Pages

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

America's children deserve real art teachers in real art classrooms




http://ilraiseyourhand.org/content/line-art-course-you-drawing-sculpture-and-photography-me

The above is a story titled "An On-Line Art Course for You, Drawing, Sculpture and Photography for Me" The story goes on to explain that students are required to take an online art class, because they have no art teachers. An art class is required for graduation. I wonder how many children of our leaders in Congress, the Senate, and the White house are taking online art classes at their schools?

John Adams said: "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." Something deep inside me thinks John Adams would object to schools in the 21st century without real art teachers.

The United States Department of Education has spent nearly 1 trillion federal dollars, (a number that many mathematicians call too big to work with) on NCLB reforms over the last 12 years. I find myself wondering how any school could lack the resources to hire real art teachers. Something is rotten with a reform policy that spends 1 trillion dollars on our schools, but the leaves many schools without the resources to hire real art teachers!
Now lets also consider that federal funds only accounts for about 10% of our tax dollars spent on public schools. This means we have spent nearly 10 trillion dollars on NCLB/RTTT reform mandates, but the best some schools can offer students is a mandated online art course.
Am I the only person that wants a forensic audit of every dime spent on a decade of this nonsense?
If we pull back the curtain from the DOE in DC we might just find a good old boys network of thieves laughing all the way to the bank.
The real tragedy is not the lost of money, but the suffering of America's children.
Children are more than test scores, and they deserve real art teachers in real classrooms.
Ready to occupy the DOE,
Jesse

Readers if you are wondering what I am listening to, and visualizing on my walk today it a little Vicent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM
Don Mcleans Vicent
" (Writers: DON MCLEAN, ENRICO NASCIMBENI, ROBERTO VECCHIONI)

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant
For one as beautiful as you

No comments:

Post a Comment