I spent most of the day yesterday in jury duty (though neither I nor the guy with the 7 inch high blue Mohawk was ultimately called to serve) which, in addition to being a good education on the judicial process in this country, was an opportunity to read uninterrupted for hours at a time. I've been carrying Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark around with me and find that each time I dip back into that collection I draw new insights and visions; what occupied most of my time, though, was a 114-page study commissioned by the Department of Education back in 2000 entitled Champions of Change: The impact of the arts on learning.
I had this in hand because I was preparing for a Parent-Teacher Organization meeting to which members of the local school board had been invited; there had been some talk that the district might cut back on "specials" -- that is, art, music, library, and gym -- in order to bolster science instruction...in order to boost PSSA test scores, which now drive curricular planning thanks to what one of the school board members defined as "the nightmare that is No Child Left Behind." Because of this rumor, and the fact that class sizes have been increasing, folks came to the meeting loaded for bear; what was disarming was the realization that the school board members were basically on the same page as the parents. In fact, what became clear was that the school board is struggling with the constrictions on their ability to do what they feel is best for the students, given the PSSA parameters that are becoming an end in and of itself, rather than the assessment tool that would help figure out how to increase support where it is most needed.
A laugh-out-loud moment for me came when the board president noted that the only group that consistently engages the school board members are band parents, who always make an immediate show of force whenever music programs are being threatened. As my friend Daphne pointed out, "sure, it's because they know how to march in formation, and can still do so if necessary."
In any case, one fascinating moment among many in Champions of Change was from a report co-authored by Shirley Brice Heath and Adelma Roach, writing as linguistic anthropologists; they note that in observing kids in community-based arts programs "They talk about 'what if?' 'what about...?' 'could we try this?' 'let's try...'....They pepper their sentences with 'could,' 'will,' 'can,' -- asserting possibility. They preface suggestions with subject-verb phrases that attribute responsibility to their own mental work: 'I wonder,' 'I came up with this crazy idea...' 'I see this going some other way.'
As Heath and Roach go on to write "Such talk can slip past the casual listener as nothing special. However, in arts organizations, the frequency of 'what if?' questions, modal verbs (such as could) and mental state verbs (such as believe, plan) as well as a complexity of hypothetical proposals amounts to lots of practice....This abundance and intensity of practice for these types of language uses is rarely available to them in any other setting."
So I'm thinking about involvement in the arts as one register where kids learn to articulate what has heretofore been unimaginable, and learn how to work in relation with one another so that when a collaborative effort is needed -- and collaborative efforts are always needed And if you know that you can in fact execute a perfectly spaced 90 degree turn by the flume ride at Kennywood Park with the entire percussion section while performing Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, organizing to lobby your state and federal legislators on the importance of arts-rich curricula in the public schools seems not so daunting. And done creatively, it could actually be some fun.
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