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Re-Imagining: The Arts in a Time of Reckoning

 Re-Imagining: The Arts in a Time of Reckoning

By Judith M. Burton


This article highlighted three major points for me:
- the sheer value of the Arts beyond dire times
- the breadth and depth of our abilities to provide for our society in the US
- the necessity of trauma and tragedy to wake us up and realizing that all deserve access to the advances of humanity

"It is, therefore, a deep psycho-social injustice that the arts play an insignificant role in the education of young people in K-12 schools, both public and private.   For in its absence we do disservice to the full functioning of the human mind, and to the creation and understanding of the complex narratives of culture. For the arts — all the arts — constitute languages of experience, each offering to the mind the resources for thinking deeply, imaginatively and critically."

This statement took my breath away because its just too true. The way I teach Social Justice in my classroom (which is a congregation of mostly black and brown students) is through self-empowerment and  the liberation of it. My students must know that they have the right to learn, love and grow in the advances of their present-day humanity. Our ancestors fought for their liberal expression of deep, imaginative and critical thought. We disservice our community when we cutoff the Arts and place it as a commodity only to be enjoyed by the bourgeois. And media gives us that perception, therefore it is within my power, as an Educator, to acknowledge the right to "understand the complex narratives of culture." 

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