Finding Arts in California Schools is Like Reading "Where's Waldo"

Last week, I took my smartphone out at a formal legislative meeting in Sacramento and invited folks to listen to the ”sound of music” in California public schools.

After a few moments of people straining to hear, I flipped my phone on again.

All they heard was the ”sound of silence.”

Nothing.

That was the point.

In too many schools, too many children don’t have music education. They also don’t have quality visual arts or dance or drama.

When you cut more than $20 billion dollars out of our California schools, and don’t require the arts as part of a quality education, that’s what a lot of kids get – nothing!

It wasn’t always that way. Arts once flourished in California public schools.

Parents, teachers and communities knew arts education was important. It’s what helps keep kids in schools. It’s what helps create community. It’s what helps teach the value of hard work and responsibility.

But most important, arts education is how children learn.

There are lots of folks out there selling (yes, I said “selling”) the latest and greatest school reform theories to close the achievement gap.

Psst…let me give you a clue.

If you are looking to close the achievement gap, if you are looking to reduce truancy, if you are looking to increase graduation rates and creativity, I have a four-letter word for you: ARTS!

We truly are living in the world that Einstein only envisioned, where imagination in many ways is more important that knowledge.

And, the arts are the key to imagination and the skills our children will need for jobs that we have not even yet thought of.

I ask you to join me in celebrating March as Arts Education Month…and April and May and June and every month of the year.

Join California State PTA in our efforts to make sure that every child has a quality education that includes the arts.

Join the PTA SMARTS network to speak out for the arts in every school.

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