The Art of the Matter

The Roaming Roaster roamed into quite the affair last night. I had the distinct pleasure of attending a dinner party at Ambassador Swanee Hunt's house. She hosts often, and recently raised over one million dollars for arts education programs in one night. I could hear the live jazz from the courtyard, and the bar had plenty of ice. Mood: apprehensive. Attire: I'm pretty sure I was the only one wearing sneakers.

The evening was billed as a "conversation with Carol Johnson" - the new superintendent of Boston Public Schools - about arts in education. Many of the guests had been running organizations in Boston for ten or twenty years, all geared toward bringing the arts into schools and communities that are increasingly artless. They see Dr. Johnson as a ray of hope. Coupled with the Patrick administration, which someone generously described as having "a more sympathetic view" as to what "education looks like," they see this as a time when voices for creative, well-rounded education will be heard. The evening was designed to introduce Dr. Johnson to all the community organizations bringing arts into her schools, and to jump start advocacy efforts in BPS and beyond.

Immediately clear was public schools' nearly total reliance on CBOs and other outside sources for their art instruction. Or, as was the case in an example Dr. Johnson gave, science teachers who happened to play the piano bring music into the classroom on their own terms. Music and art are considered extra, and more schools (nine in Boston this year) are cutting teachers of these subjects.

While these subjects are treated as superfluous by the state, they are fundamental in the homes and schools of the very rich. What privileged child went through school without learning an instrument? Or studying classical music? Or taking dance classes? The family who can afford it would not allow a child to grow up artless, yet schools continue to cut art and music.

So...the arts are necessary for the children of the rich, but are the arts necessary to schooling? What is schooling for, anyway? Some people believe it is to get a job. One of those people, Secretary Bump, Governor Patrick's workforce maven, stood up and brought the employer's perspective to the table. Usually, I cringe when this woman talks. She represents all that I find particularly frightening about "workforce development" (read: funnel the kids in danger of being "left behind" into go nowhere jobs so they can't end up on welfare. read: tracking. read: who cares what makes you happy; get a job.) However, this evening she was far less frightening than usual, and acknowledged that employers want the soft skills that kids learn in art and music and, often, no place else. Of note was this: Bill Gates surveyed his staff at Microsoft and found that Computer Science was the SECOND most popular college major across all employees. The most common? Music.

The room made a collective "hmmm" at this point. Secretary Bump follows it with a question, "What should I tell the readiness project?"

A man across the room from me put down his Merlot and stood up to blame this artlessness on the obsession with standardized testing. I perked up and gave him a silent "bravo!" He went on to explain that schools are not publicly accountable for anything besides English and math scores. Therefore, schools funnel resources into raising those scores.

The room had an immediate response to this. Collectively, we had thousands of stories to prove the misguided nature of funneling resources so narrowly. We all knew the student who hated school, who felt disengaged, angry, unsuccessful, bored...but who found (usually by accident) that he loved the theater. And he started to get involved with the drama club. Like magic, he's coming to school early and staying late, solely for the drama club. But, while he's there, he goes to English and math. He learns to measure fabric for costumes. He learns to memorize lines. He learns to design sets. He organizes the props back stage. All of these skills TRANSFER. Why did we come to the conclusion that math skills have to come in math class? This kid aces his math test, but will tell you he hates math. He is engaged with his school, and he stops thinking about dropping out. There were so many of these stories...but federal funding doesn't get reallocated based on sweet stories. They respond to results. Fortunately, Dan from the other side of the room, had an idea.

He introduces the "Creative Challenge Index." This is a public measure just like test scores -schools are judged on the basis of how many opportunities each student has to participate in the arts or music. Schools will have to publish how many creative expression opportunities they provide right alongside test scores. Those numbers will undoubtedly prove that when kids have the opportunity to engage in art or music they ALSO do better on standardized tests. Brilliant! When can we make this idea the law of the land?

Well, it already is a law. A law in waiting. House Bill 393, recently released by the Joint Education Committee, is written and floating around.

This is exactly the sort of concrete, creative activism that we need to counteract the devastating effects of NCLB and the testing frenzy. Find out more about what you can do to help advance this Bill here.

Swanee jumps in to ask Dr. Johnson what advocacy efforts worked in Memphis. After quite a bit of pushing back and forth, Dr. Johnson offers us the following example:

Parent Groups and Advocacy Groups, but more importantly the unity of parent and advocacy groups, put enough pressure on the governor to get a clear goal accomplished: more money. They created a proposal to raise the tobacco tax and funnel the added revenue into the schools. It worked. They raised the price of a pack by 40 cents, and ended up with 50,000,000 for the schools. Fifty million. And people had to pay forty additional cents to slowly kill themselves. This was making way too much sense for a room full of the ultra-rich.

Then Dr. Johnson said: "What we need is an infrastructure. Some way to connect the different advocacy groups."

Hmm. So we have a bunch of people who want to change things for the better. We have a relatively open minded administration (term used oh so loosely). We have a room full of groups with abundant resources who don't know each other. What we need is some kind of database for all these resources and some really dedicated community organizers to bring them all into contact with one another so we can GET THIS DONE. Hmm...hmm...who could do that?

Hello! Look at us! Please please please vast readership, join our network or send us email or call us! This bill, House Bill 393, is only one example of the things people are coming up with to improve our schools. But not a one of them is going to happen without organized action.

Find out more about the Boston Public student who painted the amazing painting above here.

(Oh and you'll be happy to note that this crowd took my sneakers as creative expression, and didn't blink an eye.)