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I have no direct experience with K-12 these days but here's my two cents...
With all the emphasis on testing, aren't most teachers forced to spend a good portion of their time preparing their students to take standardized tests? Being able to pass a test has very little bearing on what a student really knows.
Art and music classes are cut from schools when budgets are slim. Field trips are a thing of the past, too. These are all things that help our kids become well-rounded human beings not just good test takers and reciters of facts. The creativity of art and music helps all of us learn to think and understand. We all need to be able to make the leap from the facts in front of us to something we haven't thought of yet.
Kids are naturally creative and I think schools beat that right out of them. And kids who aren't exposed to art and music in school may grow up thinking that these are activities that only talented geniuses can do. Not everyone is going to create a great work of art but everyone can do something at their own level. If they want to, of course. But I think some people don't want to because they've never had the experience in the first place.
I'm rambling but just one more thing. Someone mentioned earlier that their music experience in school was just learning to sing some songs. That's what I remember, too. But those songs were usually American folk songs (I can't think of any song titles right now) so we were learning a little history with the songs (whether we knew it or not). And we were also indulging in a little math (rhythm) and poetry (the rhyme and meter of the song) and the social exercise (singing in a group) wasn't a waste either.
Deborah
(an accountant with a comparative literature degree who loves to dance and wishes she still had time to write poetry)
(and she knows her multiplication tables, too)
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