It comes as no surprise that a recent survey conducted by Menlo Park think tank SRI International found that 89 percent of California’s schools do not meet state standards for arts education. Most of them, including the schools in the San Jose Unified School District, don’t even come close. While the immediate problem is a woeful lack of funding—a pitiful $15 per student annually at present—the underlying problem is that many parents and those who administer the state’s school system lack an understanding of the merits of a comprehensive arts education program.
An excellent article by Sharon Noguchi in the Mercury News puts the issue into perspective by the numbers. The revelation by SJUSD Assistant Superintendent Bill Erlendson that they would need about $800,000 just to restore the music programs in elementary schools gives some idea of what the financial situation is. However, in order to better understand the importance of studying the arts in the scheme of things, I would like to put the issue into perspective from my point of view as a music educator.
Once upon a time, in medieval and renaissance Europe, the system of higher education (admittedly elitist) rested on the “seven liberal arts”: the “trivium”—rhetoric, logic and grammar—and the four pillars of the “quadrivium”—astronomy, mathematics, geometry and music. Why? Because one could apply the principles of understanding gained though studying those subjects to almost anything else. Music, at its core, is the rendering of pure mathematics expressible in an audible sensory form, akin to geometry as the visual manifestation of mathematics, and astronomy as the study of the observable physical universe that is understood through mathematics. The trivium explored the use and structure of language, a further human abstraction that provided the basis of philosophical description, tying human knowledge and action together. In short, the system was comprised of reading, writing and arithmetic, but covered all the bases.
With the industrial revolution, more universally available grammar school education aimed at quickly providing industry with workers who spent their lives doing one thing, taking a place on the assembly line of materialism. As the length of childhood education increased, the study of the arts was added into the mix of ordinary children of all economic classes, and this was a feature of an American education until recent decades, which have seen the precipitous decline that led to the current situation.
The study of music—and I mean as an art form, not how many symphonies Beethoven composed or how to choose a new subwoofer—if executed properly, prepares the student with skills to handle a wide variety of tasks and challenges in the real world. As musical works are self-functioning creations based on principles of mathematics, physics and human anatomy, the understanding of the various aspects of such works through an analytical process will yield much useful knowledge beyond the sensual pleasures of the noises. The ability to create and comprehend abstractions, and put them to practical use, is what distinguishes us from the other creatures on Earth. Through an understanding of music, one can understand many other things based on analyzable data, from the movements of the stock market to systems of society and government, from computer language and system design to applications of the law to obtain a just result. Any MBA, computer engineer, rocket scientist or attorney who has studied music theory knows this, just like Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Einstein before them. And the motor skills and cooperative social skills learned by playing an instrument in an ensemble are second to none, leaving organized sports behind in the dust.
What you are saying is that the “arts” teaches one to think! To analyize! To solve problems!
You are correct!
When the schools teach to the tests, no one wins.
Jerry
Quite a treatise, Jack!
Many moons ago I was a full time art instructor in San Jose Unified at the Bret Harte site. At one time that department had five full time credentialed art instructors and offered a thorough program. Once Steinbeck and Castillero opened we lost some of our instructors but, Bret Harte still had full time art, then little by little it diminished. I was the last of the original 5 left, and by this time Bret Harte had become a middle school. The only art class offered was a beginning art class; 6th grade was divided into 4 sections, each met one quarter. I ended up teaching core classes, English and History, I too have a degree in History. The last two years, I also taught one math class, I was not credentialed to teach math, but as the principal that originally hired me said, “but you can do it.” I could, was not difficult. I ended up resigning mainly because of lack of support from the school administrators regarding discipline. While at Bret Harte, I had rocks thrown at my car on Almaden Expressway, I was told that I didn’t see the rocks leave the students hands, so therefore the school would do nothing. Ended up parking my car at a friend’s house in front of the school. Once a strip mall was built there, I was walking through and had rocks thrown at me there, well the excuse this time was that the incident happened off school grounds. Typically hood ornaments would end up missing, the key hole on my car would be tampered with; students would find out our family phone number and harass me. The best was when I came in the first day of school the year before I quit. The entire art room had been vandalized with 18×24” paper in the ceiling with the pentagram symbol and latin words translating to “intercouse with the devil.” Chairs were on top of tables, writing on the blackboard, and a lewd note left. The entire administration was down, straightenting the room because, gee I got to begin the first day of school in 15 minutes. I was told that I must have left a window open and that nothing could be done about the note because it wasn’t left in my teacher mailbox.
