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Using Art for Public Education Advocacy: An Exemplary Advocacy Video
I love this video, for its message and the artful way its delivered. And, it’s instructive.
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Scorched Earth Educational Policy: Toledo Public School System to Eliminate All Elementary School Arts and Phys Ed
That’s right, ALL arts and physical education. Click here to read End of Art in School Means End of A Legacy, from the Toledo Examiner. There was a radio interview with one of the Board of Education members and when they were asked when the child will be introduced to music the person said “…they…
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Will The Common Core ELA and Math Standards Override State Arts Standards?
I am a pretty big-time fan of the Common Core ELA and Math standards, primarily for the ways in which the standards are designed to broaden what has often been a very flat world of literacy and numeracy. And of course, the Common Core Standards has received a great deal of attention. It’s here to…
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How Important is Arts Education? The New York Times Asks Students
From The Learning Network of The New York Times, comes How Important is Arts Education?, by Katherine Schulten. As a follow-up to Chloe Veltman’s recent piece on how youth choirs are flourishing despite cuts in arts education, Schulten asks the students to respond to: Does your school offer classes in music, drama, dance or the…
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The Shanghaiing of Arts Education Part Two: All is Not What Meets The Eye
As a follow-up to The Shanghaiing of Arts Education, I am happy to direct you to a very interesting blog by Yong Zhao: “It Makes No Sense,” Puzzling Over Obama’s State of the Union Address. It’s a very important read, as it tackles the emerging mythology on how China goes about educating its students: Is…
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How I Learned to Love Steve Reich: Quality in Arts, and Arts Education
It happened again the other day: an assistant principal I know asked me about a conversation she had with one her music teachers. The conversation focused on whether or not a particular artist that the assistant principal was fond of was an artist of quality. The music teacher didn’t think so. It was cause for…
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Not So Fast Chairman Rocco: Arts Education Has A Marketplace Too
Okay, everyone is all abuzz about NEA (as in arts endowment, not the National Education Association) Chairman Rocco Landesman raising the issue in a recent blog of there being too much supply for the demand. In other words: there are too many arts organizations in America. It’s tough to argue that point. I am just…
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More on Belinda Reynolds’s Manifesto: Where Art Thou Composition in Music Ed?
Those who know music education, know that for many years research has indicated that creative music making, meaning composition and improvisation, is taught at a distinctly lower frequency than other types of musical activities not centered in musical creation, but instead interpretation. So, as a a follow-up to Belinda Reynolds’s Manifesto, I thought it would…
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Sell It To Children: A Manifesto for Composers, by Belinda Reynolds
(And, I would add that this manifesto should extend well beyond composers…) Years back, when I was regularly involved in helping artists prepare for work in K-12 schools and the community, I often said that if they would be sensitive to how children were responding to the arts they were bringing to the classroom, that…
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A High Priest of Music: Milton Babbitt
In the big and wild ecology of music, there is a rarefied strata where composer/scientists explore the most complex of musical worlds. It’s not any different from literature and other forms of arts and culture, and all you have to do is pick up Finnegans Wake to understand what I mean. In arts education, it…