[Futurework] Critical Assumptions

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Following is an article from today's NYTimes, followed by the assumptions that I have that is based in my life experience and training in the arts, education and child development including my many years of discussion with you folks.   REH       November 19, 2003 Yonkers Awaits Deep Education Cutbacks By DEBRA WEST YONKERS, Nov. 18 — The school system here has a history of announcing budget shortfalls and proposing layoffs, followed by 11th-hour rescues, but this year the white knight might not come in time to save jobs or sports programs and clubs. On Friday, 502 teachers and support staff members are expected to receive pink slips telling them that Dec. 1 will be their last day of work. On Tuesday, coaches began collecting uniforms from players and telling them that intramural sports had been canceled. After-school clubs and other extracurricular activities were also canceled as of Tuesday. "This is real," said Schools Superintendent Angelo Petrone, who on Monday night called a special board meeting and proposed a $345 million budget for the current year that fell $20 million short. The board immediately adopted the budget, which was due in July. The schools could not afford to pay for sports and cultural programs, Mr. Petrone said. "My priority was to maintain the instructional part of the core areas," he said, "and to have all of the elementary school teachers in place." The art and music programs in the district's middle and high schools will be replaced with study halls, while school personnel, including librarians, guidance counselors and security guards, will be laid off. There are more than 26,000 students in the Yonkers school system. Pat L. Puleo, who thinks she will lose her job after teaching art in Yonkers for 14 years, said the annual budget problems send a bad message to students. "The message they are sending is, `You are not very important,' " she said. The shortfall occurs annually because Yonkers schools do not receive adequate financing from the state, said Richard Narog, the school board president. In June, the City Council made matters worse when it voted to reduce its contribution to the schools by $16 million. Instead of adopting an austerity budget then, the school board waited, hoping that the state would help. "This situation could have been avoided if people focused on the problem when it first emerged," said Steve Frey, president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers. "It wasn't addressed because we had city elections. The school board, which is handpicked by the mayor, didn't want to make it an election issue. Once the elections were over, it was just a matter of time." Deputy Mayor Phil Amicone, a Republican, won the election. He faced a challenge from the former schools superintendent, Joe L. Farmer, a Democrat. State Senator Nicholas A. Spano, who represents Yonkers, said there might be a solution for the schools' financial troubles in the future, but not soon enough to avoid the layoffs.   He met on Monday with the departing mayor, John Spencer, and Mr. Amicone and discussed using part of the revenue from video lottery terminals that will be installed at Yonkers Raceway early next year. That money is slated to go to the state. "The obvious problem is that they have an immediate need, and the video lottery terminals won't address that," Senator Spano said. "Maybe we can work out something with the governor. The door is not closed." It may be closing, though, for students like Joseph Jalloh, 17, a senior at Roosevelt High School who is captain of the track team and the county champion in the 200-meter race, with a record of 22.2 seconds. He was expecting college recruiters to come watch him run this winter. He maintains his speed by running five days a week with the school team and with a Bronx club in the summer. "Maybe the colleges can come look at me run with my club," he said.   What is the purpose of the Arts?   Fifty Assumptions by Ray Evans Harrell.   First let me say that I assume that all structures are based in the human body.    That we get our intelligence, imagination, and creativity etc. from the way in which the human body has been developed from childhood through old age.   And as someone getting older I now realize that Hardwiring does exist and that refusal to develop it or societal deprivation is the root of most of our problems with intelligent solutions.    Assumption 1: That being my first assumption that it is from the body.   Assumption 2:  I then assume that consciousness is possible and potential is developable.   Assumption 3:  It follows that the tools for that development are primally located in the perceptions and that the development of the perceptual hardwiring in the brain has a great deal to do with the environment.   Assumption 4:  My next assumption is that as we get older we can choose the environment that will create our hardwiring and that wisdom has a great deal to do with how and what you choose.   Assumption 5:  I assume that aesthetics and the arts are the primal builders of the perceptual instrument through the biological device of pleasure.     Assumption 6:  I assume that all concurrent expertise activities of the human species flow from the quality of the instrument that has been developed by perception and the practice of the Arts.    You might say that in the beginning everything is built on the Arts.   Eating, toilet training, walking, sounding, smelling, hearing, talking, touching, moving, etc.     Assumption 7: I assume that talents (potential) and opportunity interact at various times and places in the individual's life to direct the Artistic Hardwiring into either further artistic development e.g. taste and technique or the development of skills in the flowering of human endeavor.     Assumption 8:  I assume that at certain times in life the brain wiring becomes more rigid and the likelihood of change becomes more difficult.   Assumption 9:  I assume that perceptual practice in the arts keeps the mind flexible and slows down the pulse of aging and keeps change more available.   