What You Can Do As a concerned parent, one of the best ways you can be assured that your schools are providing a quality education that includes music and the other arts is to work with local arts educators and other committed individuals to make certain your school system offers a comprehensive fine arts program taught by certified arts specialists. You can support your local music teachers and students through involvement in parent organizations and by attending concerts and other music activities in your district. Remember, the fine arts are a part of the required curriculum in Texas, and school districts must by law provide time for teachers to teach and students to learn the essential elements (course content) in the fine arts. To request advocacy materials or seek help in supporting and promoting your local music program call the Texas Music Educators Association at 888/318-TMEA or 512/452-0710. The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts can lift us all up. - Barbara Jordan, Former Congresswoman from Texas Perhaps we've all misunderstood the reason we learn music, and all the arts, in the first place. It is not only so a student can learn the clarinet, or another student can take an acting lesson. It is that for hundreds of years it has been known that teaching the arts, along with history and math and biology, helps to create the "well-rounded mind" that western civilization and America have been grounded upon. We need that "well-rounded mind" now, for it is from creativity and imagination that the solutions to our political and social problems will come. Richard Dreyfuss
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© 2005 TMEA
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