Your source for community topics and  thoughts

People don’t take care of park
Sparkman Park – What a wonderful park we have in Hartselle! I love walking my dog there in the evening taking in all the sights and sounds around me. I feel we are truly blessed as citizens of Hartselle to have such a beautiful park available to us.
I am disgusted, however, by the way people treat the park. The park continues to be littered with candy wrappers, business flyers, empty drink bottles and styrofoam cups. For whatever reason some people cannot seem to locate the many trash containers located throughout the park.
Instead these people just deposit their trash on the ground much of which ends up being shredded into a hundred pieces when the lawn mowers come around.
I just wish people would take more pride in the park and the city of Hartselle.”

Sounding off on music education
“Since when did music become a part of the curriculum? It hasn’t been and shouldn’t be a part of it. Music is something that should be taught away from school by a private entity, or by someone that wishes to come to the school and volunteer their services.
One of the biggest problems in this country regarding education is the allowing of non-curriculum classes which distract from the ultoimate goal, which is educating students. Many other cultures don’t allow classes like this, and they are exceeding our standards of education by leaps and bounds.”

Music education in schools? One would be wise to research a subject before making dogmatic assertions. Youd said, “many other cultures don’t allow classes like this and they are exceeding our standards of education by leaps and bounds.”  Which cultures are you speaking of? Japan, Taiwan, Sweden, South Korea, and the Netherlands all exceed our scores.
These countries all have music education in their schools!
Do a correlative study of high scoring schools in the U.S. and music education. Do a study of average wages of the graduates of schools with quality music education programs and those who do not.
I am for well-rounded students who are well prepared for life.
I would not hold up another country’s educational system to be better at producing a well-rounded student than ours. But, if one wants to imply that those countries produce higher scoring students because they do not have music in their curriculum, one would be wrong.

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