Let’s Talk about Race, Class, Arts, and Equity

A sound adequate education means that children receive the tools they need to be productive members of society. Equitable education means that we work to minimize the ways some children are more disadvantaged than others. What are some tools that children need for the 21st century and how do those needs relate to growing school inequities?

The public expectation that students focus primarily on basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills has led most urban school districts to focus on improving test results in mathematics and English language arts. Rather than narrowing the gap between richer and poorer students however, these assessment goals actually increase inequities between them. Let’s look at why.

While no one would suggest we get rid of teaching standard basic skills to students, we can certainly argue that in today’s world, the means by which ideas are communicated reach far beyond text-based literacy and math proficiency. This has always been true as evidenced by works of art that have had great influence over history (think of Lange’s Migrant Mother, Kaufman’s Laramie Project, Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, Park’s American Gothic, D.C., Robbin’s Dead Man Walking, Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a few examples in visual, performing, and literary arts).

The ability to write persuasive argument may call for one set of skills, but the ability to create image-&-sound-rich media stories, advertisements, and powerful non-verbal or non-narrative statements calls for other skills at least as important as the first. An adequate education today requires a fourth ‘R’, the arts, where students receive grounding in the language of image, sound, gesture, space, and character. Such learning is neither fluff nor necessarily a career path, but becomes a tool for helping students develop voice beyond the text, beyond the test.

What’s happening in our schools? A new study released by the NEA shows that less than half of 18-year old high school graduates have received any arts education at all. Further data unpacking reveals a shocking inequity between races/cultural groups. Across the last 25 years, white children's access to arts education has remained steady at about 60% while Hispanic children have experienced a 40% decline, and African-American children have experienced a 49% decline. Only a fourth of these children receive arts in schools.

This is happening in Rochester right now, with questionable decisions being made about what will not be protected in a shrinking budget. While middle class families can always buy access to arts lessons privately, poor families cannot so the loss of arts teachers in public schools leads to widening gaps between what educational tools are accessible to the Haves and Have Nots. Future generations of children will be shaped by these shortsighted curricular decisions... are we willing to allow these inequities to grow in our community?  

An edited version of this essay appeared as a Speaking Out article in the April 10, 2011 issue of  Democrat and Chronicle.