Mr. B is a major fan of Tori Amos. Youtube videos of the New York City fifth graders singing Tori Amos songs have developed a huge following on the internet. In May, Tori Amos met the chorus in the atrium of Sony Music headquarters in Manhattan. Below is part 1 of 4 of the meeting.

I’m a photographer, painter and poet and my wife is a chamber musician.

One think I envy about the chamber musicians is that chamber music is INHERENTLY collaborative. Painting and poetry are solo by nature. You can create exercises in group poetry writing or group painting but those are usually artificial constructions for the purpose of creating a collaborative effort or for community-building. Very little, if any, great art has ever been created that way. Whereas you can’t even have chamber music without extensive, intimate, ongoing collaboration between the musicians, during practuce and performance. And jazz takes it to an even higher level because it involves CREATIVE collaboration even during the performance.

So even though I’m a poet, photographer, and painter, I do think that music offers something that other arts don’t with regard to learning important life skills.

it was phrased sloppily. there is an immediate sense of right and wrong when learning an instrument. i differentiate “learning” from “playing.” a note is either pitch perfect, flat, or sharp. it is either on or off beat. visual arts do not have that precise criteria, so the work ethic is different and mastering the skills is more subtle. i mentioned nothing about visual arts being easier only that, generally, they are judged in subjective terms.

When I did however, it was always such a wonderful event, it was fun and I could learn and grow as my own mind wanted to.

I often hear about “schools need to teach morality and character”, and yet the one subject that does that so well for so many is often the first to be thrown away.
Bands, orchestras, dancing, mural painting, and more are wonderful chances to learn how to work well with others and grow as part of a group.
Learning an instrument, figuring out how to throw, understanding Photoshop or life drawing, all require patience and willingness to keep at it.
Creating a terrain in 3D, creating an epic, writing a world within a story, teach the mind to see the larger idea with a concept of the small by your hand.

Arts aid the character, they can heal the mind, and they can let you grow. Yet all to often we cut it out as a seed before we get a chance to reap what we have sown.

Too often it is easy to lose sight of the values we can get from such classes when so much is dedicated to just a few tests that have no room or ability to test what can be gained or sought from them.
A WASL, A CAT, the ITAD, Exit Exam, Entrance Exam, Qualifying Exam none have a box for a haiku nor a picture of a rose. What a world we would live in if they did?

I am an artist by trade and my life is viewed as such, but I know I am a better person for the rare chances I had in art classes then I would have been had none of the schools or tutors never shown me how to create or articulate.

I am going to assume that rahbuhbuh just didn’t think about this comment very long before posting it. Of course visual arts require hard work, patience, persistence and practice.

I teach pottery, art and art appreciation at a community college. My beginning pottery students are always surprised by how difficult the skill of throwing is to learn. The ones who succeed in learning to throw and the ones who get the most out of the class are–without exception–the one’s who put the most time and effort into practicing the skills (just like learning to play the violin, huh?).

Even my art appreciation students are surprised by how hard my classes are–not because they have to write a lot of papers or do a lot of worksheets, but because I require them to articulate their own opinions and I don’t hand them a key to the “correct” answers.

My art appreciation students have commented that they are frustrated because my class isn’t like math “there’s no right answer.” This type of open-ended thinking is not encouraged in the schools around here. Often they’ve never been encouraged to have an opinion before my class.

While I think it is wondwerful and essential that you and other parents seek out oportunities to expose your kid to the arts, I’m distressed by the sense of resignation in your comments. It the topic was “math” you wouldn’t be saying “If there is no money in the schools for math, then we have to do a better job of finding it in the community–or creating such opportunities for them”.

Instead, most parents would be DEMANDING that the schools and towns and states provide adequate funding for a proper education. The arts are not some sort of frivolous luxury that we can dispense with anymore than any other academic subject is.

So would someone please tell me WHAT anyone is actually LEARNING in US schools?

I’m a poet, painter, and photographer, as well as being an engineer and science geek. They’re not mutually exclusive. My wife is an amateur chamber musician and I’m constantly blown-away by the intellectual and academic stature of the people I meet in chamber-music circles! Lots of physicians, but also professors, university department heads, scientific researchers, business owners, etc. I just got back from a chamber-music weekend and it wouldn’t surprise me if the AVERAGE academic achievement in that crowd was a doctorate!

So I wish people would disabuse themselves of the idea that the arts and other academic achievement are mutually-exclusive.

I’ll tell you what IS mutually exclusive with everything else – TV. Turn off the damn TV and it leaves plenty of time for music, art, poetry, history, science, math, etc.

