For well-rounded education, students need access to arts & sports
The ancient Greeks had a three-fold approach to education: mind, body and soul. Education of the mind was rhetoric (the 3Rs), the body was the gymnasium, and the soul was music. In today’s “modern” educational system, we focus too heavily on rhetoric while treating sports and the arts as afterthoughts. As Boston searches for a new superintendent, I suggest we take the opportunity to bring back balance to our educational system and once again make Boston the Athens of America.
Certainly reading, writing and arithmetic are important. As a Latin teacher I’d even add in a 4th R: Rome. The goal of reading and writing is simply to be able to communicate effectively both in a job and in the world around us. Sadly we are focusing on “the mind” to the detriment of the “body and soul.”
All the state of Massachusetts cares about is a school’s MCAS score. In my March 21, 2022, Op-Ed, I explained that there certainly needs to be some measure to ensure that students know the 3Rs but a) the MCAS is far from a perfect measuring tool, and b) it should not be the only measuring stick.
Students in Boston are certainly missing opportunities because they are not provided in the first place. My beloved Boston Latin Academy does not offer the arts to students each year. Boston Latin School does thanks in large part to its enormous $64,000,000 endowment that is used to supplement the Boston Public School budget. All our schools should offer some form of the arts in all grades, for all levels of mastery.
Students love the arts! Nearly every teenager has Spotify, watches YouTube, and makes their own TikTok videos. According to Forbes, the average American listened to 32 hours of music per week … in 2017.
Students love music. At this year’s Comic Con at BLA, the most popular activity was Karaoke. Yet sadly, and deliberately, the BPS does not offer singing or musical instruments to all students. A 2017 University of Akron study determined “there does exist a correlation between a high school student being involved in a school-sponsored music program and that same student receiving a higher average score than a student who does not participate in a school-sponsored music program.”
Finally there is physical activity. Our students spend entirely too much time sitting still. Nearly a century ago Maria Montessori wrote “Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside.”
Not only should every student have recess every day, but students should be both allowed and encouraged to move around within the classroom. I have not once sat at my desk all day. I move around the classroom constantly. Why can’t students do the same?
Boston is the epicenter of the sports universe, or so we like to think. The Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, Bruins and Revolution dominate their respective divisions and are mainstays in the playoffs. One would think that every Boston child spends all daylight hours honing athletic skills.
The reality is that too many of our schools have a gymacafetorium instead of proper physical education space, both indoors and out. (A gymacafetorium is the term given to the one space in schools that can be used as a gymnasium, or a cafeteria, or an auditorium depending upon the need.) All our students need PE class and recess in all grade levels. All our students need athletic fields located adjacent to the schools, not a half-hour bus ride away.
Our afterschool sports programs ought not just be for those already adept in athletics. We, the famous sports city, ought to teach the novice how to be casual players and lifelong participants.
As the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education investigates Boston for a second time, please be wary of any comments about “buckling down” or “getting tough.” Such rhetoric is hollow and counterproductive. To better engage the minds of our students, we must no longer neglect their bodies and souls.