The teachers are afraid of the pupils

Most NA Confidential readers are no doubt aware that the New York Times Arts & Leisure section of May 8, 2005, features a multi-page, illustrated story about the nationally recognized theatre department at New Albany High School: “The Supersizing of the School Play,” by Jesse Green (note that the lifespan of NYT links is unknown).

Green provides detailed observations as New Albany’s acclaimed thespians stage the Sondheim-Lapine musical, “Into the Woods,” charting the evolution of high school theatre in America from a small-time afterthought staffed by part-timers and performed in the cafeteria, to a big-budget, technically sophisticated phenomenon that can stand alongside local semi-professional theatre in terms of quality.

It is a wonderful article, providing much needed evidence that there exists in New Albany a successful creative force capable of transcending the city’s well-documented tendencies toward sloth, ignorance, self-loathing and – as a sort of house specialty – grandiloquent and Coffeyesque obstructionism.

Green’s stellar reporting makes it clear that New Albany High School students are fully capable of grasping certain points about the city’s future that continue to elude their befuddled elders, and make no mistake: These unsavory factors are far too obvious to be ignored by a professional journalist who works at one of the world’s most prestigious newspapers.

In this vein, here is an extended excerpt from Green’s article:

After all, they are in "Kentuckiana," a nicer name, as one student put it, than "Indiucky" for the greater Louisville area spanning the two states. The city of New Albany, with about 40,000 residents, is not especially wealthy or arts oriented, though it once was, back when it prospered from the packet and shipbuilding trade along the Ohio River's bends in the early 1800's. As recently as the 1950's, showboats still visited here, but now the river is more of a barrier than a lively thoroughfare; Mr. Longest and others say few people from New Albany take advantage of what cultural amenities the bigger city offers. On the Indiana side of the river, the only professional theater for many miles around is the Derby Dinner Playhouse, where "The Music Man" and an all-you-can-eat buffet go for under $40.

With all the auto shops, fast-food joints and boarded-up houses in the vicinity, it is somewhat disorienting to find Mr. Longest operating out of a $17 million performing arts annex, part of a recently completed $50 million renovation of New Albany High School that was financed by property taxes. With its airy glass lobbies and soaring curved roofs, its 24-hour radio station, television broadcast center, huge indoor pool and student bank, the building could be mistaken for the centerpiece of a college campus. But it's a public school. Despite local poverty (one-third of New Albany's 2,000 students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches), residents rejected a tax cut - by a ratio of eight to one - in order to pay for the improvements. Steve Sipes, the principal, said they had done so because the arts at New Albany had over the years brought a measure of pride, comparable only to that generated by the sports teams, to a city that's seen better days.

Mr. Sipes's superintendent, Dennis Brooks, who has occasionally borrowed costumes from the theater department for Halloween, concurred. "Arts programs nationwide are suffering because of the pressure No Child Left Behind has put on schools to move more resources into math and English," he said, referring to the federal law mandating testing standards. "If we were forced to do that here, you'd have quite a fight on your hands, because we agree with the research that says the arts help kids do better in school." Indeed, when Mr. Longest, who himself attended New Albany, was interviewed for the job of drama teacher in 1984, the crucial question everyone asked him was "Can you do the big musicals?"

I’m unaware of a better description extant of rampaging municipal schizophrenia than Green’s description of a community “that’s seen better days” willing to support the local high school, come what may, but beyond that laudable and justified sentiment, choosing to measure its political will and future vision by the eye-dropper when it comes to initiating solutions to the painful and ironic fact that the best and brightest of these students inevitably depart New Albany, eager to find a place to live and work that nurtures the creative impulse into adulthood, rather than lapsing into indifference and occasional outright hostility on the day following graduation.

Of course, in describing a city heroically willing to buck the Grover Norquist universe and forego tax decreases to finance education, Green tactfully omits what we all know: Educational expenditures, as well as progressive educational standards, are in fact consistently opposed by the same motley collection of Luddites, naysayers, fearmongers, flat-earthers and second-raters who currently are prepared to push the city to the brink of shutdown in order to cripple the sitting Mayor and to savage the very notion of progressivism, without which there is precious little hope that New Albany as a city will be profiled in the New York Times a decade hence – except, perhaps, as the first 100%-slumlord-owned Indiana city.

Furthermore, it is unfortunate that so many of those who have never once wavered in support of the best education possible at the elementary and high school levels still fail to grasp that in today’s rapidly evolving world, high school simply isn’t enough. I’m thinking here of our dilatory Tribune, whose coverage of educational issues dwells almost exclusively on K-through-12, to the exclusion of Indiana University Southeast, our community’s most consistently overlooked asset.

Sunday’s national exposure in the New York Times is a double-edged reminder of the good and the bad in the life and times of New Albany.

It gratifyingly vindicates the Herculean efforts of David Longest, his goal-oriented students, and their supportive families. It propitiously reminds us that New Albany’s adult population can be just as attentive, creative and confident as its youth, and if challenged, work toward a better city.

And it offers a timely admonishment to each and every New Albany resident.

The lifelong benefits to be derived from a quality education, and the perpetual striving for excellence that is embodied by education, are far too valuable to the community to be forgotten at age 19, and forever denigrated in the interest of short-term political gain. Rather, education is the sole and only key to New Albany's survival in a world that refuses to stop the clocks and wait for us to catch up to them.

Think about these issues the next time you hear a rambling, semi-literate, ward-heeling local politician sneer at books and reading … and shudder in the recognition that his power is maintained with the consent, or at least the passivity, of the governed.