It’s been ridiculously long since my last post. Back in the saddle!
There was a great piece in The Nation in May by Jeff Chang called “The Creativity Stimulus”. He writes about the arts and culture in the economic recovery. I wasn’t going to write about this now since it came out in May but this morning I saw that Americans are discouraged about the state of the economic recovery. So I thought this might still be timely. Here is a piece of Chang’s article that hit home for me.
Creativity can be a powerful form of organizing communities from the bottom up. The economic crisis gives us a change to rethink the role of creativity in making a vibrant economy and civil society. Artists as well as community organizers cultivate new forms of knowledge and consciousness. One of the unsung stories of the past twenty-five years is how both have used creativity to inspire community development and renewal. Creativity has become the glue of social cohesion in times of turmoil.
I love that last line. “Creativity has become the glue of social cohesion in times of turmoil.” This is such an important reminder for those of us who work in schools. These are indeed times of turmoil and children are not exempt. Try as we might as adults, we have a very difficult time shielding children from our stress. And as many schools will continue to be woefully underfunded this fall, children will be impacted directly by our adult stressors.
The funding in public education is pretty bleak at the moment. Which is all the more reason why we have a responsibility to promote creativity in schools. To paraphrase an old saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get creative.” In our ethical responsibilities to students, we can’t a little thing like underfunding get in our way. It is unlikely arts education will be well funded anytime soon but, as Chang suggests, we can be rich in what we cultivate in our schools and communities.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
News Flash (Part 2)
I would like to go back to the ethical ramifications of cutting arts from schools. There is a fairness and justice issue as well here. There are two groups of children that come up when we talk about the (lack of) fairness when cutting the arts. First are children from low-income communities and second are children who are gifted in an art form.
John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice which explores his idea of justice and fairness. Rawls acknowledges the imbalance of wealth in our society and he posits that this inequality is actually just provided that everyone in society benefits, particularly those who are “least advantaged”. According to Rawls, it is ok when some have more (even a lot more) but there has to be benefit for all.
The reality for children from low-income communities is that they don’t have access to many if any arts experiences or education outside the school day. School is their best shot at getting this. By denying poor children exposure to and education in the arts during the school day we immediately begin to limit their future options. We limit their creative and artistic literacy. We literally deprive them of a way to communicate with and understand the world. In addition, we limit the knowledge they have about the world. In not learning about and understanding great artists and great works of art we limit what they know and what they can imagine. Without meeting William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Martha Graham, or Wynton Marsalis in their classrooms, the doors of possibility and opportunity close a little bit more tightly. The arts are part of the escape route from poverty. They allow students to imagine other possibilities, to understand the complexities and nuances of the world and of life, and to communicate their thoughts, beliefs and ideas.
The second group of children we overlook when we cut the arts from schools is the artistically gifted. This is a group of kids that is rarely if ever taken seriously by public schools. Rare is the district that properly identifies and nurtures artistic giftedness. The myths around academic giftedness extend to the artistic domain as well. There is the misconception that gifted children will somehow develop and maintain their giftedness without support and appropriate education (research tells us they won’t). Like a muscle, giftedness will languish if not developed. I for one do not relish living in a world where artistic giftedness borders on extinction.
In public education we do not get to pick and choose which children we serve and how. Rawls, when he wrote about the imbalance of wealth, could have easily been writing about other resources such as education. Some schools are going to provide a better education for lots of reasons – good principal, good teachers, low-crime in the neighborhood, parents who know how to navigate the educational systems, parents who are able to support school financially. But for those schools that do not have some of these benefits, we are required by tenets of justice and fairness to ensure these poorest schools can benefit. Striking the arts from the curriculum is promoting injustice and this is a terrible misstep for public education.
John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice which explores his idea of justice and fairness. Rawls acknowledges the imbalance of wealth in our society and he posits that this inequality is actually just provided that everyone in society benefits, particularly those who are “least advantaged”. According to Rawls, it is ok when some have more (even a lot more) but there has to be benefit for all.
The reality for children from low-income communities is that they don’t have access to many if any arts experiences or education outside the school day. School is their best shot at getting this. By denying poor children exposure to and education in the arts during the school day we immediately begin to limit their future options. We limit their creative and artistic literacy. We literally deprive them of a way to communicate with and understand the world. In addition, we limit the knowledge they have about the world. In not learning about and understanding great artists and great works of art we limit what they know and what they can imagine. Without meeting William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Martha Graham, or Wynton Marsalis in their classrooms, the doors of possibility and opportunity close a little bit more tightly. The arts are part of the escape route from poverty. They allow students to imagine other possibilities, to understand the complexities and nuances of the world and of life, and to communicate their thoughts, beliefs and ideas.
