Ep. 8: The Price of Creativity
“She loved band and she just didn’t understand why the mayor was taking away the one thing that kept her grounded in school.”
Bernie Carmona reported this story as a sophomore at Beacon High School in Manhattan.
By Bernie Carmona
The transition from middle school to high school can be socially bewildering for many young people, but for New York City public school students like me it can also mean adjusting to drastically different economic and racial demographics. I went from my neighborhood school in the Bronx to a predominantly white school in Midtown, Manhattan.
At my middle school, I took an art class that had no art teacher. At my new school, the basement has ten studios completely dedicated to music. There’s also a black box theater, a dance studio, an art studio, and a film lab. These are just some of the differences I noticed.
Seeing these drastic disparities in the opportunities given to students got me thinking: if all public school students deserve an arts education, then why has a complete music and arts program become a luxury and a privilege? What do students lose when they don’t have the opportunity to explore their extracurricular passions?
Join me and a few guests as we discuss the unspoken price of creativity in New York City public schools.
“I’ve never seen so much art supplies in my life before I came to Beacon. I had art in middle school and all they had was watercolors and the basic coloring supplies.”
“I feel like our school, we definitely need funding. There’s a lot of issues with it. And I feel like at least like a little bit more funding with like really improve our school and our experience.”
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