By: Nadia Lamoreux
You wish to take away the arts,
Pull the relationship of school and students apart.
Poets would be ashamed,
Musicians would be disturbed.
Artists would be enraged.
You wish to take away the arts,
Yet you want what is best.
You make us test daily,
And you push us.
You wish to take away the arts
But the greatest people do them.
From Shakespeare to Dickinson,
To Presley to Jackson.
You wish to take the arts away,
But you fail to see what we are capable of.
“If you think about every successful person, they have a background of arts. William Shakespeare, an incredible poet, put his deepest thoughts and feelings into poems, and we now learn about what he has written in classes. If we take away arts from us students, it’s like taking away the arts from everyone. The students will grow up without the background of arts, and generation after generation will pass, and nobody will know who Shakespeare is. Nobody will remember Emily Dickinson. There are so many artists, poets, and musicians out there who thrive for arts. Our generation holds so many future artists, poets, and musicians. Why take away the arts from students who will one day be just as successful as the people in the arts today?”
Bio: Nadia Lamoreux is a 10th grade student who enjoys sports, writing, drawing. guitar but mainly singing. Expect to see more great writing and art from her in the future or to see her on the World Cup Soccer Field.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Linda Girgis, MD, FAAFP
I have wept in front of Guernica, stood transfixed hearing Hungarian Rhapsody #5, and marveled at the wonder of a child with a crayon and a piece of paper. Those experiences inform my world view, open my heart, and fill me with possibility. Maybe we need to ask those that seek to eliminate the arts what fuels their being, their soul?
You wish to take away the arts
But the greatest people do them.
From Shakespeare to Dickinson,
To Presley to Jackson …”
It will be a shame and leave us poorer in spirit and mind–without art.
Art–whether it’s prose, poetry, creating music, the art of painting, drawing, singing–they all lift our souls; they develop us as compassionate humans. Whether we only enjoy it by listening or observing or reading or creating it–it heals, it expands, it creates new worlds, new possibilities.
Educators so often get caught up in only looking at test score marks, not assessing the growth of individuals–art for example.
Art has been shown to be therapeutic in a vast number of disease.
And doing art make us more rounded as persons–do sport, some form of art and also another full time occupation. All are possible.
It has even proven itself in the correctional services–helping inmates find “purpose” in life again.
Never let anyone, as in ANYONE, stop you from creating art, Nadia.
We need art that lifts up, challenges and heals–for ourselves and those around us.
Thank you for sharing, Linda and Nadia!
Thank you, Nadia for such beautiful words and art. You raise a very important issue in our society. Hopefully, more people will stand bravely and raise their voices as you have.