paul·a·ver

We are on our way home from a Cub Scouts den meeting, the two boys in back of the car illuminated by a shared Gameboy screen (Star Wars Legos), and myself tapping the wheel to the new Bob Dylan album, Modern Times.

We turn past the liquor store and stop, waiting for another car to pass in front of the two-story house that now serves as a neighborhood music school.

“When are we going to have our next piano lesson?” Evan asks, looking up for just a moment.

“Not until after New Year’s,” I tell him. “There was too much going on right now.”

“Bummer,” he says. “But we can go after New Year’s Eve when school starts again?”

“Well,” I start, carefully because his mother and I have been struggling to figure out how we’ll pay for these lessons, “you could also take a music class together with other kids and play lots of instruments, like the glockenspiel. It’s kind of a set of bells that you play with mallets. That’s percussion,” I finish hopefully, knowing how often they’ve talked about drums.

“No thanks,” says Evan, “I want to take piano. It’s percussion.”

“Me too,” Graham adds.

The next morning I’m making my commute to work, listening to the radio. NPR’s Neda Ulaby is presenting a story about a ceremony recognizing finalists for the National Book Awards. At the ceremony, she tells us, poet, Adrienne Rich, received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

In her acceptance speech, Rich remarked that we are living in “a world in which poetry is seen as inadequate or unprofitable and hence useless.”

“Either way,” Rich said, “poets are advised to hang our heads or fold our tents, yet in fact, throughout the world, transfusions of poetic language can, and do quite literally, keep bodies and souls together.”

Rich’s comments make me think about Graham and Evan’s schooling.

Their school is a wonderful, loving, and challenging place, but they have music class only once a week, physical education only once a week, and art only once a week.

In an age of “no child left behind,” I often wonder if we aren’t leaving every child behind when it comes to developing creativity, critical thinking, and independence.

I’d like Graham and Evan to perform well in the basics, and when they come home with high scores on standardized tests, I’m proud of them.

But I want my boys, to appreciate a good guitar lick, marvel at architectural genius, and love a good book.

I want them to be sport fanatics who play constantly, aggressively–and, more importantly, as gentleman–and to be less moved by the mere spectacle of sport played on the television.

I want them to innovate, challenge assumptions, and take risks.

As much as they now love science and mathematics, I want them never to lose their passion for a good story or a funny joke.

Can they reach these goals in a system that minimizes the value of the arts or physical education?

In vulgar economic terms, poetry is not profitable, of course.

In terms of one’s life, however, a good poem may be worth more than a mansion in the most exclusive gated community.

I can’t deny the infants who made miraculous recoveries as the result of literal transfusions, a transfusion of the arts, which promises to make their lives rich and meaningful now that they are becoming young men. Can I?

So, piano lessons.

I am already figuring entries in the checkbook, and return on investment.

technorati: family, parenting, fatherhood, arts, poetry, music, economics