Assumption 10:  I assume that every profession has an artistic side to it and that side is what does the same thing using other skills.   But the primal skill is based in the arts themselves.     Assumption 11: I assume that the professions of a modern society are the same to that society as systems in the body.   Assumption 12:  I assume that a complete look at the intelligence and health of the society requires not only artistic thought but also an examination from the viewpoint of each system.    Assumption 13. I assume that humans cannot exist without other humans input and that at its heart the primal activity is sexual just as the perceptual activity is Aesthetic.   In short we could say that all ensemble or team learning has sexual pleasure as the original motivating factor for the first communication.     Assumption 14:  I assume that it is good to go beyond that primal motivation and find further purposes in human interaction.   Assumption 15:  I make the same assumption about the arts.   Assumption 16:  I assume that the physical pleasure of sexuality and the physical pleasure of aesthetic are not the same biological purposes and therefore are a balancing factor in nature.   Friendship is based in the balance of the senses while procreation is based in competition for best mate.   Assumption 17:  I assume that nature calls up the evolving systems of the body.   Assumption 18:  I assume that group dynamics calls up the evolving systems of the society based on the systems of the body.   Assumption 19:  I assume that the symmetry of parallel structures in the body are mirrored in the necessity for symmetry in societal structures as well.   Assumption 20:  I assume therefore that all societal structures are architectural and exist in time and space.   Assumption 21:  I assume that we choose to develop societal structures in the same way that we choose to develop the body.   A lot of nature and unconsciousness and some choice.   Assumption 22:  I assume that a mature, intelligent society begins to take responsibility for the development of its tools and systems.   Assumption 23:  I assume that the sustenance and development of the primal root systems are necessary for the activities of life both individually and societally.   Assumption 24:  I assume that the root systems in American life are severely dysfunctional.   Assumption 25:  I assume that there are social structures in place to protect that dysfunction based upon cultural pathologies.   Assumption 26:  I assume that the balancing of systems in a symmetrical fashion is desirable and necessary for the return to health of the American system.   Assumption 27:  I assume the necessity of leadership in achieving that balance.   Assumption 28:  I assume that every system in society has both growth and cycles as well as a beginning and an end.   Assumption 29:  I assume that research, exploration, practice and mastery are necessary to make sure that societies grow symmetrically and that the growth cycles don't become cancerous.   Assumption 30:  I assume that the intelligence gained through the practice of Music and the Arts are essential to both individual and societal symmetricallity.    Assumption 31:  I assume that it is possible to find a societal symmetricallity that balances the systems of society.   Assumption 32:  I assume that business or trade economics is the central system of choice of the American culture.   Assumption 33:  I assume that America has chosen to have a society of economic classes rather than an egalitarian society.   Assumption 34:  I assume that this choice is more recent than the founding of the Republic.   Assumption 35: I assume that argument about it is not an artistic issue but a political one and therefore not relevant to this discussion of the Arts.   Assumption 36: I assume that the choice was made for the government to fund the arts and other "not for profits" through subsidy of the wealthy class (tax exemption).   Assumption 37: I assume that the choice was made because of the ongoing culture war and not because they wished to completely "social engineer" the society.     Assumption 38: I assume that the belief that trade economics is the only engine that can run an economy is erroneus.    Assumption 39:  I assume that most jobs in the trade economy are not ultimately necessary except as a form of "make work" that redistributes income.     Assumption 40: I assume that is the reason that downsizing doesn't effect companies negatively but only workers.   Saving money but not loosing product or labor productivity.   Assumption 41: I assume that Artistic jobs that develop intelligence and perceptions are good for the society.   Assumption 42: I assume that the most complex contemporary artistic jobs can never exist in the world solely as trade items.   Assumption 43:  I assume that the values of society determine the health of the society.   Assumption 44:  I assume that values must always be developed in negotiation with the society's structures allowing each structure to do its job and serve the health of the whole society.   Assumption 45:  I assume that starving the average artist does nothing for society or for the creativity of the artist inspite of local myths.   Assumption 46:  I assume that there are several systems at work trying to serve the primal needs of the Artistic function and that none of them work very well since the artists are starving and excellence in art can't cover costs of producing them.     Assumption 47: I assume that this can be solved short of declaring war.   Assumption 48: I assume that every member of the Florentine Symposium has crucial information necessary to the solving of the problem of the societal dysfunction in the arts.   Assumption 49:  I assume that the Interactive Management Team that we have assembled is as world class and capable of facilitating the flow of knowledge in the search for a solution to the societal dysfunction in the arts as can be found.   Assumption 50: I assume that there is an answer.   Ray Evans Harrell