Without the Arts, It’s Not Education

WE know there’s a drama, art, music, dance, classroom teacher who changed your life.  Every educator knows that within EACH and EVERY child lies an artistic soul waiting to be sparked.  SEND ME YOUR TESTIMONIAL:  How your third grade teacher taught you to write your first play, fingerprinting your fears away on an oily white sheet of paper, dance to the beat of your own drum, strum, blow, sing the lyrics that express your point of view.

Earlier this spring Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote that “dance, music, theater, and visual arts” are essential to preparing our nation’s young people for a global economy fueled by innovation and creativity.” That may be the case, but thanks to education funding cuts, the arts are being systematically stripped from our schools. According to creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, what’s left can hardly be called an education.

“We may be providing something else, but it’s not what we want to think of as education,” Robinson told attendees at the recent Action Children’s Art Conference in the U.K. Instead, says Robinson, our children are growing up in a fast-paced world “that’s becoming more standardized,” which means kids “live within education cultures that are more prone to testing, to conformity, and to compliance than ever before.” Read more…