Entry #5: The Dream

Tiffany Holman, Dry Pastel

           America's "dream", land of the free, home of the brave, and functioning middle class that feeds it's happy little capitalistic society. Whilst reading the article about Doug Ducey's plans as governor to enhance the education system here in Arizona, I found myself nodding my head in a confirming, yes. The audience his article seemed to be focused on was directed towards the parents and legal voters in our state, which is to be expected. But it almost felt as if he was trying to sell his ideas to the working class. He was offering to provide more funding for education, great.  His goal was to hoist Arizona from its current 43 percent of adults with education higher than high school to a whopping 60 percent, wonderful. But what was missing to me was any regard to what the kids want. We definitely need more funding to work towards this goal but, it seems to get lost in the conversation of  education. How do we change peoples passions from dreams to reality? Especially our youth's. It's important to be able to pay your bills as an adult, but his mentioning of finding employers and asking them what they want made me wonder. What to the growing children who will be making decisions later in our society want? And how do we strike that balance. The way his article was presented seemed to me almost as if our goal was channeling education and these humans lives to fulfill societies needs. At that point, when we are trying to strive so hard to fit into a niche that a capitalistic environment desires, whose dreams are we really trying to fulfill? The wants of the people or the desires of someone making money off of their lives?
         Often I hear from students, who received an expensive education, but claim they are never able to use it. In other scenarios I hear from students that they have no idea what they are going to do, they are just there at school to fill a requirement for whatever reason. I don't deny the importance of an educated society. Even if one has no idea what they want to do, it is important that people navigate through advanced education to get a better idea of the world that they will be expected to be apart of as an adult. I just wonder what kind of society we could produce if we allowed people to harness their passions and teach people to think critically or creatively about the world.
         Let me get off my soapbox... I may be a little hurt that often in education we take away the "fun" classes that allow people to think outside of the box, such as the arts, music, or physical education. Unless someone goes to a private school that focuses on these forms of education, they are often lost in the world of public education where a big part of our society grows from. After speaking with a handful of my teacher friends who have their doctorates in music and work at these private schools, they talk about all of the amazing composition projects their students are working on. The qualitative research they do of these students after they leave schools with an emphasis on the arts is a amazing! Even the students who don't continue a career in something like music report on how much it influences their creative abilities in fields like the sciences.
            Anyways, yay teachers! I'm ecstatic you are getting paid more, but I don't think our fight for a better education here in Arizona ends there.


The musician I am sharing today is an Arkansas man named Dan Smith, and his band "Listener". This man delivers the most intense poetry reading you have probably ever heard (or seen if you watch one of his performances). He often writes about social issues in the most creative way, enjoy!

(p.s. If you are a hip hop fan, you should check out his album Whispermoon that features some of his early work)