Detroit Free Press: How the arts can change lives

[Heidi]

BY RON DZWONKOWSKI • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • August 2, 2009

The tall kid was leaving basketball practice when the teacher directing the school musical called him over. "South Pacific" was in desperate need of guys for the chorus, not an uncommon problem at smaller schools. Since the tall kid was in choir, could he please, please join the crew of singing sailors?

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The kid was Jeff Daniels, then a sophomore at Chelsea High School, now a veteran of more than 50 movies -- his latest is "The Answer Man" -- and on hiatus from a starring role in the award winning Broadway play "God of Carnage."

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I mention Daniels in the context of two things that I fear will be on a collision course in many Michigan schools this fall: money and the arts. Times are tough. School budgets are beyond tight. And too often the first thing school boards or administrators see as expendable is the arts.

And I don't mean just the school musical. There's the student poetry magazine, the art show, the spring orchestra concert, the choir's holiday program, maybe even a field trip to the Purple Rose. Anything that requires a faculty sponsor, after-hours building use or a bus trip is likely to be on the line. Districts that would never think about cutting sports will whack away at the arts to balance the bottom line.

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We don't have any minds to waste for lack of stimulation, which is what the arts are all about. As surely as a two-mile run gets the physical juices flowing, a deep plunge into Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" can send the mind racing in new directions. As thrilling as it can be to turn the pivot and make the throw on a double play, so it can be to realize you can hit that high note at just the right moment to give yourself and your audience a set of goose bumps.

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