Mr. Daniel Whitfield was one of my all-time favorite teachers. He had an encouragement and desire to see me succeed. He seemed to be able to get along with almost any student who wasn’t a horse’s ass, and the students felt the same likewise. At times, he would refer to me as his protege.
Mr. Whitfield taught chorus, a music teacher, the same kind of teacher that exists, excuse me existed in Atlanta, GA – today APS music teachers just found out they are out of a job.
Unlike the vast majority of students who came through his chorus room doors, I strove to become a great musician and performer. But that didn’t mean these students did not gain from their time with Mr. Whitfield, who also coached the girls basketball team for my middle school, and won 3 straight championships. He played a major role in shaping our lives and who we would become.
So when I see these articles talking about how music teachers are on the chopping block, I can’t help but look back at my time in school and ponder what my life would have been like if I didn’t have a teacher like Daniel Whitfield.
We live in a very confusing time. Test scores seem to be all the focus, that they are the main barometer of the growth of our kids. For the kids that score high on these tests, while some are ready for the trials and tribulations of real life, some are either still not prepared or are severely under-equipped for the world out there. Why? Because they were only taught how to score high on a test, not the skills and attributes they needed to become the developed adults to parse through the complexity of today’s society.
It’s easier to have enough kids score high on certain tests; it’s harder for them to understand the answers they give on those tests. It’s easier for simple yes/no, a/b/c/d questions to be answered; it’s harder to answer those questions that have consequences based on how you answer them.
The problem is that while we’ve acknowledged the lack of quality education over the years in this country, we likely have been misconstrued as to what makes for a quality education. We’ve focused more on the quantitative fixes rather than the qualitative fixes. When it came to gigs, Chad Denney always told me, “Quality over quantity.”
I’m not saying that music teachers are absolutely needed more than science teachers, but I think both groups offer unique skills that will greatly benefit how a child learns, grows and develops through the years. If you teach a kid to be a robot, that child will grow up to be a robot. If you teach a kid to expand their mind and think around the problem, that child will solve problems in new innovative ways we never thought of.
And isn’t that what this world needs more than ever?
If we continue to not see through fog of numbers and test scores, we will continue to see more teachers lose their jobs, more education lost for our kids, and more futures depleted.
Let’s stop cutting education and start expanding it!
Let’s give the parents and teachers the necessary resources (including time) to give our kids the knowledge they need before they go off on their own in this crazy world. We need to start embarking on better policies and people to make these changes happen, and start demanding more than ever that these areas that open up the minds of our children – the arts – be given the respect and opportunity they deserve.
I’m a professional musician with a computer science degree, thanks in part to the arts education I received through my schooling and teachers like Mr. Daniel Whitfield. Will our children be able to say the same thing years from now?