"You cannot love what you do not know..."

I've had a post rolling around in my head for a couple of days now.  Originally it started out as reasons why I love being American (and I mean that in the least cheesy way possible).  But it has since turned into a two-fold argument about the arts and the state of our educational system.  If part of you is groaning, stop reading now.

I will attempt to say this in a way that is meaningful but it will probably come out seeming garbled and unsupported... my apologies.  I don't air my sincerest opinions lightly or often.  Everyone has a rant.  Here's mine:  I've read several articles lately that have deeply saddened and frustrated my inner core about what will inevitably come in this country if change remains a mere thought.  If you take the arts away from the people, culture will inevitably shrivel up and eventually die.  Period.

On the other hand, I've realized lately how much I love being an American.  Don't discount the importance of this.  It has taken me most of my childhood and young adult life to appreciate the fact that I was born in this country.  I spent most of college pining for the countryside of England or the cities of France and Germany, frustrated by the way we as Americans look to the rest of the world:  brash, overdone, outspoken, uninformed (and apathetic to boot), entitled, and having a lack of self-control in everything we do.  We have been blessed beyond belief and we have totally taken it for granted.  When I went to England in the summer of 2006, I came back resolving to go back one day for good because I was convinced that my future was there and not in the States.  Let's not discount the fact that I was still trying to find myself (and a stable community) and figure out how to drive this train God gave me.  Personally, I was a wreck and somehow found solace and a sense of identity in a country and a people I'd grown up with from a distance via PBS, movies, and the music of R. Vaughn-Williams, whom I'd come to love at an early age.  I loved the Brits.  And for whatever reason, they loved me.

Eventually I graduated from Mizzou and ended up in St. Louis, ultimately declining my candidacy at Wash U in favor of gaining some experience as a pianist in the real world.  I found a church I love and settled into community there, as well as with my student families.  You know the story.  And as I was driving to accompany at Lutheran the other day, I realized how much I have grown.  I was sipping coffee as I drove, noticing the tulips, which are about to burst forth in bloom all over St. Louis, watching my sleepy city wake up on a foggy morning as I listened to the music of William Grant Still on the new classical radio station here.  I drove, thinking about the sounds of this American composer -- the way he incorporated jazz and blues into the sonata form -- and how his music resonates so deeply within me... not only because it reminds me of a most beloved teacher who faithfully and lovingly introduced me to his music, but because it is my sound.  His music is my music.   

Do you know why it is so important that we don't teach our children based on standardized tests?  Do you know why it is worthwhile to keep the arts in the schools?  Does anyone realize why STEM will eventually fail us?  Does anyone else realize why there are fewer and fewer artists in the mainstream with legitimate artistic ability?  There is power in both knowledge and numbers, both of which seem to escape us more and more every day.  We seem to passively allow those in charge to keep fixing a broken system that only continues to worsen with each modification.  Children need to be reading, not just Harry Potter or The Hunger Games but the literature that records the history of us as a nation (The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, amongst other American short stories and poems), as well as the great literature of the past.  WHY on God's green earth would we exchange Shakespeare for the EPA's Recommended Levels of Insulation as required reading in our schools??  How in the world is it ok to put that into the hands of the next generation and say "This is what's important"??

"You cannot love what you do not know."  The same man who used to say that to me is the same man who introduced me to the music of William Grant Still.

If you take the arts away from the people, culture will eventually shrivel up... because the people will not have an outlet for the human experience.

I hope someone out there is listening.  I pray that someone in power will help change things:  that we will start paying our teachers better (incidentally, the countries with the best educational systems have the highest pay scales for teachers... check out the Scandinavians if you don't believe me), that we will stop putting undue pressure and weight on standardized test scores, that we will stop being passive about decision-making in our educational system, that we will start supporting teachers until the administrations do, that we will cry out for the best and the brightest to be and stay in the schools with our children again.  Do you know where the best and the brightest are flocking?  The universities.  And those who are still in the public (and even some private) schools are quickly being chewed up and spit out by systems that don't care.

I love being an American.  And I hate what we are doing to our schools and our culture.

Contextual Reading:
- An article by the Huffington Post about Changes in Core Reading Standards
- A blog from the Washington Post from a teacher:  "My Profession... No Longer Exists"
- Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TED Talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"