The second group of children we overlook when we cut the arts from schools is the artistically gifted. This is a group of kids that is rarely if ever taken seriously by public schools. Rare is the district that properly identifies and nurtures artistic giftedness. The myths around academic giftedness extend to the artistic domain as well. There is the misconception that gifted children will somehow develop and maintain their giftedness without support and appropriate education (research tells us they won’t). Like a muscle, giftedness will languish if not developed. I for one do not relish living in a world where artistic giftedness borders on extinction.
In public education we do not get to pick and choose which children we serve and how. Rawls, when he wrote about the imbalance of wealth, could have easily been writing about other resources such as education. Some schools are going to provide a better education for lots of reasons – good principal, good teachers, low-crime in the neighborhood, parents who know how to navigate the educational systems, parents who are able to support school financially. But for those schools that do not have some of these benefits, we are required by tenets of justice and fairness to ensure these poorest schools can benefit. Striking the arts from the curriculum is promoting injustice and this is a terrible misstep for public education.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
How Bernie Madoff makes a case for arts education
There’s a great article in this week’s New Yorker about Bernie Madoff and the original schemer, Charles Ponzi, from which Madoff’s new nomenclature is taken. Writer Ron Chernow says this about Charles Ponzi:
Why, look! We’re back to the arts. The arts in general and I will argue the theatre in particular is all about this role- or perspective-taking. Through theatre we explore experiences outside our own – experiences we have no access to in our own lives. But through learning in theatre our ability to use our imaginations “to discern various possibilities” is front and center. Ideally, we put ourselves aside and imagine what is to be someone else.
The moral imagination is not limited to perspective-taking. When children learn in theatre, it is also an opportunity to develop an understanding of actions and outcomes. How many of us wish that our children had a better understanding of the consequences of their actions (all parents with teenagers can raise their hands)? When we read a play or "do" a play or see a play, we reflect on both the actions and the outcomes. We are forced to consider the consequences. Think of how Lear rages at his daughters with disasterous consequences.
By educating our children in the theatre in particular and the arts in general, we offer them these extraordinary skills – to understand another person’s point of view and to reflect on possible consequences. Imagine what today’s headlines might be if we had taken these skills more seriously. For one, Madoff might have run a legitimate business rather than bilking thousands of investors. For another, the implosion of the credit market might have been averted with more ethical lending practices to homeowners who clearly could not afford the debt they were accumulating.
We want to prepare our kids for the world they will live in. We don’t know what that will entail but we can probably assume that fraud will be part of it. Charles Ponzi began his scheming in 1919. Ninety years later Bernie Madoff nearly perfected the scheme. Perhaps we can offer our children something better than a nearly perfect Ponzi scheme. Perhaps, through thoughtful education that includes the arts, we can prepare our children for their world with a robust moral imagination. I’m all for that.
Ponzi was convinced that he was a wizard who had stumbled upon a form of financial alchemy that had eluded others. Incapable of moral clarity, he could never quite admit to himself that he was a charlatan and that his scheme was an impossible fiasco.The idea of being “incapable of moral clarity” struck me as I read this article. Ponzi’s inability to understand his actions and their consequences resonates throughout the article. He appeared to have no understanding of the impact of his immoral actions on others. This reminded me of a great book called Moral Imagination by Mark Johnson. Johnson says that the moral imagination is “an ability to imaginatively discern various possibilities for acting in a given situation and to envision the potential help and harm that are likely to result from a given action." In other words, the moral imagination is to imagine what effects we might cause with our actions. How do our actions affect others and what might their experience of our actions be? This moral role-taking, if you will, is a sophisticated ability. It obviously isn’t innate (see various felons listed above) but is a learned behavior. So where can it be learned?
Why, look! We’re back to the arts. The arts in general and I will argue the theatre in particular is all about this role- or perspective-taking. Through theatre we explore experiences outside our own – experiences we have no access to in our own lives. But through learning in theatre our ability to use our imaginations “to discern various possibilities” is front and center. Ideally, we put ourselves aside and imagine what is to be someone else.
The moral imagination is not limited to perspective-taking. When children learn in theatre, it is also an opportunity to develop an understanding of actions and outcomes. How many of us wish that our children had a better understanding of the consequences of their actions (all parents with teenagers can raise their hands)? When we read a play or "do" a play or see a play, we reflect on both the actions and the outcomes. We are forced to consider the consequences. Think of how Lear rages at his daughters with disasterous consequences.
By educating our children in the theatre in particular and the arts in general, we offer them these extraordinary skills – to understand another person’s point of view and to reflect on possible consequences. Imagine what today’s headlines might be if we had taken these skills more seriously. For one, Madoff might have run a legitimate business rather than bilking thousands of investors. For another, the implosion of the credit market might have been averted with more ethical lending practices to homeowners who clearly could not afford the debt they were accumulating.
