Dredg- Eighteen People Living in Harmony

"Culture is down, spirits are jaded."


The opera is over, singers have all gone home,
Seats are empty, the kitchen is closed,

The sidewalks are sprayed down,
The blinds are pulled down, foundations unstable,
The wrecking ball's back,
Quiet business vacancy, quiet business vacancy.

Rents are rising, our lease is up, culture is down.

The symphony's concluded,
The instruments are all cased up,
The notes are silent, music's still apparent.

Rents are rising, our lease is up,
Culture is down, spirits are jaded,

Art is dying, is art dead?
Art is dying, is art dead?
Believe it, we need to move on.

A one track mind in a one way time,
Let's go ahead and gentrify,
We let art die with robot minds,
They steal the brush and paint boundary lines.
A stale kind of people we'll find,
Walking in single file line,
I think it's time we finally rewind,
Let's go ahead, we might as well

Rents are rising, our lease is up,
Culture is down, spirits are jaded

Thanks to my youngest brother, Tim, and his recommendation for using this Dredg song as part of this assignment. Both of us have always been passionate about music, and we find it disheartening that schools across the nation are cutting back on their fine arts programs. The importance of the fine arts curriculum reminds me of Adler and his Paideia Curriculum. In the third column of the Paideia curriculum, "students are engaged in a process of enlightenment, the process whereby they develop their understanding of the basic and controlling ideas in all fields of subject matter and come to appreciate better all the human values embodied in works of art" (Adler, 1982, p. 20). He further stresses this importance by using the arts to aid in the students' deeper understandings of the world in which they live. Just as the song lyrics state, without the fine arts in our schools, a stale kind of people we will find. If we fail to expose these subjects to our students, we let art die. The end result? A nation full of children with "robot minds", who can recite basic knowledge and facts from their content areas, but who are unable to express themselves creatively. And since "nothing like this is done in our schools, and because it is completely absent from the ordinary curriculum of basic schooling, the students never have the experience of having their minds addressed in a challenging way or of being asked to think about the important ideas, to express their thoughts, to defend their opinions in a reasonable fashion" (p. 21). Such practices are a detriment to our society and schools should be shifting their priorities to make such practices a priority.