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Our school district, like most others in Colorado, faces
a financial pinch. Some critics will suggest that perhaps
the district could get by with fewer administrators. The
administration often finds ways for the district to get by
with fewer teachers. But always, here and in every other
place I read about, there is a strong impulse to eliminate
frills
like art and music.
Art is a frill, and math a necessity, right? But around this isolated little town, there are dozens of people who get their livelihood from art: sculptors, potters, weavers, painters, illustrators, photographers, serigraphers, lithographers, designers.
As for math, I know precisely one mathematician here. Throw in a few surveyors and engineers, along with a programmer (though that is more logic than math), and the artists still outnumber the math wizards by a substantial margin.
If our schools were indeed trying to prepare kids to participate in the local economy, the frill would be math, not art.
Compare music to English. One of my daughters makes some part-time money giving piano lessons; neither has ever made a nickel from writing. Among adults, I know a few professional writers, and about the same number of professional musicians. That's a wash, but when I peek around most houses, the books are almost always outnumbered by compact disks and cassettes, and most people spend more time listening to music than they do reading.
I've yet to see any evidence that a working knowledge of English is a requirement for success in America. Listen to George Bush's fractured syntax when he doesn't have a script. In business, those who can spell become secretaries; those who can talk football become executives. Note that at least half the best-seller list is ghost-written, which means the ignoramus gets the money and glory while the wordsmith gets neither.
Clearly, a knowledge of chord progressions is at least as valuable as the ability to parse a sentence, and if music is a frill, then English is an extravagance.
This inability to see the obvious extends even into extra-curricular activities. If it's a choice between football and skiing, then football gets the nod, even though there are a thousand Coloradans who make money from skiing for every one that makes money from football. Basketball or swimming? Even arid Colorado has scores of river guides and lifeguards for every pro basketball player.
Perhaps the traditional curriculum made sense when our major industries were agriculture and mining. But if tourism -- the entertainment of visitors -- is the future, then our educators should realize that yesterday's frills may be tomorrow's vital skills.
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