K-12 + The Arts = The Future of Innovation

By Alexander Ostroff

Technology has accelerated our society to hypervelocity. Public and private educational institutions have launched an unprecedented effort to make sure that every student does well in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Makes perfect sense, these subjects give birth to all technology. Moreover, America must compete and when it comes to STEM our educational system is way down the list in comparison to other countries.

Educational funding is finite so administrators have been given (or have given themselves) the green light to make room for STEM. The bloodiest victims of this diamond encrusted chainsaw have been the arts. Private schools have a financial advantage, at least that’s the assumption. In reality many private K-12 institutions have followed the same blueprint; drastically defunding the arts in order to focus on STEM.

The reasoning seems logical enough: the future is based on STEM, the highest paying jobs will be in STEM, and therefore STEM should be the priority. Ironically, by eradicating the arts from K-12 we will destroy exactly what STEM hopes to achieve. Innovation.

Today we use advanced technology to build more advanced technology. The role of the human being in this process is increasingly that of feeder of information and data. The great innovators of the past had to create everything from scratch. The Wright brothers did not test aeronautical theories on a computer. Nicola Tesla, perhaps the greatest inventor in modern history, pushed his mental faculties to the edge and beyond. Einstein didn’t have an app to help him, only his brain and a piece of chalk. Edison had his mind wrapped around everything that came out of his lab. Entrepreneurs of the past were also innovators. John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie are a few examples of self-made businessmen who built entire industries. All of these disrupters had countless disadvantages over the innovators of today and yet, relatively speaking, accomplished far more. In terms of innovation, the 18th to 20th centuries brought more changes to the world than at any other time in modern history. Why?

Neuroscience is revealing the powerful impact that the arts have on the developing brain, when neural connections are rapidly being generated. The arts offer not only expression and emotional well-being, they are deeply cognitive and develop critical thinking skills for the future. The arts enable us to really see and feel the human experience and explore different ways of thinking.

Innovators in the past were not distracted by the internet or mass media. Reading and the arts were the only form of entertainment, even for average people. It’s easy to assume that life was simpler back then and more time was available for the arts. On the contrary, every professional and personal activity required more time and effort. This magnifies the further back we go. For innovators the arts were not merely a form of entertainment, but also a means to relax, relieve stress and set the mind free.

The arts help develop the most important skill of them all: a powerful imagination.

We have become a society obsessed with the acquisition and regurgitation of information and data. Instead of teaching students how to use their brains to blaze new paths, our educational system is pushing standardized tests and rote memory; essentially transforming students into human hard drives.

Einstein once said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

From an early age Einstein was a dedicated violinist. Later in life he took up painting. Both of these activities were critical to his work in physics. Einstein himself said: “After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are always artists as well."

The arts train the brain to develop the process of imagination and creativity. Given the opportunity to be unrestrainedly creative, a child will develop a way of thinking that is best suited for innovation, regardless of what profession they eventually go into.

The arts also play a critical role in battling the single greatest threat there is against humanity. Stress. Exposed to enough pressure, the most brilliant and capable person can be rendered dysfunctional. As the population increases and resources decrease, the fight for a “piece of the pie” is driving global stress levels off the charts.

Art Therapy has been scientifically proven to be extremely effective in reducing stress and enhancing well-being. Working on an art project takes your mind off of what’s stressing you. Studies have shown that focusing the conscious mind on a creative task offers the same health benefits as daily meditation.

We have a duty to teach our children about the value of freedom, and the importance of doing everything possible to preserve it. Exposing them to the arts at an early age is a critical first step. An enlightened, thinking society cannot be suppressed and controlled. Freedom must be felt and experienced by a young mind otherwise it will remain an amorphous concept.

The arts promote thinking. Seems a bit obvious? Not if we notice that thinking is rapidly being replaced by reacting. Government and the multinational corporations that employ it is thrilled that we are concerned about threats to our freedom of speech, because it takes our attention off the real threat—endangerment to our freedom to think. After all, speech comes from thought. It’s far easier to have psychiatry label daydreaming and creativity a mental disorder, to be chemically treated until rendered harmless. It’s far easier for the powers that be to defund and/or remove the arts from K-12. Once our natural human curiosity and desire for intellectual enlightenment is extinguished, they will no longer need to expand resources to keep us in the dark. We’ll be there without noticing it.

What does the future hold if educational institutions will continue to view the arts as a nuisance?

The theory of singularity predicts that one day artificial intelligence will supersede human intelligence. At that point the human mind will no longer be necessary or even relevant.

