means of self expression
throughout the darkest times of history, it has always fallen to the artists to preserve the expression of the human spirit, so that we as a species retain the best of what it is to be human. so that we can stay connected to one another.
thank you for this eloquent editorial about the importance of the arts to everyone. they are the essence of us that will live on long after we are gone.
I MEANT LACK of public political awareness!
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Nixon cut the funding to the Arts in Public schools in 1973. My Brother's first job as a Drama Major Graduate, was teaching Shakespear
So we have 3 decades of the population NOT exposed to anything ABOVE mediocre! The toxic auditory trash we are forced to listen to while "shopping" is painful, abusive, and does nothing to "sooth the savage beast" in fact I think it. generates violence & unrest. IMO, it does NOT encourage me to spend more money.I grab what I NEED and get out of there ASAP!
AS a visual Artist, for the last 40 years.....
This is how we've fallen into such a state of public political awareness.