4 months later...

After nearly 4 months, 2 cities, and a world of experience later, I make my triumphant return to blogging to talk about...

...nothing related to music therapy. Cue the sad trumpet "Womp womp."

That's not entirely true, because everything relates to everything, right?

Seriously though, I had planned this big return to blogging with a new name (as "MTI" nor "ATL no longer applies to me), new look, and new vision. But grad school has a way of sucking up all your free time, and worst of all...I couldn't think of a good name. Gotta think a lot of potentially great bands never got off the ground for the same reason.

But as I browsed through my Facebook news feed tonight, I got so riled up about a particular topic, that a simple tweet or status update would not satisfy me.

Being a music therapy major, I know a lot people who work in education and the public schools. And I constantly see them bemoaning the pains of standardized testing. As I read their dialogue, I can't help but think: "What the heck has happened to our schools?"

I'll do everyone a favor and leave politics out of this rant, but the whole thing is rather disappointing. I used to be proud of my public school education (and really, I still am). I wear it as a badge of honor. I pointed to it as proof that an expensive education, devoid of diversity, isn't necessary to be successful.

But still, I can admit there were many times when school just kind of...stunk. Boring. Stifling. Not fun. What made it this way? Looking back, I came to the conclusion that more often than not, I didn't see the applications of what I was learning. I was good at math, but I absolutely hated it. I had many long nights avoiding homework. I'd sit at the kitchen table simply staring at it, no motivation to continue. My wonderful dad (an electrical engineer, i.e. loves math) would go to great lengths to try and motivate me, but it was difficult. I don't have any kind of learning disability. I just plain didn't like it. It bored me to death.

When I got to college, all of that changed. In college, you have all this autonomy, and the things you learn have meaning. You get to choose what you learn, and the material has real world applications to you. Now I have a passion for learning. I absolutely love being in school. I often tell people that if I won the lottery, I think I'd just get degrees in anything I found interesting. Sure, writing papers isn't fun, but how great is it to be in a place with so many smart people in such a small place, all wanting to share their knowledge?

In college, you have an almost infinite amount of resources at your disposal to improve yourself. Opportunities to take in the arts, learn about the sciences, and shape yourself. More than anything, you learn how to think critically.

And that is what I feel is missing from our public schools. More and more, we teach our students to simply regurgitate facts for a test, so that we can judge their teachers off the scores and somehow filter the good ones from the bad ones. No critical thinking required, and they certainly don't have the time to teach students the applications of this knowledge. When you take that away, you're left with a class full of bored kids.

I don't have the facts to back this up but I think if you took a survey of the brightest kids in our schools, a large number of them are attracted to the arts; be it band, chorus, orchestra, theater, visual arts, dance, or something else. There's really no magic to that, it's practically the only opportunity for creative outlet left in our schools! Natural born learner's crave these opportunities, and there's no reason we can't incorporate creativity into our math and science curriculum. We should encourage it! The greatest scientific minds of all time didn't change the world by being really good at taking tests and spitting out facts. They thought up new ideas and made amazing discoveries. They dared to think outside the box. That is what we need to teach our children.

More and more politicians are pushing for more science education, which makes perfect sense: many of these jobs are driving forces in the economy. Getting more bright students into these kinds of fields will keep us competitive in the global economy, and that's a big deal. But how on Earth do we expect to inspire kids to join these fields when we do such a poor job of educating them?

It all makes me wonder why these politicians push for these creativity-stifling policies. I have to think that they've either a) forgotten what it's like to sit in a classroom bored, or b) never experienced the kind of testing they advocate, and don't realize what it does to a 10 year-old's mind (hint: shuts it off).

Like many people, I look back on my high school years and think: "If I only knew then what I know now." If only I had the kind of passion for learning that I now possess, I could have gained so much more from my education. I can only hope that my kids get educated in a school that teaches them the applications of the things they learn and inspires their creativity, creating a passion for learning early in their academic careers.