Cutting Back

This past week, I received some disturbing news from home; schools in the Des Moines area were facing serious budget cuts. The school's response was to cut back on the amount of time allotted to the art, music, and gym programs. By cutting the amount of time given to these courses, the administration reasons that they can then cut back on the number of teachers working.

My first concern was that the schools were cutting music programs since I will be licensed to teach music in just over a year. I was furious that the amount of time given to ensembles in a week was restricted because this meant that these musical ensembles wouldn't have an appropriate amount of time to rehearse. Music is something that is best rehearsed as an ensemble and cannot easily be given homework assignments outside of class time to complete. In addition to losing time, the decision was also made that the 5th and 6th grade band program would be cut entirely and students would not be able to begin until 7th grade. This sort of move could either eliminate the interest in band entirely, assuming that students find playing instruments "uncool" by the time they reach middle school, or turn into complete and total chaos when students from multiple elementary schools filter into middle school and decide they all want to sign up for the program. Teachers at this level would be given the responsibility of teaching an extremely large group of students that were more than originally bargained for while the high school music program would greatly decline in skill now that students are robbed of two years of learning. The end result, I fear, is an extinguished band program altogether.

Soon after realizing my fears for the music program, I found that the greater thing that I should be fearing is the elimination of time spent on physical education. Already, there is concern at the rate that obesity is rising in the children of America. Some schools believe that by simply taking out vending machines or changing the lunch menus will solve this, but I don't think that enough time has been spent looking at the physical education programs and how important they are to children. They are also key to elementary schools. Without gym programs for kids to get excess energy out of their systems, how do we expect them to focus and pay attention throughout the day? Everyone, no matter your age, needs at least some time to do something active to get the body moving and alert for the rest of the day to come! Cutting physical education programs is the absolute worst thing schools can do!