Michigan Schools to Eliminate Art and Gym Classes

This article was originally published on the Marijuana Patients Organization site on March 23, 2013.

While most of my rants are about medical marijuana, today I will discuss education and the State’s budget. Unlike most advocates for medical marijuana I really enjoy our Governor Snyder, not sure if I will vote for him a second time, but appreciate what he is doing to clean up Michigan’s fiscal mess.

Recently I read that as a result of lower funding from the Michigan State Government, Lansing Public Schools were forced to cut all gym, art and music teachers to make ends meet.

This would seem like the logical choice. None of these activities help to make better students and more productive adults right? Let me tell you how I won the 3rd grade art contest with my intricate circles and shapes that were in perfect symmetry with the blank spaces left on the canvas and the backdrop of harmonious lines that helped to anchor the painting, it was magnificent. Or at least this is what the art teacher and my parents said. I just thought it was something cool that I thought of, that never existed until my mind imagined it, something that my steady hand and vivid imagination spilled onto my State paid canvas.

This was one of my early lessons. Maybe one of the most important in my early life. The painting represented a combination of the thoughts and information implanted in my young brain with the structured yet independent assignment of painting whatever I wanted and what I thought the world would want.

By no means am I claiming to be an artist nor did I continue many more art classes during my public school tenure. For me, my life has been about innovating ideas and putting them in action with little direction and an unsure result, much like my art classes as a child. I know that I would not have been a better person had it not been for my art class in public grade school.

As far as music, well I never played so I cannot argue. Assume the same satisfaction I got from my paintings, another child gained similar confidence when she nailed her first scale on the clarinet. The reality is paint and paper are far cheaper than instruments and large practice rooms and concert events.

More and more our society is expecting teachers to assume many of the responsibilities that parents should. And they are, without the pay. Ask any teacher the demands and expectations placed on them each year. I had great parents but I never remember them mandating exercice time, educating me on proper nutrition, or having the same passion and eccentricity that my art teacher had to ignite my creativity.

We, our society, turned to an out-source culture long ago. We put our kids on school buses and leave a good portion of the day for the State to teach our children history, hygiene, inject shots, teach manners, confide their secrets and share most of life’s other lessons.

I am all for less government involvement, ask any one that knows me, but what I am not ok with is Lansing school children, mostly from single parent households or 2 extremely hard working parents (like mine), not getting the same enrichment that art, music and health can deliver and less of the life lessons that they need from teachers.

The willingness to find solutions to business challenges while ignoring the bigger issue, our children’s future, is one of the biggest tragedies facing our State. Call it a domestic terrorist attack, I do.

The future we are painting is a world with less human potential, creativity and intelligence but one with sound tax strategies in place for big business to employ “human drones”. Maybe this is what we want? We must. This is what is going on.

Mr. Snyder always states “I am looking for solutions.” With my art training and public school ingenuity I will engineer a strategy where sick patients purchasing medical marijuana through a special tax assessment will fund Lansing teachers, or some of them. The shortfall is $6,000,000 in Lansing public schools, us in the medical marijuana industry can easily cover this tab. What say you Mr. Snyder? Those recently unemployed educators in Lansing, let us help you get your job back, serious!