Wind Me Up

Description

Wind Me Up

From my perspective, this song is the most politically motivated on the project. It resulted from my years as the Fine Arts Coordinator for Fairfax County Public Schools, overseeing the K-12 dance, music, theater arts, and visual arts programs in over 200 schools and for 165,000+ students. My last 10 years in this role were served in conjunction with No Child Left Behind, the federal education law of the land that brought focus to standardized testing across the country, especialy in the areas of mathematics and language arts. Increasingly, I would hear children say things like, “Just tell me the right answer! I can remember it for the test!” as if all the world could be sorted out into black and white, right and wrong answers to every problem. For me, the antidote and antithesis to this mentality can be found in the arts, where creative, outside-of-the-box, innovative solutions are the norm, and are much more useful ways of knowing and thinking in a world of gray, where truth is ubiquitous and dependent upon who you ask. My wish for our children and their education can be found in this song.