Arts opens many doors. (Arts Awareness and Advocacy).

Editor's note: This column is a reprint from the December/January 2000/2001 issue of American Music Teacher.

David O'Fallon, executive director of the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Golden Valley, Minnesota, was a presenter at the 2000 National Convention. O'Fallon has served as a consultant for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Prior to his appointment to the Perpich Center, he was the education director for the National Endowment for the Arts.

--MarySue Harris, NCTM, National Community Outreach and Education Chair, Lincoln, Nebraska 

We have crossed a national threshold regarding the way many different American publics perceive and value the arts as part of a child's education. This step requires a change in the way arts educators think of their jobs and the message they send to others. Stepping across a threshold just gets you in the building. Of course, the building may not necessarily be completely furnished and fully equipped.

The threshold I think we have stepped over is that the arts are increasingly seen as a legitimate and even necessary part of a child's development. The arts are seen as an important and even powerful resource to hew us address important social issues, such as communication across cultures. I do not mean to say that the arts are suddenly fully supported, or that an arts education is suddenly as embraced and highly valued as a computer programming job. I do not know a music teacher who has been offered stock options--yet. But I would not be surprised if there are some teachers involved in a dot.com company.

My perceptions are based on work, travel and networking across the United States. I have learned to trust perceptions based on wide views and built over time. Here are a few instances from many I have encountered in my life that bolster this perception:

* A reporter from a major daily newspaper calls to discuss this center's work, and we end up talking about her young daughter and the need for music education in her early years. Then this happens again with a reporter from another media source.

* A three-day conference on arts education research includes key people from the financial community, as well as the expected participants from education and arts organizations.

* Arts organizations ranging from major museums and theaters to small dance companies state that education is one of their principal goals--and their programs get funded.

* Research by Shirley Brice Heath shows strong youth organizations use the arts, and this research gets national attention.

* The excitement over brain research and the positive implications for the arts receives national attention with articles appearing in Newsweek and Scientific American.

* Fast Company, a new business magazine, is full of stories and articles using the arts as their primary examples for describing imagination, intuition, creativity, team work, passion for excellence and even joy of involvement and accomplishment.

* Managers of a major financial services company expect to encounter in the next eight years 1,000 times more information than they currently receive. What to do? They are looking to the arts for examples and modes of thinking. Perceptions are shifting away from the arts as something to be made by an elite few and appreciated by a select group toward "the arts" as an essential human action, one needed to cope with a future no one imagined and needing a disciplined and compassionate imagination more than ever.

I see a world of new possibilities for people well trained in an art form and with a deep commitment to education. But stepping over the threshold into a new building does not mean you choose to enter. You could turn around and leave, and some people will.

A certain "victim" mentality often is found in the arts and for understandable reasons. But it is not a useful response to a world of both opportunity and need.

If you remain in the new building and help construct and furnish it, I think you will need to incorporate the following:

* Know what the research says about brain development and making art and reflecting. Use it. Explain it to colleagues and clients.

* Move from "What do I need?" to "What are the issues in my community--and how can my knowledge and practice in the arts bring their solution?"

* Incorporate more reflective thinking and more open-ended questions and inquiry into daily teaching.

* You are teaching what you love and care about, and passion and commitment are great assets. Let other people see this and help them realize why your passion and commitment might be important to their hopes, aspirations and concerns for themselves and their children.

We may see a new understanding and respect for those who teach the arts. This will be based on a deeper understanding of the importance of the arts to human development, and the important, even critical, role art knowledge and processes play in imagining and creating the world we experience.

We can support and encourage this by changing our own way of thinking. We must see ourselves as practitioners and students of knowledge, skills and values reaching far beyond their role in a recital or performance. We must articulate the way we see these skills and knowledge connecting to broader concerns and issues, whether through the development of the very young or the vitality of the increasingly large numbers of senior citizens. We cannot assume people who see their student working hard with you will somehow understand the complex nature of the student's learning and problem solving, the discipline needed and how that may benefit this student in other life challenges. We must articulate this.

And we must spend time listening to the issues of hurried parents and children, of people with full to overflowing calendars, of schools pressed to show higher test scores, of older citizens feeling disconnected and uninspired. What have we to offer them?

Plenty--but they may not know it.

Or we can turn around and leave this new, half-finished, unfurnished building.

--David O'Fallon, executive director, Perpich Center for Arts Education, Golden Valley, Minnesota