What makes this prediction frightening is the insufficient lack of fright it evokes. Perhaps society wants autonomy from itself. Contemptuous of the intangibility of the spiritual and chronically dissuaded from individuality, society will embrace singularity as means to free itself from introspection. Imagination will become a liability. Social discourse will be reduced to an exchange of data, instead of an exchange of ideas. We will emulate our masters by judging each other by numerical scores, instead of our unique traits and abilities—the very elements that built civilization in the first place. We will enter a super advanced version of the Dark Ages. A cynical and pessimistic view of the future? Well, it’s already happening.

We have the power to prevent this—as long as we choose to use this power. The arts train our minds to never accept a constricted consciousness as being a normal. The arts promote the very thing that makes us human. Individuality. If we lose that, we lose everything.

From Kendall to Sara:
Alicia Minshew’s Rise above ‘Soapy’ Stardom

By Mende Smith

A conversation with actress Alicia Minshew reveals that life after daytime television can be beautiful. Born and raised in the South Florida sunshine, Alicia was the third of four girls. A minister’s daughter, she began acting and performing plays for her family and soon realized that the acting bug was going to stay with her all of her life. Cast regularly in community theatre productions and high school musicals, young Minshew received a musical theatre scholarship to Indian River College. Alicia believed her next spot would be on Broadway.

“I knew at a very young age that I wanted to act,” Alicia said. “I just remember saying I actually wanted to be on Broadway. I wanted to be a theatre actor, and it was something my parents always supported.”

Alicia landed her first commercial while still in high school. And although she did attend almost two years of college, once she started making money doing what she truly loved, college aspirations faded out like the small set lighting of the local theatre and the spotlights on her were ever-growing. As an MTV-style VJ on a small satellite TV show, she really got the fever. “I said, ‘You know, the heck with college. I‘m making money.’ So, I started acting classes and eventually moved to New York City with my boyfriend at the time.”

In New York, Alicia found an intensive acting school. The William Esper Studio prepared her for television while she made a living doing commercials for her first year in the big city. Soon after Alicia's first film role with actor Richard Lewis and a few indie projects, she auditioned for All My Children. The soap opera set was soon to be her professional home away from home. Cast as Erica’s daughter, Alicia found herself on stage with daytime TV icon, Susan Lucci.

“When I auditioned for All My Children, it was kind of a secret role. They didn’t really tell us who it was going to be. I think they wanted to keep it a secret. So when I finally got the part, they said, ’By the way, you’re playing the part of Kendall Hart, Susan Lucci’s daughter,’ and then I got nervous. [Laugh] Because she’s the queen bee, she’s the queen of daytime, and I wasn’t sure how she would react to me. Thank God she is an amazingly sweet, grounded, awesome woman and kind of embraced me from day one and we’ve been friends ever since. It was definitely my first big job,” Alicia said.

For almost a decade she played the role of Kendall Hart, memorizing a 30- to 40-page script every single night before filming the next day. The makings of steady work in television came with a price. Alicia worked through the last era of daytime TV, when there were fewer cable channels drawing viewers from prime-time stations. From there, she moved into the film industry.

“It’s funny,” Alicia said. “When I first got the job, I was happy … people make fun of soaps and, listen: there’s silly story lines, people come back from the dead, there’s evil twins, all that stuff. But, if you can kind of just suspend your belief, act like it’s real and have fun with it, it’s a really fun gig.”

Alicia never thought her first TV gig would become a 10-year role. She said she had hoped for three years and held fast to the idea of moving on after that, but the lifestyle that soap opera stardom afforded her proved hard to leave.

“Once you’re in it and you have this lifestyle and you’re working with these people that become your family, it’s a hard job to walk away from,” Alicia said. ”It was inevitably going to come to an end. I watched a ton of other soaps slow down and get cancelled. It was a long time before our show did, but we all knew it was on its last leg.”

By the last season of All My Children, Alicia had already given birth to her first child and was contemplating her withdrawal from the role before the show was cancelled. She recalls planning to leave the show when her contract ended, longing to “spread her wings” by trying different things. When she left the show, there were tears. The family that Alicia had been working with every day for years was coming to an end.

“I was sad for the fans because the fans are really die-hard and really love the show, but there was also a part of me that was excited to start this new chapter,” Alicia said.

The auditions that followed came easier then. As a seasoned television actor, Alicia embodied a new confidence in her abilities after acting every day for the past 10 years. She was still challenged by being “the soap actress,” and so part of her life after All My Children was focused on reinventing herself as an actress, not “just the girl who played on the soap.”

“People still see (me) as the actor who played Kendall Hart, so I am trying to do other things and move past that,” Alicia adds. “At least my acting muscle was being used every day.”

Alicia was glad to learn that she landed one of her film roles last year because the producer was a fan of All My Children, and felt that casting Alicia in her American love story Desires of the Heart was a little bit like paying it forward for the show’s fanfare. Desires of the Heart, screened this year at the Cannes film festival last night.

