From the December edition of NewMusicBox.org, comes “An Arts Education Symposium,” with the great Maxine Greene, Hollis Headrick, Polly Kahn, Frank Oteri, and me.
For those who don’t know Polly, she’s the former education director at The New York Philharmonic, the 92nd Street Y, and other organizations. Today, she is the vice president for learning and leadership development, at the League of American Orchestras.
Oteri, a well known figure in the new music world, was once a teacher at one of the toughest high schools in New York: Thomas Jefferson High School.
Hollis, I am sure there are few in the arts education field who don’t know him…
It was a terrific conversation, one that was supposed to be focused on Maxine Greene, but she was determined to serve us dinner, so it turned out less of focused on Maxine, and more of a free for all.
Click here to read An Arts Education Symposium, from NewMusicBox.org
Here’s a wonderful excerpt:
MAXINE GREENE: Yeah. Dewey says that
democracy is a community in the making. And always like that, because it
means you never really achieve it, but it’s in the making through
community… That’s why he uses Whitman
as the poet of democracy. And if we could say that schools should be
communities in the making, you know, or, like he talks about an
articulate public, giving a public its voice… I think they’re all very
similar. It’s such a funny place to say it. Art reaches a deeper level
of awareness and that ordinary conversation is so trivial and so
superficial, but if it touches the level of the arts, desire and purpose
come to the surface, you know. And I think it, you know, you get fewer
sound bytes, if you can somehow be in touch. And a lot of people are
talking, oddly enough, about Eros now, in connection with schools. Desire, passion, they’re trying to spoon it back, you know.
