Recently by Susan Sclafani

I have been fascinated by the thoughtful responses and frustrated by the tangents that made it difficult to decide where and when to get back into the conversation if it were to be a conversation.  However, I do believe that valuable insights have been shared that deserve an additional forum for discussion.  I worry that a week would be an extraordinary and difficult commitment from the busy people in this blog, but it would allow for a more focused conversation.  If it can be done, it does need a more varied group of participants, including practitioners who have had success and those whose success was short-lived, policy people from the national and state levels, educators from general education and arts education, as well as the experts on the blog.  It also requires a highly skilled facilitator who can gather the threads together and weave a coherent conversation.

I want to agree with Eric in the sense that  I am regularly being asked both here and abroad about how we can teach innovation and creativity--perhaps that is "the greater truth" that Eric mentioned.  There is a growing consensus that our future success will be determined, not just by greater productivity in the areas that have traditionally fed our economy, but by a constant stream of innovation that will capture the imagination of consumers across the world.  Apple's iPod and iPhone are great examples.  Apple can never stand still; it must always have the next product in production because the first will be copied and sold for less within months. The business community and middle-class parents understand that education in the arts and design will be their ticket to future success.  Large corporations are hiring MFAs along with MBAs.  This is the message that needs to be delivered to state governments and local communities.  I actually put more faith in actions in local communities than in state policy based on the total lack of attention to NCLB's inclusion of the arts in the core curriculum.  According to NCLB, the arts must be part of the curriculum provided to students in every grade--has it made it happen?  No.  We see better results from local community actions as Edward Pauly suggested.  Keep Arts in Schools (http://www.keepartsinschools.org) provides good examples of local efforts that are making a real difference like Big Thought in Dallas.  Big Thought has galvanized the foundation and business communities to work with the schools and arts organizations to ensure access for families and children.  We can use the push for innovation and creativity to galvanize other communities as well.

As a long-time education practitioner and more recent policy person,  I am delighted to contribute.  Many have asked about what we mean by "culture" and that is a real issue.  I think we need to look at what interests students and build upon that--if it is their music, we can start there and then contrast it to more classical pieces.  The same is true for art-moving from grafitti to caligraphy to abstract art, or similar movement in dance or theater.  We cannot convince students that "the arts" should be important to them unless we help them see that what they are doing counts as art as well.  We cannot assume that all of our teachers are prepared to do this, but that is where our arts associations and institutions need to contribute.  I agree that the arts institutions should be worried about demand, but that requires their involvement in offering professional development to teachers and access to students.  If students are demanding access to the arts, it is more likely that systems will respond.  If no one complains that it is not part of the education offerings, why would education systems focused on the NCLB scoreboard be worried about including it?