By Lincoln McElwee
In the 1989 film, “Dead Poet’s Society,” a remarkable professor played by the equally remarkable, recently deceased Robin Williams, lights a fire under the traditional school curriculum with his passion for the written word—for poetry, his labor of love. By doing so, Williams’s character not only engages his students in the arts at a time when their school finds no need for the arts, his character instills into his students the benefits of the arts and just how extraordinary life can be with cultural and creative outlets at one’s fingertips.
Though Robin Williams’s character, Professor Keating, is indeed fictional, the lessons learned from Professor Keating are real-life lessons that speak to a real-life problem: the decline of music and arts programs in the classroom. Lucky for us and our children, their exists the real-life phenomenon of passionate teachers who devote a remarkable amount of personal time and money to ensure that our children are in fact given access to creative and cultural arts programs.
Teachers, such as Mrs. Kim Sutton of Tennessee, are real-life individuals who push far beyond the call-of-duty to ensure that children still have access to increasingly declining programs, such as music and arts, in today’s schools.
Mrs. Sutton is a music teacher. She happens to drive over an hour both to and from her job at Culleoka Unit School in Maury County, Tennessee, and wears many hats as far as keeping the arts alive and accessible to children. Mrs. Sutton also runs the school’s chorus program—happily so—as well as a variety of other programs that are not actually funded by the school itself.
What this means is that Mrs. Sutton often ends up paying out-of-pocket for certain expenses while also putting together fundraisers to try and help offset additional costs. What this also means is that Mrs. Sutton is usually still working after school and even works on weekends in an effort to keep these music and arts programs running.
For Mrs. Sutton, and others just like her, all of these extra-curricular activities are simply a part of being both a teacher and an individual who is concerned with the fact that more and more schools are cutting funding to music and arts programs.
In many cases, the programs themselves are being cut as nonessential to the core curriculum a school implements for a given school year. As a result, students no longer have access to these programs. In sum, students no longer have the ability to supplement their education with equally valuable forms of skills acquisition, be it math and memory recognition in learning to play a musical instrument or learning about history, not to mention self-confidence, through theater or choral programs.
This trend is troubling in that children are no longer able to integrate this creative/cultural and hands-on education with the standardized education they receive in the classroom. The integration of the arts into a standardized curriculum has long since lead to children that graduate from schools with more than just textbook knowledge. When we keep various music and arts programs in our schools, our children leave school with knowledge of how the world around them fits together and connects in the same way that a history lesson on the Elizabethan period can connect to the theater of Shakespeare.
In this sense, what Mrs. Sutton is doing by keeping these fledgling and fallen programs alive is showing our children that lessons come not only from textbooks and lectures, but from experience and from pushing oneself to strive by taking on a role in a theater production and/or by learning a particular piece of music to play or sing.
Music and arts programs help our children to stay active in the same way that sports programs are often touted as fundamentally vital to ensuring that children do well in school and maintain their health. Music and arts programs keep children active and maintain the mind and body’s health as well. Just think about how many albums for mothers there are—even expecting mothers—that contain Beethoven lullabies to help children and babies sleep through the power of music’s influence on the brain!
Learning to play an instrument and understanding the mechanics behind a musical instrument, learning the sounds and notes of a particular piece of music and honing the skills to play that piece spot-on, are skills that are not simply superfluous, but skills that have led to some of the greatest advancements in music and music history, and have led to some of the most beautiful pieces of music that the world has ever known! It goes without saying that all of these musicians were children, once-upon-a-time. What’s more, many of these musicians were either given or had access to music at some point in their budding lives.
Mrs. Kim Sutton is but one individual devoted to a phenomenal cause. In her way, she helps children, parents, her school, and the community-at-large realize how one person can do so much. Mrs. Sutton also shows how, with the aid of music and the arts in school, our children can do so much with their own lives and become so much more knowledgeable if just given the chance.
And people do listen, if Galaxy Audio is any indication. With over 35 years of family ownership, Galaxy Audio is no stranger to community. From Brock Jabara, the Founder and President of the company who has been with Galaxy Audio since the beginning, to Yule Jabara, the Chief Executive Officer who, according to the company’s website, has been with Galaxy Audio since the 2nd grade, Galaxy Audio is a perfect example of the sense of community that is found in creative outlets.
As a business invested in the mechanics of sound, Galaxy Audio is devoted to ensuring that dreams are realized and that voices are indeed heard. And so it makes sense that Galaxy Audio donated one of its battery-operated sound systems, the all-inclusive TV5i, to Mrs. Sutton and the Culleoka Unit School when the equipment was sorely needed.
Sutton and Culleoka Unit School received Galaxy Audio’s Traveler Series. Designed to be portable, configurable, and usable in a variety of settings, the TV5i system is perfect for Mrs. Sutton’s needs as it allows her to move the equipment easily from her classroom to off-school sites and functions. Weighing in at about 8lbs and with a built-in handle for easy transport as well, Galaxy Audio’s TV5i is a welcome asset to Mrs. Sutton’s arsenal of love, labor, laughter, and selflessness.
With individuals like Mrs. Sutton and companies like Galaxy Audio, children still have a chance to benefit from the value and appeal of music and arts programs in the classroom. If it truly takes a community to raise and foster our children and their growing interests in the world around them, Mrs. Sutton and Galaxy Audio are both living proof that it is a cause worth fighting for and a community worth being a part of.
