Taking the drama out of schools

I am sitting here watching the Tony’s on TV and yet I must admit that I have no sympathy for the constant complaints about cutting the arts from schools. I’m sorry but I just don’t get it. The arts, to me, are filled with egotistical people who display themselves or their work in public, be it via drama, music, art or literature (get that – literature, never simply “books”) in the hopes of getting applauds and adulation. How sad is that when you think about it. Yet they have done a marvelous job of brainwashing us that these arts must be included in school. I now feel like the child about to point out that the emperor has no clothes but why are their professions of such importance that they must be taught in school? We use to teach children how to cook, do woodwork and even basic car mechanics. So why aren’t chefs demanding that cooking classes be added back into the curriculum or mechanics requiring that their skills continue to be taught in middle school? It seems to me that knowing how to change a tire and make a decent meal would be a lot more useful for a child to learn than art appreciation.

And why are the arts so respected by educators while occupations that deal with making a profit are considered to be crass? Again, learning how to write a resume or how to fill in a W2 form would be more useful to a young person then how to distinguish a Monet from Manet. It is ridiculous to think that most of society has a greater respect for adults who spend their time playing make believe than they do for people who make products we need and services we use.

To make the topic even more ludicrous is the fact that when the arts are taught then understanding and critiquing a poem, song or play is purely subjective. Who’s to say if it is good or horrible? Impressionable children are pretty much at the mercy of their arts, music and drama teachers. The Oscars awards for best movie clearly shows a deep divide between what those in the arts profession admire and what the general population actually goes to see. They had to increase the nominees for Best Movie recently because in prior years no one other than actors and actresses had seen the handful of movies that had been nominated.

Speaking of which, when did actresses decide they wanted to be called actors? If they were so determined to deny their womanhood and be seen on par with men then it seems to me that they should have a Best Actor Oscar, period, and let them compete with men for the one award. But no, as usual, women want the best of both worlds. They want to be called actors and yet they still want to have their Best Actress Award. Makes no sense to me.

Finally, there is one other well kept secret when it comes to the arts – if you aren’t that interested in the arts you are not that alone. In spite of what you are led to believe there are a lot of people who are not the least bit interested in the arts. Of course the artsy folks would denigrate the nonartsy people, using terms such as philistines and unsophisticated. This is especially true if the nonartsy person is {gasp}a sports lovers. Yet why are sports always portrayed so dismally? It takes great strength, grace even for an outfielder to leap for a catch, or the exquisite timing needed for a full court press or the acting to bluff for the fake end run. There is more skill, passion and excitement in a good sporting event than in a Surrealism painting or an off off off Broadway show. Yet no one has ever fought to include educational sports in school, not simply PE but teaching the finer points of basketball and football. Imagine what that would do to male-female relationships every Sunday afternoon in the fall!

Seriously, this summer most towns will be battling over budget cuts. One of the major issues will be if arts should be retained in schools. This is why you hear ads with Broadway and Hollywood stars and musicians passionately arguing that the arts must be kept in the schools. They insinuate that you should be ashamed if you try to get rid of arts from the curriculum because we are a civilized nation that knows the importance of the arts, right? Don’t let them fool you. There isn’t anything more special about art skills than about cooking or mechanics or fashion designing yet no one is arguing to have these in our schools. It was a great con all these years but now with limited funds we must end the farce of institutionalizing arts in school and concentrate on the basics first.

A Lesson on Democracy

A teacher wrote to tell me that she had asked her high school students to evaluate the convention speeches by the two candidates. She had looked up the speeches shown on CNN and wrote “Obama's has a grand introduction with inspiring music, 5 minutes of thundering applause, and panning the cheering stadium. McCain's begins with his speech and a shot of a guy in the back holding a sign that says McCain does NOT support vets.” The sad state of the media is that stories like this are no longer unusual and you almost begin to expect this kind of biased coverage of the two candidates.

