Arts on the Edge
Today, Day to Day on NPR had a story about Arts on the Edge, a nonprofit in Alaska that teaches incarcerated women to play in an orchestra. The only requirement for the program is that a woman’s prison sentence is long enough that she will have time to learn how to play. The orchestra performs concerts for the public twice a year and the performances are always sold out. An orchestra member and inmate interviewed for the piece said she was learning about more than music through her participation. She was learning, she said, teamwork and other skills that will help her to succeed when she gets out of prison.
As I listened, I found myself reminiscing about my own childhood experiences playing in the band, participating in team sports, and camping with the Girl Scouts. Collectively, those experiences taught me valuable lessons about how to live a happy and productive life.
I admit I got a little teary eyed listing to the woman talk about the orchestra with such pride in her voice. You might accuse me of being a bleeding heart and you’d probably be correct in that. But the truth is that arts and music programs are less available to at-risk populations of children who subsequently miss out on developing skills that you can’t come by learning math formulas or studying historical timelines.
When money is tight (and when isn’t it?) it’s the arts that suffers the first, and most brutal, cuts in funding. But we never seem to run out of money to incarcerate people in ever expanding numbers. My point is not that prisons should be all happy-fun time. When individuals fuck up, they have a debt to society that needs to be paid.
My point is that as a society we are woefully short sighted and reactive. The reach of this phenomenon extends far beyond short-changing our kids on an education that should be both broad and deep.
I’ve never worked in the medical profession and I’m not a policymaker, but I can look at the difference in cost between solid prenatal care and four months in the NICU and extrapolate from there to what it means for future health care costs when preventable problems manifest.
I’m not an economist and I tune out completely when analysts drone on about markets and interest rates. I have no real idea how we got where we are and even less of an idea how to fix it. But I could see warning signs when mortgage companies started pushing people into taking on home loans too big for their household income.
I’m not a scientist but I could see damage being done to our air, our water, our planet, and figure out that someday the earth was going to start fighting back.
I’ll bet I could find a whole host of other examples of how we, as a society, take action or don’t without any thought to future consequences. And I’m not all that smart. The really smart folks, the supposed leaders and trailblazers, must be able to see the writing on the wall long before the rest of us get a clue, right?
I’m left wondering if we’ll ever have leaders who are both smart enough to recognize that it costs far less, in both monetary and non-monetary terms, to prevent problems before they achieve behemoth proportions and courageous enough to care more about our collective future then their own election cycles.
Highly, highly, highly recommended, O.
From one who would love to see our criminial justice system almost completely overhauled, so as to make more sense and save us all billions -- not to mention thousands of wrongly incarcerated people their freedom, I agree one hundred percent.
From one who sees the two-edged sword of society and its ironies every day right along side you, I appreciate your writing this post before, and more eloquently, than I could.
Hear, hear.
July 14, 2008 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Music for kids. Especially singing. Best investment I can think of. Cheap. Great for brain. Fun. (Also, future payoff in more artists who can hit notes without expensive equipment.)
Your last para has the nasty public policy sting in it. People who ALREADY face problems are louder, easier to organize & more likely to vote than people who MIGHT speak up or vote IF they knew they'd face a future problem. So today's "crises" drive over money for preventing future ones. Today's Seniors outrank tomorrow's Kids. Today's plant closure becomes more important than investment in growing new ones.
Best idea I heard on this was to set up a 3rd House, just to speak for the longer-term, the future. We already have the Senate/Lords/etc. to provide "sober second thought," always dominated by older citizens. So why not organized input from voices focusing on the long-term, on prevention, etc.?
Rec'd.
July 14, 2008 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I absolutely love that idea: a group of people who don't have so many competing interests and would be able truly to focus on what is coming down the road. Like a think tank, but with teeth.
Could you get on that right away?
July 14, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Music does amazing things. Remember those Godless, emotionless, heartless & incorrigibly-violent Soviets & their Red Army? Or at least, that was how we were taught to think of them. (Kinda like prisoners, only with bigger guns.) Take a look. An Aubie find, I do believe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNFRLrP014
July 14, 2008 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post Orlando! We "invest" so much money creating more prisons that could be better be spent preventing people from committing crimes through adequate social programs and prison diversion programs for the mentally ill or drug addicted that need treatment rather than punishment. And what of investing in re-entry programs for those that have served their time, ensuring that they are not unfairly discriminated against in getting post-release employment and are unable to find places to live? The diversion and reentry programs are the ones being cut while we continue to jail more people to fill up those newly constructed prison cells.
July 14, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the entire state of Texas is made into a Federal Prison (and why not, we are building the first wall just below it, very soon, after all), then all of America will finally say, "Hey. We have a problem here."
Or, maybe just Texas will complain. I'm not really sure yet how it might play out.
