teachers union
Yeah! No More 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 indeterminable 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 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 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.
PUBLIK EDUKATHUN
To no ones surprise who has watched the dissolving public schools 17 of the nation’s 50 largest cities have high school graduation rates below half. America now spends more per student than almost every other nation and gets less for it. America’s education deficit is forcing jobs off shore where better educated students are available – often for less money and with better work ethic – and without the punishing litigation climate.
One bright spot is when and where families can pick the schools there children attend. Charter school enrollment in the U.S. has climbed to 1.1 million from zero seeded by two tiny voucher programs in Maine and Vermont 20-years ago. Tuition tax credits, once puny and rare, are now sizable and commonplace. Plus, as public education fails home schooling has dramatically increased by parents concerned about poor results, conflicting ideologies, and increasingly dangerous campuses. School choice is clearly making a difference for the better, which justifies expanding it, not abandoning it.” - excerpted from Wall Street Journal editorial, 4/5/08 with additions.
EDUKATHUN WARS
On March 25, the California Court of Appeal granted a motion for rehearing in the ‘In re Rachel L.’ case–the controversial decision which purported to ban all homeschooling in that state unless the parents held a teaching license qualifying them to teach in public schools. The automatic effect of granting this motion is that the prior opinion is vacated and is no longer binding on any one, including the parties in the case.” - Home School Legal Defense Association, 3/26/08
California law requires children between six and 18 to attend a full-time day school. Failure to comply means falling afoul of the state’s truancy laws, which say kids can’t play hooky without an excuse. But kids who are taught at home are less likely to be truants. Their parents choose to spend their time teaching English, math and science precisely because they don’t think the public schools do a good enough job.”…That so many families turn to home schooling is a market solution to a market failure — namely the dismal performance of the local education monopoly. . . . For some parents, the motive for home schooling is religious; others want to protect their kids from gangs and drugs. But the most-cited reason is to ensure a good education.”Home-schooled students are routinely high performers on standardized academic tests, beating their public school peers on average by as much as 30 percentile points, regardless of subject. They perform well on tests like the SAT — and colleges actively recruit them both for their high scores and the diversity they bring to campus.” - Wall Street Journal editorial, 3/22/08
Oregon Speaker Kisses Teachers’ Butts Is Hypocrite.
Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley voted against Oregon’s charter school legislation pontificating about fairness in education, what a great job teachers’ unions were doing and other pomposities while grabbing with both hands for teachers’ union money. He lost. Then, he and his wife secretly applied to send two of their kids to a newly forming charter school. The school was late in starting up, so he lost again as the application wasn’t acted on. Merkley denied the report at first but a newspaper produced the application making him look dumber and more hypocritical than usual.