The writer then concluded “I try very hard to give a favorable introduction to both candidates, without bias, and also include the ideas that we benefit greatly from a 2 party system rather than a totalitarian 1 party system.” Wow. How disturbing is that? You would think that by high school the students would know about our history, our heritage as a democratic country and why this is better than a one party government. It is scary to think that the idea of America is something that now needs to be taught.

As for this election, I have no doubt that the majority of teenagers are supporting the young black man versus the old white guy. There is more than some truth in the old joke about being idealistic when young but becoming conservative the moment you get your first paycheck. When you don’t have any money it is easy to agree with Obama’s “spreading the wealth”. Anyway, I am sure the teens are very enthusiastic supporters of Obama and probably wouldn’t listen if someone tried to tell them otherwise.

Maybe this teacher has the right idea; to try to be unbiased and yet to expose the students to the blatant misuse of power by the media in favor of Obama. On one hand, you hate to disillusion the teens by showing them the seamier side of politics or even by helping them see for themselves that this is yet one more instance where life is not fair. So finding the bias on their own might make them more cynical and distrustful of not just the politicians but also of the supposedly unbiased media. Yet lessons like this will better equip them to make judgments about what they are seeing, and to learn to question even what “trusted” authoritative figures are telling them. And that might be a good idea after all.

Save Children from Art and Music Classes

Art and music classes should be abolished in all schools. There I said it! Actually, I never really thought about this until recently when we had to have budget cuts in our local schools. The outrage over cutting back on art and music classes was never ending and you thought the children would end up as boorish dolts without it. This made me take a second look at it and to start questioning the decision to have these classes in the first place.

Seriously, when was it decided that art and music should be standard classes taught to all children? Why art and music? Why not drama or band, too? Or here’s a better idea, why not classes in logic or ethics or things they might actually need when they grow up? What is the big deal in teaching art and music to children other than to give jobs to third rate artists and musicians? The more I thought about this the more I realized I not only agreed with the administration’s decision to cut these classes but I now think it shouldn’t have been offered in the first place. I know I sure wouldn't have missed them.

In grade school I despised art and music classes in the same way other children feared and hated gym class. I can’t sing. Even worse, I can hear how off tune I am but for the life of me I can’t find the right note. Heck, I can’t find any note on the scale. So it was embarrassing for me and painful for everybody when it was my turn to sing. And forget musical instruments. After two years of piano I still couldn’t find middle C on the keyboard! Hard to believe but I was even worse in art class. I couldn’t draw a straight line much less any type of picture. The undeterminable blobs on paper were cute when I was 5 but made me feel like an imbecile as I grew older. I was equally bad at mobiles, shadow boxes and anything requiring visual arts. To make it worse, I “inherited” this ineptitude from my parents so they were no help, either.

I do realize that the other purpose of art and music is to teach children to appreciate them; to broaden their knowledge of the “finer” things in life. If that is the case, why stop at art and music, why not also teach drama, ballet, band, cinema etc.? And who decides what is “good” art and music and what should be taught? Why is it that “old” is always considered to be better than “new”? Perhaps if they tried to try to cover other types of music and art it might have been more interesting but they only ever taught classical music (and I don’t mean the 1960’s). So year after year it is the same old dead artists and composers, except for that one when you had that one music teacher who tried too hard to be one of the kids by playing your music. And what other class was being shortchanged so that a 10 year old boy could listen to Bach (and most likely fall asleep)?

I admit to being impressed when my 6 year old niece looked at a print of Starry Starry Night that was on my wall and commented “I like your Van Gogh.” Wow. When asked how she knew this she said she learned it on Baby Einstein, a TV show. So again, who needs an art class if she is getting it elsewhere?

There are so many things to teach children today that I no longer see why we are using valuable class time for art and music. I would vote to eliminate these classes forever and instead teach students computer programming or science or spend more time on reading, writing and arithmetic. Yes I know that this is a very politically incorrect view. Too bad. Let kids appreciate art and music on their own time – use class time to teach them the skills they need to survive in this world.