A Vote for Adding Additional STREAM of Consciousness to STEM (Update note: Not for merely the traditional feathers and beads executions)

Detroit Free Press Local commentary

Eliminating arts teachers hurts students, state’s future

By Christina Wallace

   I am a product of a strong early childhood arts education.

   I started piano lessons at age 5 and spent most of the next 12 years in a practice room, rehearsal studio or performance hall.

   What began as an innocuous interest in the ivory keys turned into a full-fledged obsession with classical music as my studies grew to include voice, cello, clarinet, music theory, sight singing, band, orchestra, choir, composition and conducting. By the time I moved on to college, I scaled back my musical commitments, participating only in orchestra and choir to make room for majors in theater and math.

   I’ve built my career at the intersection of the arts and technology, and without a doubt I have used my creative vocabulary as often as my business and mathematics lexicon.

   Recently, the Lansing School District voted to eliminate arts, music and physical education teachers from elementary schools. Instead, the district is hiring consultants for these subjects to assist other teachers in arts, music and gym. The move was part of a larger contract negotiation to save the district $6 million over the next five years.

   I can’t think of a more dangerous decision for Michigan’s future.

   Despite a bevy of natural resources, top-tier public universities, and one of the most affordable cost-of-living indices in the country, we are a state that keeps moving further away from our golden age.

   The most significant job growth over the next decade will come from the so-called innovation economy: the system of production and consumption that is based on knowledge, technology and entrepreneurship. The high-tech start-up trend is a significant part of the innovation economy and, overall, the emphasis on fluency in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the STEM disciplines) is growing stronger.

   But STEM education isn’t enough. We need STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Dun-can has said that “to succeed today and in the future, America’s children will need to be inventive, resourceful and imaginative. The best way to foster that creativity is through arts education.”

   Early childhood arts education is integral to cultivating creativity, curiosity and collaboration: three ingredients to creating innovators, according to Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University. “The Art of Problem Solving,” a 2010 Guggenheim study, goes further, to define the true value of arts education in the training to “persistently and adaptively work through problems.”

   But studying the arts produces something perhaps even more valuable: the development of empathy. The power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings is a powerful tool for innovation. But more so, it is absolutely paramount in developing our humanity.

   Discipline, persistence, flexibility, imagining, experimenting, empathy; if there is a “silver bullet” in education, I think the arts may be it.

   The decision by the Lansing School District was not to eliminate art, music and physical education curriculum, but merely the teachers. The statement the district released indicated that with the help of consultants, other teachers would pick up the orphaned subjects and try to incorporate them into their existing curriculum.

   To a certain extent, this could be beneficial, since creative education should not be siloed only in art and music classes, but considered an interdisciplinary lingua franca.

   However, this doesn’t seem like a calculated effort to foster interdisciplinary creative study, but rather a move to squeeze more out of teachers while paying them less, giving them less preparation time and resources to meet ever increasing demands.

   We are handicapping our children before they can even read.

   We must give the proper resources and support for arts education at all grade levels if we want Michigan to compete in the innovation economy, and thus have any hope for a revitalization of our great state.

   • CHRISTINA WALLACE IS A NATIVE OF LANSING AND CURRENTLY THE DIRECTOR OF STARTUP INSTITUTE NEW YORK.

Christina Wallace