We want to prepare our kids for the world they will live in. We don’t know what that will entail but we can probably assume that fraud will be part of it. Charles Ponzi began his scheming in 1919. Ninety years later Bernie Madoff nearly perfected the scheme. Perhaps we can offer our children something better than a nearly perfect Ponzi scheme. Perhaps, through thoughtful education that includes the arts, we can prepare our children for their world with a robust moral imagination. I’m all for that.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
News Flash: Arts cut from schools
The San Diego school board has issued a Plan A of budgets cuts and has a Plan B in place, which includes eliminating the visual and performing arts across the second largest school district in the state of California. The arts are currently the only curricular area to be cut under Plan B. There is a discussion amongst my circle of colleagues about the ethical nature of cutting the arts. So, here are some thoughts on ethics and the elimination of arts education from public schools.
In both ethics and the law, we create sets of rules (at least in western ethics and since this is the United States, western ethics rule, if you will excuse the pun). I quoted Frank Griswold earlier about ethics being the sets of rules we agree to live by once we decide to live together. Once we set up those rules, we don’t get to break them because it is more convenient to do so. Convenience is not a reason to compromise on our core beliefs.
This extends, of course, to how we educate our kids. We have created essentially a set of rules (in the form of No Child Left Behind) that we have agreed will guide the education of our children. This is part of our ethical obligation to our children. We – America the country, not just American parents - have an ethical responsibility to educate children. In meeting that ethical responsibility we created NCLB (I have no doubt this could be argued about how successfully we met that responsibility through this piece of legislation).
As those of us in the trenches know, the arts are mandated in No Child Left Behind as the part of the curriculum. So in deciding to exclude the arts from the curriculum is in violation of our original agreement about what a child in a public school should expect to receive.
I realize that NCLB is not perfect and I also realize that it is not equitably applied due to high-stakes testing. If we agree as a society that NCLB is not meeting the needs of our children we have an ethical obligation to rewrite it, rework it or throw it out and start again. Nonetheless, we are currently violating our ethical duties by allowing American children to receive less than what we agreed they needed.
Our second ethical failing in considering the arts education cuts is that we are allowing public education to promote a form of illiteracy. By failing to teach our children the arts from the time they enter school through the completion of their high school diploma, we fail to prepare them appropriately for the world they are about to enter. We are promoting a form of illiteracy. This illiteracy translates into fewer skills and less knowledge to solve more complicated problems than previous generations.
How can we rationalize this? We cannot and we should not. One of the great philosophical thinkers, Immanuel Kant, recognized the danger in rationalization and the driving need of humans to do so. Rationalization allows us to excuse ourselves from our ethical responsibilities and we must be careful in this regard. Our rationalization of the elimination of school curriculum teaches our children a number of things – and none of them are good.
In both ethics and the law, we create sets of rules (at least in western ethics and since this is the United States, western ethics rule, if you will excuse the pun). I quoted Frank Griswold earlier about ethics being the sets of rules we agree to live by once we decide to live together. Once we set up those rules, we don’t get to break them because it is more convenient to do so. Convenience is not a reason to compromise on our core beliefs.
This extends, of course, to how we educate our kids. We have created essentially a set of rules (in the form of No Child Left Behind) that we have agreed will guide the education of our children. This is part of our ethical obligation to our children. We – America the country, not just American parents - have an ethical responsibility to educate children. In meeting that ethical responsibility we created NCLB (I have no doubt this could be argued about how successfully we met that responsibility through this piece of legislation).
As those of us in the trenches know, the arts are mandated in No Child Left Behind as the part of the curriculum. So in deciding to exclude the arts from the curriculum is in violation of our original agreement about what a child in a public school should expect to receive.
I realize that NCLB is not perfect and I also realize that it is not equitably applied due to high-stakes testing. If we agree as a society that NCLB is not meeting the needs of our children we have an ethical obligation to rewrite it, rework it or throw it out and start again. Nonetheless, we are currently violating our ethical duties by allowing American children to receive less than what we agreed they needed.
Our second ethical failing in considering the arts education cuts is that we are allowing public education to promote a form of illiteracy. By failing to teach our children the arts from the time they enter school through the completion of their high school diploma, we fail to prepare them appropriately for the world they are about to enter. We are promoting a form of illiteracy. This illiteracy translates into fewer skills and less knowledge to solve more complicated problems than previous generations.
How can we rationalize this? We cannot and we should not. One of the great philosophical thinkers, Immanuel Kant, recognized the danger in rationalization and the driving need of humans to do so. Rationalization allows us to excuse ourselves from our ethical responsibilities and we must be careful in this regard. Our rationalization of the elimination of school curriculum teaches our children a number of things – and none of them are good.
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