“When I go on auditions, I have casting directors say, ‘We really loved All My Children,’ and I do think that audiences are kind of used to seeing people cross over now. We have reality stars, people from American Idol who are doing TV shows, and I think people are getting used to seeing different personalities in TV and movies now, which is great for people like me.”

And although Alicia is moving from the face of daytime television to the big screen, she is still an active mom to a 4-year old. While Alica was wrapping up the show, Willow volleyed between Minshew’s husband and their “wonderful nanny.” She recalls how fortunate she was to have a team for Willow’s early years. Today, Alicia plans her working schedule around her daughter’s birthday parties and family events. She said all the juggling can sometimes become a struggle, but she wears her life well.

“I think it’s really about balancing. When I’m in work mode, that’s really what I focus on and when I’m home with (Willow) and taking her to her gymnastics classes, I’m all about her. Again, it was harder in the beginning but now I've kind of found my groove. I finally found my groove.”

Dancing is another passion that Alicia has pursued since she was a child. Whenever she gets a chance to get out on the dance floor, she said, she is right there. She said that if she was not an actor, she would have become a professional dancer. In her spare time, Alicia takes classes and dances with her daughter. Her grandmother, now 103 years old, dances at family gatherings and parties, too.

“I guess it is in the genes,” Alicia said with a laugh. ”We could all learn something about celebration from my grandmother.”

Alicia's career has taken her from New York City to L.A., to Atlanta and even Canada. Her husband, Richie Herschenfeld, owns a string of restaurants in New York. Alicia said she can work as an actress anywhere!

In one of her most recent, diverse roles, on Crystal Chappell’s lesbian-centric web series Beacon Hill, Alicia plays one of the lead roles, Sara, a reporter who is very much in love. Alicia described the script as Dallas meets The West Wing.

“There is some really great writers working on this show,” Alicia said. ”I got to work with some people that were on All My Children with me and I got to work with people that I’d never met but whose work I’d always admired, especially Sarah Brown, who plays my girlfriend. She was on General Hospital and I always loved her work, so it was really cool to meet her and get to work with her for a while. Beacon Hill is streaming now on the Beacon Hill website. And Season 1 DVD will be available later in the year. It was really fun and different. I had never done a Web series before.”

Alicia credits her family with being her biggest influences. Her parents supported her through the ups and downs of her career, emotionally and financially. Growing up with their support, she said, saved her. She aspires to be as great a parent to her daughter as her parents and grandparents were to her.

“My grandfather was really the only other actor and performer in my whole family,” Alicia adds. “He used to do Vaudeville and he used to put on little shows, and we used to kind of sing and dance and do silly little shows together. So I think I would watch him perform and that inspired me: ‘Oh, I want to do what Grandpa’s doing.’ He only did it at local theaters and stuff, but I thought, ‘This is really cool!"

When asked if she would do any of her life differently, Alicia said no, adding that she has been blessed with a great support system and credits her close-knit family for her success. She offered advice to young actors, saying if they share her love for the craft, than they should never give up.

“Not to sound cliché,” Alicia said, “but you really have to believe in yourself because it did take me several auditions and several acting classes and several restaurant jobs before I got the steady job on All My Children. I just had to believe in myself and be very, very persistent and don’t take things personally. Just because you didn’t get the job doesn’t mean you’re not good. It just means that you weren’t the right person for the job but you’ll be right for something else. So I really believe you have to do it because you love it. Don’t do it for the money, don’t do it for fame. Do it because you love it and just be persistent. Just keep at it, keep at it, keep at it.”

Alicia feels just as passionate about education as she does about her acting career. The community literacy support organization City Year is one of her favorite ways to give back.

“I actually learned about (City Year) when I was in Los Angeles,” Alicia said. “I actually visited one of the schools in Los Angeles and…I've just reconnected with the City Year here in New York. …City Year is…an organization that finds low-income schools where the dropout rate is really, really high, and it’s this program built to keep these children in school. So when I was in California, for instance, I went to a school in L.A. that was not in a very safe neighborhood and it was just a lower-income school. (City Year is) a really wonderful program that … encourages the children to do the after-school programs and to do something good with their time after school, and they’re basically just trying to get the kids to stay in school. The organization is making leaps and bounds for these kids.”

Now, Alicia fanbase spans from TV to the web, active Twitter users, and to the community of education.

“I love that even though the projects I am working on now is not a soap, the fans just want to be supportive,” she said. “So I think for that, I have to just have a lot of gratitude to the fans…soap fans are the most loyal fans and even if you move on from soaps and do other projects, they are always there to support you and that’s another thing I’m really lucky to have, is people that support the new things that I work on.”

In the years since portraying Kendall Hart, Alicia has come full circle in grace and beauty. Her story offers hope to the modern American family, to the continuing study of acting, and to the brightest of television’s rising stars.

