One of New Orleans’ success stories is the New Orleans Center for The Creative Arts (NOCCA), which has just added a culinary program to its curriculum. NOCCA is a regional, pre-professional arts training center that offers students intensive instruction in dance, media arts, music (classical, jazz, vocal), theater arts (drama, musical theatre, theatre design) , visual arts, and creative writing, and now the culinary arts. But we need more, a lot more.
If you have a brain, you realize that a great educational system and motivated students are the key to our future economy and successful, happy and employed future citizens.
Amazing results come from music education.
I’ve been amazed at the success that the music education program in Venezuela, El Sistema, has had on the economy of the country, and on the impoverished youth in that country. IF you’re not familiar with this story, please read up on it on the internet (or rent a copy of this film) and see how it’s impacted the Venezuelan economy and society. And the program idea is spreading. The president of Colombia recently signed a cooperative agreement with Venezuela.
Music and cultural education has an enormous impact on the students: not just in learning an instrument or being involved in culture; it creates responsibility, commitment, pride and self-esteem, as well as cooperation among students and parents.
We need this type of program to be institutionalized in New Orleans. In fact, we need this educational institutionalized as a country.
Furthermore, this morning, I saw a television piece on a high school in Florida that’s geared towards training students in the film and movie industry. It’s a pretty powerful story,in that the students are motivated: 99 percent graduate and 97 percent go on to college. They’re really happy to be there, and it shows. They’re not only being trained to do something they love; their creativity is being fostered, and best of all, they are eminently hirable in a growing industry.
Both of these are great models for us. The high school in Florida is an absolute model for us to truly become “Hollywood South.” Why isn’t the state pursuing this sort of educational opportunity?
