According to the a New York Times article titled: Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math, Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush's signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects. According to the same article 71 percent of the nation's school districts reduced their instructional time spend on history, art, and music projects to spend more time on reading and math. More and more music is starting to be cut from the school's budgets to make way for "the more important subjects".
How recent is this article? While it may be true that the No child Left Behind Act led to curriculum changes, mostly due to the widespread imposition of standardized tests in return for federal funding, but the current and more severe force in limiting music and arts education seems to be budgetary--states are simply defunding public education to balance their budgets. It is tragic and horribly short sighted.
ReplyDeleteI did not realize it until you said that, but the article was from 2006. I agree that the main reason why schools are cutting programs is because of budgeting. It is quite tragic.
ReplyDeleteYes it is...I think it's also important that you look for more than news reports about the issue. While news reports can give you some factual information, they don't often reveal their stance, and rarely make explicit arguments about issues. Look for some opinion-editorial pieces closer to the present time frame to get a sense for the development of the issue as na argument in the public sphere since 2006.
ReplyDeleteI think that music class was one of my favorites in elementary school. That hour you spent learning about different music was so much fun. You just got to be yourself and try to become a good singer! I think it is important for kids to learn about all the different types of music out there. Music is a huge part in our generation and without it I don't know where we would be. Has there been any articles on people really fighting back and trying to get more music back into the schools?
ReplyDeleteHi Ben, My name's Don and I'm the instructor for the eaccsupa group. I've posted a student's newsletter on the eaccsupa blog site that might give you another perspective from which you can devlop some inquiry. The paper/newsletter discusses the healing power of music on the soul and the author, Brittany Reisman, uses Joeseph Rael as one of her sources. Check it out. There might be somehting in it for you. Good luck,
ReplyDeletedon-
I'm torn on this topic. I understand that there are a lot of creative people that excel more in the arts. On the other hand, I can see why there is more time being spent on math and sciences. We're always competing with other countries to be smarter and better. I don't think that our leaders are purposely try to eliminate music from our lives, but musicians and artists usually have a rough time making a living and establishing themselves, whereas an interest in math or science can easily take you far career wise.
ReplyDelete