As an early St. Patrick’s Day treat, I want to share with you this wonderful video about a teacher in the New York City public schools who has introduced Irish dance to her students in the Bronx. It accompanies the heartwarming New York Times story, “For Bronx School’s Dancers, the Moves are Irish.”
The teacher just sparkles, and isn’t it great the way the principal says “we need to have a whole program” for the entire school? I find it interesting that New York was also the setting for the feel-good documentary Mad Hot Ballroom (2005), about a citywide school ballroom dance competition. How are they doing this?
As it happens, Stacey Garfinkle, On Parenting blogger for the Washington Post, included a link to musician Tom Chapin’s website www.notonthetest.com in her Friday blog about testing. Chapin, another New Yorker, has written a satirical song about testing and is using it to raise awareness about the importance of the arts in education.
On the website he writes,
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 Chapin
Definitely check out his Facts page. It contains nuggets such as “Young people who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement.” And his Act Now page.
Both these stories come on the heels of a recent Washington Post story, “Coloring Outside Curriculum Lines To Depict the Drop in Arts Education,” about a teacher who essentially has been holding a “draw in” to protest the narrowing of the curriculum in Montgomery County Public Schools. The story drew over 30 comments…clearly a subject that hit a nerve. One commenter helpfully included a link to yet another article I read a few months ago by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland in the Boston Globe, “Art for our Sake.” I made a point to share that article with both the wonderful art teacher at our neighborhood school–and the new principal–when it was published in early September.
One of the things that has drawn our family to our neighborhood elementary school has been the stellar arts program and extracurricular opportunities. Art literally greets you at the door of the school because three years ago each student in the graduating class made a glass tile that was subsequently arranged into a “mural” in the windows surrounding the doors. That was thanks to an artist in residence program.
Once you step inside the school there is art everywhere: in the main office, lining the halls, high in the clear story, hanging from the ceilings, in the all purpose room…just everywhere. And this is not bland cookie cutter art, but really creative, expressive work in all types of media. I can’t adequately express how welcoming it makes the school feel, how it creates a permanent connection for the children. C. still has a pastel that she did in the 3rd grade hanging near the main office, and there is a tile with her self portrait farther down the hall…yet another collaborative class project. For awhile M. had a clay sculpture in the main office. Every year the school joins the county school art display at a local shopping mall. And the wonderful Mrs. M. works herself to the bone helping students prepare work to compete in the county school media festival. Inevitably they win many, many awards for photography, video and animation projects they prepare under her guidance.
All of which is to say Art Matters for kids. It matters a lot.
