The Arts in Schools: A Critical Question

Greetings Everyone!

After the sweltering heat wave last week, the Bay Area has finally cooled down. However, the chilly weather didn’t prevent me from visiting Half Moon Bay and seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time! Since the water was freezing, I was restricted to only looking at the Pacific, rather than actually swimming in it. Perhaps I will brave the icy water and take the plunge another time. Over the weekend, I also got to attend a nail-biting Red Sox vs. Athletics game across the bay in Oakland. Even though I was outnumbered by Oakland fans, I proudly donned my Red Sox t-shirt and cheered on the reigning World Champions.

Half Moon Bay

Once again, my week at Music at Kohl Mansion proved to be eye-opening, filled with plenty of learning experiences. After mailing out almost 600 subscription packets last week, the ticket orders for the 32nd season began to come in, meaning that MAKM had to start marketing itself across a variety of news outlets for the upcoming concerts. Since MAKM’s patrons come from all over the Bay Area and beyond to attend their world-class chamber music series, MAKM must advertise itself in multiple different newspapers and websites to target their diverse audience.

In addition to writing advertisements and learning a few marketing skills, I had the privilege of sitting in on MAKM’s Education Committee meeting. The Education Committee is the group which plans and organizes MAKM’s family and children’s programming in local schools. A prominent question that the committee discussed was why the arts are becoming less appealing to children. Some of the committee members explained that it was because arts education in both public and private schools is being slashed. Others stated that it was because parents are not cultivating an appreciation for the arts in their kids. One person said that it was because playing music is not as popular or “cool” as playing a sport in school. All of these insightful suggestions offer credible answers to the question. Whether or not the problem is solved in the future, I’m incredibly appreciative to my teachers and parents for introducing me to music. Without music, not only would my childhood education have been profoundly depreciated, but I would not have found my passion in life.

As another action-packed week comes to a close here on the Peninsula, all of you must be starting to wonder when things will begin to slow down for me and there won’t be any more sights to see. But I haven’t even seen the Golden Gate Bridge yet! So I’m confident there are several eventful weeks still ahead.

Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2014 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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