Lead the Way

Over at ArtsBlog, John Abodeely of Americans for the Arts writes about the importance of systemic change if we are going to effectively provide arts education in our schools. This, among other things, is the topic of the upcoming 2009 Convention.

Systemic efforts to sustain arts education provision include a sense of ownership by civic and education leaders; a single strategy to leverage otherwise disparate funding streams for arts education; and support for school districts to choose arts partners and teaching artist programs with discretion and purpose. In essence, these efforts organize the arts education community in order to help the education community to provide arts education.

Also: James Baldwin, 1963

The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then to learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.

Plus: Dionne Warwick - Alfie