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N.C. ESSAY - PAGE 3 Inlook. by Kathleen Fitzgerald APPROXIMATE ENROLLMENT FIGURES DEPARTMENT 1st SEMESTER 2nd SEMESTER MUSIC 210 208 DANCE 142 143 DRAMA 102 80 DESIGN & PRODUCTION 46 45 VISUAL ARTS 25 25 WRITING 9 7 TOTAL 534 508 • Note:*This total includes 21 studentsadmitted'second semester. While these figxires are approximate, they do indicate that this year, as in previous years, there is a drop in the enrollment between semesters. A number of students leave because they have come to the realization that they cannot realistically embrace a career in the arts for the rest of their lives but a significant number find that this school is simply not conducive for the development of their particular talents. What goes wrong? What is it in the school’s environment that can so sour a student’s outlook that he is compelled to leave? It could be the frustration and discouragement that result from the discovery that school is not what he expected, or was led to believe, it would be. There are various reasons for this frustration. The school should be out of the makeshift, embryonic stage, but it isn’t and the catalogues and brochures exaggerate the courses and facilities which will be available. The recent (tension in the Drama Department and dissatisfaction with the academic ciuriculum’s content and quality are evidence of this. For the most part, students become dissatisfied with their individual departments, with the lack of opportunities to perform, with what they consider inadequate training or with a lack of response from their teacher or teachers. Many students are not prepared for the pressures of the school- newcomers feel this pressure acutely. They are expected to know how to organize a forty hour week when they get here. Perhaps if there were some sort of organization orientation the pressures would be decreased to a tolerable level. Younger students are not prepared for the depth of commitment which is required of them. Our society does not require these com mitments until they are into their twenties. They are away from their homes and parents and under the pressure of professional training and competition without a great deal of guidance or support. While the Visual Arts Department is something of a breakthrough in the creative arts there is an overall lack of possibilities for creativity at the school - for exploring choreographic potential, modem forms of music or playwriting. Add to all these the loneliness, boredom, noise, insanity and haphazard conditions of dormitory life and you will have a pretty complete picture of the factors which cause a student to decide to go further than griping - to look elsewhere for training or to leave tiie arts altogether. David Wright gave the story which appears below to the Essay before he left school. As the Essay looks inward and con tinues the process of evolving an editorial policy, this story seems to express the problems of ex pectation, reality and frustration that everyone faces to some degree. It is presented as an allegorical commentary. Tommy Williams was in the Essay office to rap about problems the other day. Under his leadership, the SCA has begun to deal with problems of ex pectation, reality and frustration. He commented that students and faculty alike talk about “this school” as though the buildings were to blame. It is easy to in- stutionalize the frustrations, to search for an organic reason for everything that goes wrong. “This school is people,” Tommy said, “and what we take away is related to what we bring to the school when we come.” The expectations come in subtle ways: from the catalog, from a music teacher in high school who tells us we are great; from all the friends and relatives who have insisted that we are better “than a lot of those people I see on TV”; from all those teen age novels we read about schools, colleges, theater; from our own dayckeams and from what we have been told about the school. The reality and the frustrations are present^ and explored every week in the Essay, in the lounges, around the cafeteria tables, in the faculty meetings, in the letters we write home, in administrative meetings. Each of us - student, faculty, administrator - has develop^ our own picture of the ideal school, and each of us is left to deal with the reality. We must seek to find that line between the ideal and the real which takes us a step beyond where we find ourselves. So it comes back again to the people....that is not only where it’s at....but where It’s always been. ISN’T IT NlCg-THAT HAROLD’5 G^TTHSTG- IN SUCH A SCHOOLF RAP From Israel Continued From Page 2 20 years should get - by our standards. The children lived in the children’s house. We saw children before we knew that, and remember being struck by the freedom of the children and the parents and by the respect and love I saw from everyone for everyone. The child goes to the Children’s House at about six weeks, and then his mother goes there to take care of him. When he’s a little older the mother is free to work and the husband and wife live without worrying about their child. The kids come home on a holiday or when they ask to and sleep in their parent’s house. When they are over 18, they have quarters of their own. It seems to make for more secure people all around. - Warm Reception Everywhere - Whenever we sang we were received curiously and warmly. We were invited to eat in the homes of the members of the Kfar Witkin, a cooperative farm community near Jerusalem. We got off the bus and were claimed by whoever wanted us. I was claimed by Yachael Snadar, back in Israel after at least 10 years in America, with 5 of them spent at UCLA. I enjoyed Noa and Nochon Snadar, his sister-in- law and brother, and their children and him and they enjoyed me. Not, I might add, because I was black, for my hair or my skin, but for me. I had a ball! This is Doctor Loomsman. He is a nice man. He says I have mental problems. He says my stomach is dumping out acid because my head is screwed up. Maybe the acid is causing me to have bad trips. N0...I don’t think it’s that kind of acid. Why does my stomach care if my head has problems? Because they all work together and my head was too screwed up to tell me it was screwed up so my stomach had to do it. Thank Heavens my stomach had sense enough to teU me about my head problems. But who told me about my stomach problems? I guess my head did. Now we have just discovered what is known as a vicious circle. Why don’t we just drop Oie whole thing right here. Okay? Okay. This is this school. Now does this look like the kind of place that would screw up a kid’s head. Of course it doesn’t. Then how did it manage to screw up my head? My motoer thinks it’s because they don’t have a barber shop. I don’t think so. This school was supposed to make me into an actor. Why have I spent a semester here and never acted. Do you teach a man to lay bricks by not letting him lay bricks? Oh, don’t be silly David. Laying bricks and acting are two entirely different things. (There I go talking to myself. That’s part of my mental problem, I guess.) This school does not think I know how to act yet. My teacher told them so. This you? is his boot. Would it fit This school and this acting teacher have made me very discontent. They made me miss my girlfriend even more because they are not nice like she is. This is my girlfriend. Her name is Kay. She is very nice. I love her. She doesn’t think my mental problems are caused by long hair. I want to leave this school to be closer to her and because it hasn’t taught me how to act. It hasn’t even taught me how to lay bricks. a a a D Well, now, this is my draft board advisor. He is advising me to stay in school or I wiU be drafted...into the Army even. This is the Army. This is my head. Does it look like it has problems? My mother thinks it’s because there is too much hair . But you and I know that there is no real medical logic to that, don’t we. Don’t we? Of course we do. Now what kind of problems exist in this hairy head? Well, first, let’s examine the evidence. (I threw that in for a laugh, so how about one?) It all started when I first came to this school. I This is my teacher. His name is Doctor Jaguar. He is not the same kind of doctor as Dr. Loomsman. Doctor Jaguar is an acting doctor. He was supposed to doctor my acting. At least he gave my stomach a chance to act (up). He taught me Karate. Now I am a better actor. If I everdo a James Bond flick I’ll be all set. 9^ 9^ A ^ °V" Now do you see why I have mental problems? Napoleon (David) Wright
N.C. Essay (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Feb. 2, 1971, edition 1
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