A special thank you to Robert Pinsky for carrying the torch, for that high level of caring about us as a society, for recognizing and saying that what was given to us or what we have somehow found for ourselves, we must pass on.

When my son was in elementary school, many years ago, I was invited to come into his class to lead the kids in a project that I created based on Henri Matisse’s cut paper collages. Matisse made his own colored paper ou know- painting each sheet a deep rich color. Then he cut shapes from them. That’s what we did. This went on over a few days. After we made all the colored paper, everyone had blank square white sheet to make their own design. Then we put it all together in an enormous “quilt” collage. We had a “border committee” to make a border around the whole thing to tie it together. It was beautiful!- and the kids were so proud of themselves and their group project….their creative juices were flowing! It hung in town hall for awhile.

Thanks for the nudge to go and see the Edward Hopper show.

peggysue — once again, I love to read your observations. And, also, a while back, I “toured” your website and I liked it very much. I’m so envious of you for being a painter.

Allison — thanks for your interest in my poems. I think the idea of an open mic — however that could happen on ROS — is a good idea. There must be many poets among the people who have registered on ROS. I’ve been working for the last few weeks on poems for a manuscript to enter into a Poetry Foundation contest for poets 50 years old or over who haven’t had a book published. The experience of compiling the manuscript — putting poems into the order they should go, writing new poems so that I have enough (48 pages at least), just making a decision about what is good enough and what I am willing to stand by — has given me perspective on my life as a whole that, I think, is extremely valuable. I can’t believe how many things I’m seeing for the first time.

Art has saved my life and I bet all of us who have written about it here would say that. I went recently to the Edward Hopper exhibit at the MFA twice, and I hope to go a few more times. Of course, I have seen many monographs of Hopper’s work and all the other places where it is reproduced, like post cards and greeting cards. All of that reproduction has made the work trite. I had not seen the paintings — in person. The first time I went with a friend, I was floored by the work to the extent that I never got beyond the second room before they closed. The second time, I would say that I spent enough time with 20% of the exhibit. He taught me so much about my own life. I stood in front of certain paintings and felt as if a great weight of beauty was about to throw me to the ground. I know I was more aware of his process because of the experience with my own process. I know I probably have a bias in this sense, but I sometimes think that people who don’t have an experience with an art form are going through life unconsciously — they are asleep.

Another thought I had about art in school — in workshops in which I’ve participated, no one talks about process. “Product” is everything. If I ever teach writing, and I think I’d like to do that in an alternative setting (e.g. kids locked up, or in some community college where no one expects that much), I want to have a class where everyone talks about their experience making art — how the ideas came to them, what it felt like, how they came to what they love most about the piece. I want everyone to listen to someone’s experience and talk about all the ideas it gave rise to in themselves. That feels alive to me. The way it’s done now bores me. I have friends in various of the arts and they tell me that often people are afraid to talk about process. I didn’t study writing and what I missed most was the lack of discussion of process. I looked forward to being in classes to hear how other people learned to write, but it never happened. I heard often how great one of my poems was, but that didn’t give me very much in the end. When I was a nun, I once taught writing (for student teaching) to 5th graders and we had a GREAT time. Afterward I painted a mural with a bit of writing from each student in it and we put it up in the hallway at the school. I could tell that the kids were amazed to have their own writing given that much attention. The thing is, it wasn’t difficult to find something great in each piece to include in the mural, and I’m certain that I learned as much from each of them as they learned from me. I know that each of them wrote a good piece because they were so alive and open in our discussion before the actual composition was written.

In the end I gravitated towards an arts education. It filled the void. My ever growing awareness and appreciation of the arts has to do very much with what is transmitted: love, meaning, a sense of awe, aesthetics, philosophy ethics and morality- through the various languages of the arts. This should not be optional in education but as well kids should come to it naturally over time. It’s possible that the more arts education get cut the more it is sought out too because we miss it and therefore we get more creative about it.

Speaking of transmission, my grandfather awakened a sense of music in me at age 5. He taught me to read write and sing the notes one summer with no instrument. He was a choir leader near Kiev before he came here. One on one, it was pure love from him and it stuck with me a lifetime. My parents felt that I ought to learn to play the piano. My cousin inspired me-he was fabulous on the piano- later went on to become a neuro-surgeon. My mother loved poetry and literature. Had she gone to college she might have stayed on to teach and she would have been great at it her love of lit was so great- but she was not educated.

