The Arts Are Not Appropriate for Colorado's Youth

So here's a great little article that adds to my fear of the Midwest and the Neocons and the fate of our country in the coming years. I am appalled by the reactions of the parents in this school district. I can guarantee that none of them have ever seen "Who's Afraid of Opera," because they ARE afriad of opera and any other art form that might make them think for more than a second.

The most appalling part of the article is the comment from one mother, "I think the opera is glorifying Satan in some way." How intelligent of her. I can't stand comments that come out of ignorance. If she'd watched the program she would see how little of the opera is actually shown, if she'd read a synopsis of Faust, she would see that the opera does not glorify Satan in any way. If anything, it shows how unmerciful Satan is and how people who make pacts with him end up destroying everything around them. Much worse, methinks, are the video games that let kids kill each other and walk away with no consequences whatsoever.

And so the arts are knocked down yet again in our country. But this shouldn't surprise me coming from Colorado who was, of course, the first state to create anti-gay laws in the early '90s.

When I was in 4th grade, I did a ballet from the opera "Faust," and we were told the story in very basic terms and we understood it just fine. Children have an innate sense of good and evil and "Faust" demonstrates this sense perfectly. We need to stop underestimating what our children can grasp in this world. (and stop overestimating what's going to go right over their heads).