Comments about ‘Letter: Reduce cost of public education by cutting school programs’

The countries that do the most with art and music also score the highest on math and science. Coincidence?

With all due respect Mr. Haynes, you've got to be kidding me.

You speak as though music, art and sports are a hindrance to public education. Perhaps in your world they are, but in the world that I and many others grew up in, these classes, more than any others, made school so much more enjoyable.

In middle school and high school, I sang in choir and it was such a welcome change from classes in which I had tons of homework in. Without choir, school for me would have been so incredibly dismal.

And just to set the record straight, my choir uniform, as well as the money we raised for school choir trips came out of our own pockets. Kids who play sports or dance have to spend a lot of money also on their uniforms and other equipment.

On top of that, numerous studies have shown kids perform better in math, English and other core subjects when they also have the chance to study music, dance or some other art.

You may find these activities to be a waste, but the fact is, they do improve education.

Oh dear, here we go again. It's the same tired argument to get rid of "fluff" and focus on the "basics.". This refocusing has happened in 1949, 1983, 1996, and 2002, and it has never worked. There is ample evidence that engagement in many of the supposedly non-important subjects correlates with increased performance in the "core" subjects. Go back to school tests of the 1880s and you'll see that they were more focused on a diversity of topics than simply literacy and arithmetic .

What evidence does the author have that these subjects are hurtful and a narrow focus on literacy and arithmetic is good?

Bad, right-wing idea. This sounds like "Mr. Holland's Opus" redux, where, after learning that the music program was being eliminated at the high school where he taught, Glen Holland told the school board, in effect, that if the arts were eliminated, eventually the students would have nothing to read or write about.

We would be better served to find ways to fund education programs, rather than eliminate them. How about preventing $13 million payments to losing bidders on UDOT contracts, for starters?

Please tell me you are not serious.

Some of the best education I ever received in HS was via Drama and ROTC.

Same is true for my kids. Their Choir teacher was perhaps the most demanding "coach" they had (and they participated in several sports).

For some kids, these programs are what keep them motivated to attend school at all.

And not every parent can fund these activities themselves.

The pioneers thought theater and dance were essential. BYU has strong performance art programs.

I'll make you a deal, W. L. Haynes,

I will support your call to eliminate art and music classes in public scools the day after you succeed in eliminating public funding for high school athletics.

Utah will stop teaching students math and would secede from the union before cutting high school football.

This was a really ridiculous letter.

Music teachers tell us that music helps students learn math.

Art teachers tell us that art helps students learn math.

Football coaches tell us that sports help students learn math.

Isn't it just a little strange that those who would loose their jobs or be reassigned are those who tell us that their job helps students learn math?

Each of my seven living children was taught to play the piano at home and then with private lessons. Some of my children took music at school All of my children excelled in math. One represented his high school as the sterling scholar in math. Did music increase their ability to do math? Perhaps, but they all ate carrots. Was it the carrots that increased their ability to do math?

Using non sequiturs to prove a point only shows that some people would try to stick things to jello.

How do we know that it is music that helps math students. Could it be that some countries encourage LEARNING and that it is not the music department that is responsible for success in the math department in those countries, but ATTITUDE and APPLICATION?

Just think if we had students pay for music, art, and dance all on their own we could truly have a segregated society again..ahh the good old days. David Brooks, one of the true remaining conservatives left in this society, just wrote an entire book on this topic, and the point of the book is not that the arts make us better in math or anything else, the arts educate our soul. The arts make us what is distinctly human. The arts enhance our appreciation for and ability to create that which is beautiful (words, pictures, music, movement). It's that appreciation and ability to create that is distinctly human,ergo, our human soul.

There's nothing conservative about eradicating arts education from the general curriculum. The arts have always been been the soul of a society..the expression of the character of a society. It's only the modern "conservative" obsession with money that would deny that legacy.

And the right wing wonders why they're labeled radical? Why they're labeled anti-education?

Here's another idea...

FUND THESE PROGRAMS

Make the necessary sacrifices, maybe eat out at McDonalds a few times a year less, to fund these programs. I learned more about math when I learned music and a foreign language than in many of the math classes I had taken before.