Trust me, I wasn’t alone, I recall an English teacher who had her lawn set on fire; another teacher finding all four tires deflated, another had a hard boiled egg thrown at the back of her head.
Guess I got a little carried away! But it’s all the truth and most people have no idea what teachers go through. I must also add, that for the most part the students I had were great, in fact one is my dentist today and another stopped by my house on my birthday. Schools are a microcosm of society, rules and prisons are for a small sector of offenders.
If the powers to be had realized the more extensive benefits to the arts, like using the right hemisphere of the brain, perhaps the curriculum would still exist. I do believe that school districts even sold off their instruments, so it to reinstate worthwhile programs would surely be costly and in today’s world of cuts, not a likely prospect.
Jack,
First of all, “Amen!” Great post.
On a related note, when one looks at students at a university such as MIT, the vast majority of those students have some musical background at one point or another.
Music truly prepares the mind for many other things.
As for making the the medieval/renaissance model of the seven liberal arts current to today, where would social sciences fit in? I use that term loosely to refer to government/political science, economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, and non-neurological psychology, among other disciplines ignored by our schools today.
There is much lacking in the schools… The $64,000 ($64Billion?) question is, given that half the state budget is spent on education, and we have 7,000,000 K-12 students in California alone, how do we fund these things?
#1 Gil
Your suggestion is an excellent one. You are so right in saying that everything that we are intellectually and physically is firmly rooted in nature. Both art and existence begin and end there.
#2 Jerry
Thanks for putting it so simply and correctly. A system based on extracting absolute, quantifiable results from standardized testing is behavioural not educational. It turns humans into B.F. Skinner’s mice in a box. It’s great for the people making meaningless charts and graphs, but terrible for students. When you apply the concept of assembly line processes to learning, education becomes a tool ripe for political misuse (which may account for its support in some quarters). A good educator knows how to evaluate and guide individual students without resorting to regimented means and stifling the creative energy that is inherent, in one form or another, in all humans.
Jack—Very interesting post, and responses.
The Trivium may never ever reemerge and bring music, and even mathematics along with it, but education was BIG and REAL when this country was founded. Perhaps the greatest writer among the founders, the English immigrant Thomas Paine, missed college, and music was not a strong suit, but he taught himself the classics to great effect after he was 30. But education in America went south immediately after WWII was over, when the GI Bill paid for vets college tuition, as it should have—and changed all colleges, from Cal and Stanford to Harvard to places of TRAINING. The vets left farms to go to war, and when they returned to get to go to ivy halls, they knew for sure that if you went to college you got rich. How do you get a ticket?
You get to be an engineer, a businessman, a chemist. Before WWII, the select few got EDUCATED first, then they got trained, to be engineers, architects, scientists (not just chemists). But it took 4 years to get educated
in the classics, music, art, literature. THEN you got to go to professional school and be trained. The vets were in a hurry. They didn’t have 4 years to “waste”. Let’s get that degree and start making money!!. At Cal for 10 years after 1945, classics occupied dozens of shelves in every bookstore. Today, classics may not appear as a category. The rocks, the hard boiled eggs in the back of the head, the burning lawns and vandalized classrooms are the inevitable result of ignoring education and pushing training. Unbelievably, there are engineers who think they’re educated. Before the war, an engineer would play the cello in the SF Symphony, then write equations for shutting down the steel furnaces in South San Francisco. The mess we call education, K-12 today is full of English teachers who don’t ever read, who own no books, whose houses have no bookshelves, just bigscreen TV’s, HD of course. Thomas Paine could teach himself the classics, but a roomful of kids today, even a small class, taught by a trained teacher with a credential to prove it, and paid a years wages for 9 months work, and whose effectiveness as a teacher is NEVER measured(the CTA sees to that) can’t learn squat. Teachers are just time servers who can’t even teach 6 year olds who come to school speaking English how to write it in 12 years.
