. . . and the Arts.

I'm going to describe something that happened to me last week at work that is unfortunately, all too typical. But first I need to give you a little background.

West Virginia has adopted the "Common Core" State Standards in English and Math. These standards were authored by work groups with membership from around the country. In West Virginia, these standards have been renamed the "Next Generation Standards." The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) include literacy standards in social studies, science and the "technical subjects." In their shortsightedness, the writers of the standards apparently believed that literacy was not an important issue in the arts. I approached my bosses and suggested to them that we author literacy standards in the arts as well, to demonstrate both our commitment to the arts, as well as an understanding that literacy (including reading, writing, speaking and listening) are key processes in the arts. I've received the go ahead for this and I am hopeful that we will unveil West Virginia Literacy Standards in the Arts in the 2012 school year. I'm not sure, but I think we may be the first state to do so.

My office has presented on this topic on multiple occasions to various audiences. Last Wednesday was one such occasion, when we were asked to present for four hours to various offices from around the Department. We were to present the background for the work, an overview about the math and English/language arts standards, a discussion of "text complexity" and how the issue of literacy is important in every content area.

I discovered on Tuesday that I had been given the "sweet spot": the final ten minutes of the four-hour presentation, right before lunch.

The ordering reflected the implicit (and sometimes explicit) hierarchy that dominates our educational system. English and math usually come first, the sciences typically follow, then the humanities, "and the arts." This hierarchy is reinforced everywhere in a thousand different ways. It is so pervasive, that the phrase "and the arts" has become a bit of a joke among the arts advocacy community. I'll illustrate with just a few examples.

When I was working in the classroom full time, I was asked to write an "instructional guide" in music for the Department of Education. We convened one time at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown, where there were instructional guide writers in the other disciplines as well. All the teachers listened to a general session on the work and then we broke out into our content areas. The other content areas worked in adjacent salons that were roomy and close to the restrooms and break areas. The arts teachers were shuffled off to a second floor work room without enough chairs and no WiFi access.

In another instance, I was with several arts teachers working at the Flatwoods Conference Center on another project. We were piggy-backing with a different project involving English, math, science and social studies teachers, so we were sharing some space. They had this curious thing at Flatwoods where the meals and breaks were given names that were displayed on placards on the buffet tables, things like "The Fruit of the Sea" for a seafood meal or "Down on the Farm" if you were having fried chicken and biscuits. Anyway, it came time for lunch and we moved to the common dining area. As we entered, the catering staff asked which group we were with, the arts or the other group. The arts were escorted to a buffet line with a placard that read, "A Taste of Italy." Lunch included baked ziti, salad, rolls and chocolate cake. We looked curiously over at the other buffet line. Their placard read, "A Tour of Italy," and included everything we had, plus vegetable and meat lasagna, meatballs, chicken picatta and tiramisu.

Now, it's not just that I think that these incidents are illustrative of the lower value we place on the arts and arts teachers, though that certainly may be true. What I think both of these instances illustrate is that the arts were an afterthought in the planning process. I doubt that anyone wanted to put arts teachers in cramped spaces or feed them less, it's just that they hadn't considered them in the first place and then had to fit them in.

The same thing happens in our schools everyday and unfortunately, it happens with our students, not just the teachers.

We pour untold resources into our math and language arts programs. Millions of dollars are spent building high-stakes summative assessments to measure student literacy and numeracy. The federal Title I programs give millions more toward the same goals. Schools invest in computer-based test prep programs in those subjects. Students' schedules are built around the required English and math requirements first, followed by the sciences and social studies.

Yet we expect our arts programs to thrive through car washes and bake sales. We expect elementary students to master arts standards with 30 minutes of instruction a week (or less). We ask secondary arts teachers to teach multiple levels, sometimes even multiple subjects, in the same class period. We keep students from scheduling arts classes they want to take for classes we've judged are more likely to "prepare them for college." (And we counsel them they aren't going to be musicians or artists. Of course, they probably aren't going to be linguists or mathematicians either.) Then when our arts programs fail, we blame the arts teachers, the only people in the building working to make them succeed.

If we are going to truly transform our educational system, we must stop thinking like this. The arts are core academic subjects that are essential to student success. Our students need language and math to make sense of their world, of course they do. But they also need an understanding of movement and gesture, color and form, drama and narrative, rhythm and melody. They need to be prepared to make sense of their world in all the ways they experience it.

The workplace that students in our schools will inhabit is nearly unimaginable to us. What we do know is that they will benefit enormously from creativity nurtured in the arts classroom. We also know that they are so much more than "workers," that if we value their humanity, we will give them a world filled with dance, theatre, the visual arts and music.

Everyone wants to reform education right now. That's what the Common Core State Standards are all about. The problem is that the work being done belies the fact that our priorities may have not shifted at all. The work began first in English and math, then science and social studies. The arts were still an afterthought.

Many have begun saying that education reform is not enough. Some are beginning to use the word transformation. But the word that others are bold enough to use, the one that really describes what we need, is revolution. I would argue that the first order of the education revolution should be re-valuing the arts in our schools.

History is on the side of the bold. To paraphrase Sir Ken Robinson, the Italian Renaissance didn't happen because the Medici's had a literacy plan. When we view the major cultural achievements of civilizations throughout history, the role of the arts is central, equal to the role of the sciences, mathematics, and the humanities. The reason for that is obvious: the arts inflame the intellect and the imagination.

The arts are the soul of a school. Schools without thriving arts programs are desolate places, not just intellectually, but emotionally, too. Whoever you are, whether a teacher, student, administrator, parent or part of the community, it is incumbent upon you to help us make schools the culturally rich places we imagine they can be. The revolution needs you.