When I went to school, art classes in the public schools did little to nurture creativity. Still, despite that, or maybe because, I felt very drawn, a spark was ignited. I think I found some solace using that awful paper and those unappealing poster paints. I won 2nd prize in junior high school for a painting I did. I looked out of my bedroom window at the Harlem River, the Washington Bridge that crossed it, the park alongside, the water tower on the other side and painted it all- down to a little squirrel on the tree. I must have discovered something about myself because I gambled my future with a major and minor in art history and design ending with a BFA. What a difference it made in my life though I qualified for no real job at the time other than gallery assistant. That lead to public relations at a museum. I was extremely lucky though to have the benefit of being around instructors who were simply very creative people and so it was not what they produced but just being around them that was inspiring.

Some of the comment here about the pressure to be cutting edge and so forth really rings a bell. It’s true. I refused to go out there and produce what felt inauthentic to me. The gallery scene turned me off .

Art history should be core curriculum. Camille Paglia said this too. But it’s also good to have the time and room to just explore various mediums, materials and feel the horror of the empty space, canvas, paper. Painting (for instance) in school for a required course is really exploratory. It’s different when you leave, when you give yourself permission to do something or must paint from something deep- write something- make something w/o worrying what anyone will say. It’s ultimately a private process- then you share or you don’t.

It took me years to find that I really wanted to work with clay. That was after I settled down emotionally. It was a strong impulse and I had the support thankfully. I was interested in the material and the process, not fame or fortune, and I wondered about my own expression, what would come out. I challenged myself for years ( still do) to learn a very formidable process. Although I studied with a local Japanese potter for 8 years, and a woman ( my dear friend now) who specialized in porcelain most of what I know comes from just working at it, studying the results, getting better and also having failures ( from which one learns the most). I get excited about possibilities (such as making a glaze with ashes from my fireplace or gathered blackberry cane across the street). It’s a dialogue with myself and after that to share a great moment.

I listened to the podcast after I wrote most of the above. This was a show after my own heart. Thank you. These points about how important the arts are in education are not new and yet they don’t penetrate the system do they? We know something the powers that be refuse to acknowledge. We have been saying this for years and yet it’s the arts that are the first to go and so many kids who could be found are lost or lost until they somehow find themselves through their creativity. The lucky ones.

I think if that was thought out more, the school would be more successful. It would be impossible to do it without being exclusive.

I didn’t mean to give the impression that I do not like modernism. My own work is greatly inspired by it. My favorite art is minimalist and constructivist. I simply meant to point out the odd circumstance of having an art professor assume that if you do representational work it could only be due to the fact that you’d never heard of abstraction even though its been in the art history books for over 100 years now. No, I do love modern painting. By edgy, I meant going for the shock value, which has been done so much it even it can get boring.

That having been said, I went to a really great public school and excelled in both science/mathematics and music, and kept up both interests into my college and education. I have found that a lot of the students in math and engineering who do the best do have an interest in music and often play and instrument. Among the students who didn’t were those much talked-about students from China and India, who were very talented in computer science or whatever field they chose, but still seemed “uneducated”, without the ability to connect the arts, or history, or creativity to their own field. Certainly not across the board, but this was my overall experience (and made it sometimes embarrassing to be a CS student).

and by the way, education goes beyond trade school. a nation of thinkers is a nation of problem solvers.

I received an undergrad degree in Music Ed k-12. Because of my bad experience in student teaching, I immediately persued a career in Theatre.

I now have a son, almost 5, and feel that music is ANOTHER LANGUAGE, just like French or German – or Spanish. My son has been playing the violin (Suzuki) for almost a year. At his last lesson, he played one piece that he had NEVER played before.

I have always felt that those “fellows” who can really kick “a##” on the field will bring more recognition to a school than the students who work at music or the arts.

And how long can this fellow who “plays” sports play sports? How long can a musician play an instrument?

Oh, Guuuuurgh!

no, the good workers are cheaper elsewhere, in other countries. that’s why the Harvard Business Review asked “is MFA the new MBA?” in 2004. It follows Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class” book and it’s sequal “Flight of the…” America now values creativity in our visual and story-telling culture. That’s our export to the rest of the world, it’s why we don’t follow actual news as much. Business is about brands today, which is all reinforced image and less tested substance. So the arts are currently important to our capitalist society. Apparently we just don’t want to pay for training it.

Without a doubt the kids who get into art are often reclusive. It’s hard to develop the skills otherwise. The superstar artist however has to be an extrovert and an entrepreneur.

The blurriness of goals in art education in grade school has something to do with the unclarity of the art world as to what it wants. It is hard for me to justify going to the government and demanding money to feed people into that system. Some people might justify a legitimate public desire but it’s by accident.