July 14, 2008 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, walling off Texas might not be the worst idea I've ever heard. :) We could evacuate Austin first.
July 14, 2008 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's "walling IN Texas" I believe. Ark!
July 14, 2008 11:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm all for walling in Texas... can we dig a big pit and push it in?
July 15, 2008 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not so fast, M. I wanna plant a little shrub, right at the bottom.
There. Done. Go ahead Marquis.
July 15, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you remember "Escape from New York?"
July 14, 2008 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Orlando, nice effort, are you a writer or what?
Did NPR follow any of these women after they got out? Are they more successful? I'm just wondering.
My daughter attended a HOT school (Higher Order Thinking) where they used music to teach math, and other things like that. It wasn't for everyone, but the kids that weren't doing well in the regular program tended to excel there.
As far as I can tell it's a lack of common sense that is the problem. That and MBAs. MBAs do not CARE about the future, and that mindset is what is in power.
I say, lose the MBAs. Get a union lawyer, or a couple writers in there. Or heck, a waitress, a trucker, maybe a computer code geek, and a farmer. They'd have more common sense in one room then the Fortune 500 and the population of Washington DC combined. My point is we USED to consider the future and the future was very much a part of policy making. It is no longer. Everything is about NOW.
It ain't working.
July 14, 2008 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
They didn't talk about any long term benefits in the story. Here's the Web site though, for anybody interested in the program:
http://artsontheedge.org
July 14, 2008 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I also remember seeing, many years ago, a "60 Minutes" piece on a warden somewhere, in some state's prison system, who had begun what amounted to raising his inmates over again. Those without HS diplomas had to get GEDs, once they got them he encouraged them to seek college degrees, he enforced lights out and such things, essentially instilling some measure of personal responsibility into people who had as often as not never shown any.
His recidivism rate was apparently by far the lowest in the state's system. I simply cannot recall which state, or much of anything else about the story beyond those few details.
Whatever works.
The problem is, the costs not incurred by well-timed investments never really show up to be measured against the incurred costs of incarceration.
July 14, 2008 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a day job and on Friday evenings I volunteer with the local youth center and teach art from 5:30 to 10:00. I get ages from 10 to 16, of kids who want a safe place to hang out and something fun to do.
I teach jewelry making, painting, drawing and other mixed media. I enjoy my time with them. I don’t know about "leaders" because I think we all, living now, are "leaders" of sorts in that we are the ones who have to do the wading in and putting our time and our hearts into the situation to make a difference.
Yes, it would be nice if the state or the feds came through with money. But if not, hit up the local businesses for a fund drive. It's in their interest too. Just my .02 worth. Good post, btw.
July 14, 2008 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice job, Orlando. Hope you post more. The site needs more of this. I think your NPR reference is the key. Your post makes this site more like All Things Considered, to which it bears regrettably little likeness lately. Thank you.
July 14, 2008 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I teach at a private boarding school that, like many others, is in financial trouble. Running short of American parents willing or able to pay almost $40K per year in tuition, schools like this one are recruiting heavily in Asia. The result is that half the students here are now the sons and daughters of newly successful Chinese and Korean entrepreneurs.
What is the relevance of this to Orlando's post about music in prison? Other than the obvious element of 24/7 monitored incarceration, the answer is that the power of the arts is working magic.
Many of the students arrive speaking barely a word of English. It is heartbreaking to watch them at the beginning when they wake to the nightmare of finding themselves plunked down, overnight, far from family and friends in an alien culture in a crowded community in which they are, nonetheless, completely isolated.
Their emotional and academic experience, of course, improves gradually. They make friends, first, among the other Asian students. As their English improves -- which it does remarkably quickly because they study so hard -- they begin to develop relationships among the American students (although given the American students we have, many of whom have behavioral issues, this could be regarded as a mixed blessing at best). They win uniform praise from their teachers, who are sincerely grateful for them. But whether in the classroom, or the dormitory or the dining hall, there is still a cultural divide.
What brings them their first real experience of integration, their first chance to be "one of,"is their participation in the arts program. Whereas, in academic classes they are rigidly attentive, in the music, drama and art studios, they are relaxed, animated. American students and Asian students are finally on common ground, with similar interests, similar talents, joined in common activity and purpose. Everyone is smiling. When the products of their joint endeavors are presented -- in concerts, and plays and gallery shows -- there is shared pride.
Arts programs in public schools are among the first to be cut. Arts funding, in general, has lost significant ground. Yet the arts represent a universal language, one which can cross national, ethnic, religious and cultural divides. It's important that we do whatever we can, wherever we are, to keep it alive.
July 15, 2008 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post but I disagree with you on one statement - " And I’m not all that smart. "
No, you seem to be smarter than the average.
July 15, 2008 12:26 AM | Reply | Permalink