RICHARDSON: Synapses to success

I've always been thankful for going to school in the era when I did. It was B.C, Before Computers. Certainly I took my share of tests, but there were loads of arts and music and field trips. We went to museums of natural history, technology, even a telephone switching station. We got to draw and paint with teachers guiding the way. We had choir and band and orchestra in elementary school, middle and high school.

All of this was before the data came in to prove that art, music and other creative programs such as drama and dance help connect the dots for academic subjects like reading and math.

Somewhere along the way, at least in Georgia, the arts became expendable. Students had to spend their time calculating and computing, learning science and technology. How do you take a test for art? How do you fill in the bubble with a No. 2 pencil for dance?

Money for drama and music started to dry up and when funds really got tight. It really didn't matter that the data showed a correlation between the arts and academic success.

While this is only a theory of mine, I would bet money that some of the rise in discipline problems could be traced to the absence of arts programs — and one other thing that has nothing to do with the arts. When I was in school, several decades ago, we dressed out every day for physical education. Did you know they don't do that anymore? So what do you have? Children with weight problems that's leading them to other issues such as adolescent diabetes and other maladies. But that's a subject for a different column. Back to the arts.

Gov. Nathan Deal appointed a task force to see if the arts could help students academically. He really didn't need to do that. There have been numerous studies outlining the impact of arts on academic success. He could have just picked up the phone and called Dot Brown; she would have given him chapter and verse about how the arts helps students understand concepts they might find hard to grasp otherwise.

He could have called me. I would have shared an anecdotal story. Every year, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators brings to Atlanta the STAR students and their teachers from all over Georgia — and every year, I'm amazed at what these teenagers have accomplished and where they are headed off to college. Without exception, since I've been keeping track, all of them are accomplished musicians. Is there a correlation? I think this group of students would make you think so — and by the way, not one of them, as I remember, was going off to school to study music.

So what's it going to take to get our arts education back on track? A lot. When you blow something up, you can't snap your fingers and put it back together again, ask Humpty. According to the state Department of Education there are fewer art teachers today than five years ago. A Georgia Budget & Policy Institute study quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said, "Sixty-six school districts cut or eliminated fine arts and music programs since 2009." And "two-thirds of those districts did not restore them." And, as usual, Georgia, lags behind the rest of the nation for the number of schools with arts classes.

Here is part of the problem. The universities training the teachers have to get up to speed, because going into art or music or dance or drama education was an invitation to the unemployment line.

What can fine arts do for children? It helps them put the comprehension and context behind the words they read. Music, after all, is just math, and painting allows a child to express himself in a non-disruptive manner. Drama allows a child an outlet to make a positive scene and maybe get the gears of a dream working either on stage or in front of or behind a camera.

Impossible you say? Think again. Who is Betty Cantrell, and where did she come from? Her dream led her from acting on stage as a tree at Mount de Sales Academy to being Miss America. Or Sasha Hutchings, from Central High School. She's on Broadway in the hit show "Hamilton." Did you see her Monday night on the Grammys? So much for impossible.

Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet @crichard1020.

This story was originally published February 20, 2016 at 4:50 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Synapses to success ."