Arts undervalued in many Mat-Su Borough schools

However important the arts are to society and our culture as Americans, they seem to be both underrepresented and underappreciated in our school systems. In fact, two of the newest schools, Valley Pathways and Career Technical High School, have virtually no fine arts representation within their schools.

During a tour of her school, Valley Pathways counselor, Susan Steele, told a visiting group of journalism students, “These are some of the best students in the Valley.” In this view, don’t the best deserve the best?

Valley Pathways and Career and Technical high school aren’t the only schools experiencing a lack of fine arts. In fact, fine arts are usually the first programs to get cut in schools. In 2013 several of Colony High Schools teachers were faced with a realization that more than one of them would face a summer in fear of losing their jobs.

After the Colony High School journalism class toured Valley Pathways, CHS senior Sarah Williams said, “If they had the fine arts it would be a perfect school.” The school has made headway into the fine arts, hiring Mrs. Franco, one of the very teachers who was facing unemployment at CHS. She now teaches art at Valley Pathways and says she loves it there.

Valley Pathways is also adding in a Glee club to satisfy the desire for a choir. “I bet if [they] give it a couple more years, it will develop nicely.” Williams said. While the community waits to build up their fine arts programs, the students are welcome to take those classes at other schools.

Unfortunately for some of the students attending Career and Technical High School, the fine arts are hardly present in their curriculum. CTHS senior Alli Poe explained that students attending the school knew when applying that they would have to make certain sacrifices. While they have fantastic programs in other subjects, traditional art most likely isn’t going to be on the agenda anytime soon.

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on “how schools kill creativity” is one of the most popular talks on that organization’s website.

“Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects” Robinson says in the recorded speech. “At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts.”

Robinson isn’t wrong. After all, math, science, language arts, and social studies are called “core classes” for a reason. Superintendent Dr. Deena Paramo on the District home page quoted a Forbes article by Ericka Swallow, “The world doesn’t care what you know, what the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.”

In essence, the world cares about your innovative abilities.

Robinson said of the focus on some subjects to the detriment of others: “our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won’t serve us.”

The arts are being eschewed because of the popular notion that arts students are not employable, that a career involving the arts is unrealistic, and should not be pursued. “Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at in school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized,” Robinson says. “And I think we can’t afford to go on that way.”

But the point of having fine arts classes in school isn’t purely for the purpose of making a student into an artist, just as math classes aren’t intended only to produce mathematicians. While those certainly are some outcomes of the classes, they are not the only focus. Both are created with this thought in mind: what is taught can be used in everyday life, is applicable to other things, can be enjoyed, and can help with employability.

That being said, some might ask how being in a music class could possibly help them get employed. Perhaps to be a surgeon, knowing how to find the relative minor chord of A wouldn’t be at the top of the list; however, music teaches many other skills that would be. For one, teamwork and listening: if everyone is not working together the music will fall apart. It also teaches improvisation. That type of quick thinking is required in both open-heart surgery and improv solos. The fine motor skills involved in playing an instrument are critical for a surgeon. These aspects of a fine arts education, and many others, are essential to the job market.

The fine arts are essential to our school systems because they are important and employable. The fact of the matter is that employers aren’t looking for cookie cutter factory drones anymore, they are looking for someone who can help them come up with a way to be revolutionary and coveted. And the idea that fine arts aren’t being valued in schools is appalling.

Not only are the arts important for future employability, but they are important to the students. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been involved in theatre. Probably nothing. And quite frankly, that terrifies me. And I am not the only one. For a lot of kids, being in fine arts programs is their refuge and a way to express themselves. When a student’s ability to create and explore is taken away, what is left? As philanthropist William McKnight said, “if you put fences around people, you get sheep.”

Denali Thomas is a Colony High senior and President of Drama Club and Vivace Choir.