The Tools of Creativity By Jon Deak April 10, 2010 Hola Dani - You had asked me a very good and pointed question: "If you say that the children can already compose, then what exactly do you give them in your classes?" So, just to make things clear, I do want to give an answer to that. But first, we must recognize that all children are different, and that they have different … [Read more...] about The Tools of Creativity, by Jon Deak
Arts
Guest Arts Education Blogger, Jon Deak: Creating Music with El Sistema, Part Five
Click here for Part Four Caracas, April 13 Another day of wonders and the unpredictable. Today, Diana Arismendi, head of El Taller de Escritura Creativa, the Center for Creative Writing, and a prominent Venezuelan composer, returns from Puerto Rico to help us organize our efforts. I need her to feel that our program of starting kids composing at a very early age will help her … [Read more...] about Guest Arts Education Blogger, Jon Deak: Creating Music with El Sistema, Part Five
Arts Education and Social Justice
This article, The Hijacking of Arts Education, was forwarded to me by my friend Andy Wolf, who just wrote this terrific and important piece for the NY Daily News urging New York State to forgo applying to Race to the Top.The first piece, the hijacking piece, which strikes me as a sort of way out there, Joe McCarthy world view where art education is being infiltrated by … [Read more...] about Arts Education and Social Justice
Guest Arts Education Blogger, Jon Deak: Creating Music with El Sistema, Part Four
Click here for Part Three Caracas, April 12-13, 2010 This will be the start of "The Week That Was!" for us and this wonderful, colorful band of children. If I didn't know through years of composing symphonic music that creativity can indeed be given a boost in restricted, unknown and time-intensive circumstances, I would say this could not be done, even attempted. But Richard … [Read more...] about Guest Arts Education Blogger, Jon Deak: Creating Music with El Sistema, Part Four
Better for Some, Worse for Others: PTA Funding and Inequities in Arts Education
Here's a piece from the Village Voice about the gross inequities in education and arts education associated with the varying abilities of parents to raise funds for their child's public school.When school systems and state departments of education fail to establish instructional standards that include required levels of minimum instruction and/or fail to enforce such required … [Read more...] about Better for Some, Worse for Others: PTA Funding and Inequities in Arts Education