Over the last thirty years in most schools, the arts have become marginalized, seen as irrelevant in the race to make students competitive in the global marketplace. Focus on math, science and an increasingly narrow view of literacy at younger and younger ages leaves little room for the play and delight of question, exploration, and artistic expression.

by Anne Greer, Board member SSWS, educator. Watch a young child in a park, or a forest, or a beach and you will see learning at its best. The child naturally jumps, skips, explores, gathers treasures, asks questions, and glows with health and well-being. That fortunate young person is secure in the truth of his or her own observations and full of wonder at the richness and the riddles of life. In far too many children of even nine or ten, teachers and parents admit, “the light has gone out.”...