Bureaucrats Drive Arts Faculty From Teaching?

By Charles Kochakian

I propose a quiz: Of which of the Greater New Haven high school programs can it be said: a) Its students are uniformly enthusiastic about the program, and passionately committed to their studies. b) It has a thoroughly mixed student body, unmarked by the usual self- segregation. c) The parents of its students are as enthusiastic about the program as their children.

One answer is the Educational Center for the Arts, or ECA, on Audubon Street in New Haven, though I hope there are others.

ECA, as made clear in the article “Certification mandate jolts arts magnet schools,” is now being deliberately dismantled by faceless state bureaucrats through their demands that the professional arts faculty, whose dedication and professional standards have made this institution such a resounding success, submit to a totally inappropriate set of credentials requirements.

Many will resign rather than submit to these burdensome, expensive and pointless demands that constitute, paradoxically, yet another example of the de-professionalization that has caused such havoc and demoralization in the teaching profession over the last couple of decades.

The arts are inherently pedagogical, each with its own methods of transmission, handed down from master to student since the Renaissance and beyond. There is nothing relevant for such arts professionals to learn from an education course at Western Connecticut State University.

It is time to stand up and yell! Our politicians should demand to be told just what problems these out-of-touch bureaucrats think they are addressing. Have they, for example, had a deluge of complaints demanding that the arts be taught more like physical education?

Richard Stack

New Haven

Editor’s note: Richard Stack’s wife teaches ballet at the Educational Center for the Arts.

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