It seems like this letter writer is just going off on another anti-government rant. Sad.

Curmudgeon,
you have got to be kidding, right? RIGHT-WING idea?

No, definitely not! I RESENT you calling me a leftie because I support art and music in the public schools

Blue,
I think you missed the fact the author DID call for the elimination of school funded sports.

No, art, music, and sports and NOT the programs to be eliminated.

Start with the sports programmes.

I don't know, or care, if art and music and drama programs help kids learn math. What I do know is that they save lives.
Kids are not robots to be programmed with latest math and science software. Kids are human beings, with passion and imagination and fears and insecurities and a huge range of talents. Kids need, above all else, to find that thing that will free them, that will inspire them, that will motivate them and challenge them. Eliminate art? Eliminate music? How about double their funding. Triple it. Those are the most important programs schools can possibly offer.
My high school drama teacher would walk the halls looking for kids who were lost, lonely, made fun of, bullied, outsiders, losers. She would find those kids and she would say 'hey, why don't you come to the theater after school. We need you.' When she died, they estimated the crowd in the cathedral for her funeral at over 4,000, kids she'd saved, kids who found a purpose in life because of their high school drama program.
I was one of them.
This letter is not just wrong. It's cruel beyond reckoning.

It's sad to me that we have billions to give to bankers, incompetent CEOs, and to the Middle-East yet we "don't" have enough money to fund our own schools.

Mike there is direct causative evidence that music increases a persons ability to understand and work with mathematics. There are many studies on the subject in fact a quick search would show as much.

So far as the letter goes I agree that this is dangerous. How would it be for a student to do nothing that they love and everything that they hate. It would be counter productive. School should not become more generalized but more specialized. Focusing on what a student can do and improving upon that. It should also focus on the student's interests. If a student is a political individual and wants to learn more about politics why not let them study politics over calculus. Instead use math to teach them reasoning, logic, problem solving, basic stats and budgeting. Seriously why should a student learn about things that they will not use in life...ever? Teach them the above skills that can be applied to many things and the math scores will increase.

This letter was written as a joke, right?

Perhaps my sarcasm meter is a bit off, but I just cannot believe anyone could have written this and been serious. Not even the Koch Bros would be so radical, right?

The only thing this nation is #1 in is the race to the bottom. Following the advice of the letter writer would cement us in that position for all time.

Um, This has to be a joke right? Even if you leave the studies out with the whole math thing. Sports and art are extremly important. One of the biggest lessons you can learn in high school is how to work with other people as a team. A skill that is good in almost every job out there. In my mind it is up there with math and science as the most important things to learn in school. Being good at working in a team and functioning in a structured environment is critical to long term success for any person.

W. L. Haynes let's take it a step further. Let's cut out public education all together since we give it lip service anyway. You could have the teenagers teach the 5 year olds for minimum wages to prevent teachers from unionizing. You can hire retirees to sit with groups of childrens for next to nothing. This would save billions in Social Security costs. Of course when we have absolutely no inovation in 10 years we can take those big jet planes from Hill and go steal what we covet from other nations. Some day we will need technology to fix those weapons and we will finally stop outsourcing, we can call it insourcing and we will import all our intelligence from overseas like we are doing now but in a mass scale, and leadership in Congress, well none of them have to work anyway.

@mike richards
its not just teachers telling you these things it is based in a great deal of research, if as you usually do choose to ignore the research and the acts about the benefits of these types of programs then that is your right but don't expect that if you choose to be willfully ignorant of the facts that others to take you seriously.

"We probably could then provide 12 years of public education that results in college equivalent BA degrees in many fields."

one problem with that logic in order to get a BA you actually have to have to study all the fields you want to eliminate.

I always find this subject fascinating because the very reason that education in these areas is so important even for a mathematician is that it allows people the flexibility in thinking to understand how to look at a complex problems or situation and find solutions that may not be readily apparent. A skill which is lacking in people that suggest the only way to improve education is to cut funding for these types of programs.