I expect everyone has been reading about the stunning failure of schools preparing students for SJSU, let alone Junior College. Testing isn’t the problem. Training is the problem. George Green
Thanks Jack. We’ve discussed punting on the Cam and Kings College and I’m wondering why those European and British students we met were so much better educated in the Arts. It seens as though they place a much greater emphasis on the Arts than we do.
Thanks everyone above. Excellent posts today.
#3 Wonder Woman
I read your story with great interest. You are not alone. I have heard the same from family and friends who are teachers, or used to be.
My past experience has been as a music and arts history teacher at university and high school level in the UK and Ireland, where they have strong traditions of arts education at all levels of their systems. Except for very minor instances, I had nothing like the bad experiences that you describe. In fact, quite the opposite. My small-town Irish high school students were always attentive and curious and were very respectful of the subject. And their parents (mostly fairly well-educated dairy farmers and fishermen) nearly always took a great deal of interest in their kids’ education. Many would frequently stop me on the street and enquire as to their childrens’ progress and if they could do anything to help.
Like you say, the most rewarding thing is to find out that some of your pupils made real successes of themselves later on. One of my students who started with me as the equivalent of a high school fresman and that I mentored through university, became an excellent music teacher herself, and I couldn’t be prouder.
Why do you think some American children act as you describe in your post? Is there one cultural factor or more that you can put your finger on?
Jack,
Thank you for your thought provoking posting.
What comes to mind is not a question, but an answer.
This very week end, pack a simple lunch, some trail mix and water the night before.
In the very early morning after a healthy breakfast, drive into the Santa Cruz mountains with your young child. Arriving at any trail head you choose.
There are many that have vistas and deep redwood canyons. It is here in these ancient forests, that you will introduce this young mind to all that the senses can comprehend.
This is not a hike but an adventure into the sounds and visuals of ancient man.
Stop and listen to the waters as they decend gently to the sea. yet in their decent, provide life for many species. The sounds of our redwood forests are a symphony in its self. A young mind can grasp all the elements provided within this canopy of life. When you have reached the vista site, the body is charged with energy. The sites below will overwhelm the child, for it is he or she that has reached this place above all that unfolds below.
To touch a living life form that is a thousand years old is a lesson not often shared. Nor ever forgotten.
Mother Nature has always been the teacher that will share it’s music, visuals, and inspire one to great thoughts.
When a week has gone by, ask that your child to write what went on inside their mind. While in the forest.
Discovery is a wonderful thing to see expressed.
Gil Hernandez
Great column Jack! In my work as a mediator, I can tell you another side of the importance of music and art. I work with youth offenders. Many times in their court ordered restitution, these youths agree to write a poem, rap, or song to the victim; or to draw a poster telling other youths why stealing, drinking and driving, using drugs etc., is a bad idea. These kids are so talented! I’m in awe of them. Funny thing is the way they use music and the arts to express themselves, really gets through to their peers in a way adult messages don’t. These posters are hung in schools, and other public places. I’ve noticed they take a lot of pride in communicating through music, and drawing or painting. You can actually see their confidence grow.
I recently watched a news bite on a youth who started a drumming group in the ghetto, after being in and out of Juvenile Hall. He said drumming gave him a way to express his anger, joy, and frustration. His group gets invited to play at sports events all over the US. I think that’s a pretty awesome way to turn your life around, while communicating an important message to his peers.
Music and the arts are a form of communication that breaks all language barriers. It relaxes the sole, it makes one think, it’s a way to tell a story, or to release feelings and thoughts that mere verbal communication cannot. Personally, I can never get enough!
