Arts
In my school district, they call it S.R.A.M. -- Systematic Resource Allocation Model. As if big words can hide the truth or make it easier to accecpt.
It doesn't work.
Budget Cuts are budget cuts no matter who tries to disguise it with a clever acryonym.
Under the guise o "SRAM" decisions are made, and programs are cut (just like any other budget process!). Each year parents, teachers, community memebers, and folks from the administration form comittees to decie what to cut from the budget. It is a wretched process. Every year, the arts are placed on the table as a potiential place to cut.
One of the supposed "benifits" of the SRAM process is having decision made by a comittee of steakholders -- it is supposed to be like a family trying to work together (that way the guy in charge can't get ALL the blame for an unpopular decision!)
It doesn't work that way. Instead lobbying and gosssip, and fights break out as people scramble to protect their program (and their jobs!)
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Music doesn't really improve math scores. (the research is VERY misleading) Art won't make your brain grow bigger, and playing Bach won't make a kid smarter.
The arts exist because o their INTRINSIC beauty. They are a cultural universal!
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To save arts programs, we have to start education PEOPLE, not just the "grown up" people who sit on the school board and make decisions. The UTURE grownups (also known as Kids!) who will be sitting on school baords in 20 years. If the bean counters see music as irrelevant to the school - I wonder i they have never experienced music themeslves. (did they have really bad music teacher) Do they go to the art museum and LOOK at the work, or do they just network with their buddies??
Humans naturally want to create and find beauty. The arts exist to help us make sense of the world -- eliminate the arts and will we still understand?
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Even HOllywood can't come up with a Happy Ending. Mr. Hollads Opus and Music of the Heart both end with the program being cut.
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Charles Fowler Quote:
"Do we want ine arts for our kids, or will pop arts do?"
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