i bawled the first time i read this a few months ago and i still love it today. it took me 2 days to find it, but i am reposting it because it has been weighing on my heart so heavily recently. ♥
Proof of the power of music, and how it can make it any of us feel larger than life. I’ve seen this teacher and his students on youtube before. I wish there were more like him fighting to keep art in schools. I went to high school of the arts in Palm Beach, Florida, in the time from my freshman year to my senior year i had seen a drastic change in the schools curriculum. As a result of Dreyfoos being a public school they would adhere to the boundaries set by the school county. If a withdrawal of arts can take place in an arts school imagine how many kids across the country are being stripped of the same thing in a normal school. All our lives from day one we have the weight of society telling us our path. Middle school, to high school, to college, to a job, to a wife kids and a house, to a mortgage, to a coffin. Everything is set out before us because it’s been tried and tested and “thats what we did so that’s what you’ll do because if you want to be happy you have to do it this way”. Why hasn’t it occurred to the bright minds out there that maybe we all are gifted in different ways and call me crazy but maybe we don’t all have to know exactly what we want to be for the rest of our lives at 17 years old. Or maybe we don’t even all have to do the same thing day in and day out for a lifetime. What the point of life if you don’t get to live it? We are all gifted in many different ways. The winner at the spelling bee can’t paint a mosaic of Italy. Why should academics come first when we barely use them in real life? Why can you deny the most talented basketball player in the school’s history of being able to play because he can’t pass a science exam of atom separation. Find me another scientist out there that’s as talented at basketball as he is. Rather than keying in on making cookie cutter copies of every child that walks through the doors of school we should be giving every kid the option to try as many major’s as he or she would like. Who are you school county commissioner to decide what’s best for someone you don’t even know? I don’t care what you’re report papers say, number’s don’t mean anything. Between you and i, i hope the basketball player cheated the science exam to play the game and honor himself and the school. If i was in his shoes, i would have done it too, because i’d go to great lengths to do whatever it is i’d have to do to shine and play music. Test’s don’t mean anything. If you want to test someone, look at the integrity and dedication to a job. Job of life. How much do they put on the line every day to keep the ones around then happy as well as them selves. Forget about the rules for the next three minutes and listen to the voices (in perfect harmony) of the hearts and minds that are going to carry out everything i put before you. These kids are already setting them selves up to live the life they want to live and they don’t even realize it yet. That say’s a whole lot more than the ones trying to get a nice check from the man for their neat test scores.
-EL
(via thedailywhat)