Lastly, I worry about the loss of music and the arts to our youth. There is so much history in music and the arts, which these kids are missing out on. My God, music and the arts tell so many stories of important events in the past. It tells stories about love, family, you name it. I think schools need to understand that these courses are just as important as to forming a young mind, and character as math or history is. Music and art is not, in my opinion, a luxury it is a must!
Bridget,
You have discribed the frustration known to all of us that fight the good fight for educating the next generation of leaders.
Public art, like public education, does not belong to “we” the public. It is exercised by the politicion in power to command what is going to be placed in view of the people.
The best examples of this drama, is the Fallon statue, the plastic snake in Ceasar Chavez Park. Payed for by public funds yet, orchestrated by our elected officials.
San Jose is keen on political art. The process
that takes place in San Jose does not even resemble Public Art.
Having assembled the first Mexican owned gallery in the history of San Jose, I set out to only allow children to be our guests. Public officials and the general public needed to do their own thing, alas MACLA.
Knowing the digenerative state of our leaders and blind administrators. We had many children do work shops. Mentored by the very artist that hung in our Gallery.
We joined with other folks that felt as we did.
When we have leaders who build momuments to them selves costing many millions, this leaves very little to give to those that would nurture the next generation of artists and thinkers.
We spend billions in the search of our universe. We spend billions in search of oil in other countries. We spend billions in search of easier profits in China.
Where is the commitment to our North American Family. Yes, Mexico and Central America are a part of North American Family, as is Canada northward.
The question is an easy one. What of the North American Child? The answer is easy as well. That child is our future!!!!!!!!
I cannot comprehend the thought process behind a wall between two North American countries. Realizing that the wall is not to keep people out, but rather to keep people in.
We had a dog in the neighborhood that was very much like the Minute men. It never bit anyone, but it always barked at the wrong people.
Perhaps you are asking what all this has to do with art and music?
If you or I were to journey to another country in search of our future, as the Pilgrims, Euopeans, did, would we be able to take with us our music, poetry, language,art? Of course not because it is not being taught to us by those intrusted to do just that!
The most meaningful experiences to me are the many festivals that abound, where the heritage is expresed in song, dance and art.
That is what make Our North American Family neighbors so valuable.
Most of what we eat, and drink has been illigally derived by the use of labor termed illigal. That makes us all illigals.
We make heros of those that have decimated the true Noth American Family.
If it’s money for the arts we want, then stop buying Chinese. Those that derive corporate profits will hear the message. If your corporation is in North America, you have the responcibility to share in educating the North American Family.
If your market is in North America, and your product is made in China, it’s easy to see what needs correction.
It’s time to honor the North American Family.
When the North American Family has said ENOUGH, corporation thru out will listen and the politicians will follow.
Our children need us. We need our children. It is time for change. I am but one, soon there will be millions. ENOUGH!
The Village Black Smith
Gil – #10:
Thank you for your post. I think Bridget (#9) was talking strictly about our educational system, and how we are stripping it down to the bare bones, and in the process, jepordizing the future of our children. I remember when schools used to have metal and woodshop – no more! Now we are getting rid of music and the arts programs for what reason – cost? Locally, our county representatives have been pretty good, but overall, our state and county (Cities have no jurisdiction over schools) invest millions in business programs and invest in business, and little in education. When California first instituted the Lottery, it was designed to SUPPLEMENT our education funding. Gov. Wilson turned it into a funding source, taking out of our state’s education budget the exact amount the Lottery put in. AND HE WAS RE-ELECTED!!! California used to be one of the nation’s top educational systems; now it ranks near the bottom. Why? Priorities. We are not putting our children’s education as a priority. And so, we face the prospect of losing music and arts in our children’s schools.
As to your comment about The Quetzacoatal statue (spelling?) and the Fallon Statue, I hear your frustration, but both were a product of a flawed Public Arts policy. Since then, the City has done better (for the City, that is) about making it a public process, and not a political one. The fact is that art is personal and private – it depends on your taste in art. You either like it, or you don’t. Good art tries to teach you something. Check out the Hand statue in front of the Camden Center on Union Avenue in San Jose. Hey, we could be in Iran, or China, where public art depends on who the ruler is, and what they want!