To watch Beacon Hill click here and for more information about City Year, click here

Photocredits: Top Photo: Peter Hurley, Desires of the Heart Photos Marayann Bates 

Top 5 Expected Changes To The iPhone 6

By Kia Dargahi

Just a few hours short of WWDC, we know that Apple are about to heat things up with some new software, iOS 8 and OS 10.10 being the stars of the show. This being said, a new iPhone won’t pop up at Apple’s yearly tech showcasing. This hasn’t stopped the rumor mill going crazy with iPhone 6 leaks however including the supposed back housing. There is a lot to be learned merely from this back panel as well as a few rumors of features of this phone and I’ll be naming the top 5 most probable and to some extent beneficiary changes to the iPhone 6 so let’s kick it off with number 5:

5. NFC

This particular rumor appears nearly every time a new iPhone has been mentioned, dating back to the iPhone 5 (that was 2 years ago!!). The seemingly ancient technology has allowed for third party accessories to easily sync with the phone with the battery draining of Bluetooth or the nuisance of cordage. The rumor has a little more backing to it in that if the above image is indeed the back housing, there is a cutout in the Apple logo which would indicate a pretty ideal location for an antenna of some sort or in this case, the location in which NFC would be effectuated. All in all, it appears that NFC accessories is just a royalty to users but it has been a feature missing from iPhones but present in the competition for some time. Following this precise trend, let’s move on to number 4.

4. Water/Dustproofing

I personally think that this is the least likely of the list to make it onto the final product (perhaps we’ll see this on the iPhone 6S as an incentive to upgrade). This being said, the android competition has recently made water and dust proofing somewhat of a norm on flagships such as the Xperia Z2 or the GS5. Having such a practical feature on an iPhone, even if limited water/dust proofing, would make the iPhone a better rounded product for the mass markets and would allow for an incentive for android users to switch over to Apple’s flagship. Common in nearly every major revision to an iPhone’s design, let’s move on to number 3

3. Better Form Factor

It seems that the phrase “the new iPhone is blank percent thinner and blank percent lighter” is somewhat of a norm to the major design updates to iPhones. In the photo shown above, an alleged iPhone 6 aluminum mold (consistent with the first photo of the back shell) is being compared to all previous iPhones. The rear shell is allegedly 6mm in depth, a considerable drop from the iPhone 5S’s 7.6mm depth. The result is an ultra-thin handset with, more importantly, rounded edges. I myself use an HTC one and can appreciate its curvature, as it feels excellent in hand. When I hold iPhones for extended periods of time, I notice that my hand starts to cramp and is remarkably uncomfortable in comparison to my android device. These newly rounded edges and overall increase in size should prove better to hold in hand and use in general, but we’ll save the size increase for another number… Let’s move onto number

2.2. New and Improved Camera

Take a look at the cameras of the iPhone 5S and alleged iPhone 6 in the photo above; notice anything different? That’s right! The iPhone 5S has a dual LED flash while the iPhone 6 appears to only have one. “Are they mad? Have they gone completely bonkers?” I thought the same too at first glance; however, with a recent patent release from Apple, the one LED flash sort of excites me. Apple is supposedly preparing a sensor that will be able to capture colors so well even at night that a regular flash will suffice and in fact will complement the new camera. This, in a nutshell, means that the camera will be hugely impressive, even though it is rumored that it will remain at 8MP. If anything, it’s a good thing that Apple isn’t caught up in the MP specs race with the other android competitors and appears to be taking an HTC route, as I don’t think that anyone will argue that the iPhone takes great looking pictures and videos. So we’ve finally made it, I hinted at number 1 earlier so perhaps the surprise element of it isn’t quite there but we’ll be keeping true to number 1 right now!.

1. Increase in Screen Size

Man oh man I never thought that I’d see the say that Apple finally increase the size of their phones significantly. The bump up from 3.5 inches to the 4 inches of the iPhone 5 was a joke to say the least. In comparison to the android titans of today, the iPhone 5S appears to be a toy made for a child; it is way too small in the current market. Heck, even in 2010 handsets were around 4.3 inches big and Apple was still adamant on 3.5 inches (but those were the days of Steve Jobs may he R.I.P.). Who knows, if Jobs was still around today, we may not even have had the increase from 3.5 to 4 inches! But I digress, This screen size is significant in a number of ways. First and foremost, it is evidently important in that there will ultimately be a more user friendly feel to the device in that your fingers will not be cramped in trying to type even the simplest thing (don’t try and convince me typing is easy on iPhones, it just isn’t). The 4.7 inch screen is a great size for a device and has been seen on previous handsets such as the Moto X and HTC one, phones that have received praise for their feel in hand. There is no doubt that Apple will use the increase in screen real estate to their advantage, perhaps by adding an extra row to their home screen just as they did with iOS 6 and the iPhone 5. All in all, if there was ever a reason that I left iPhones, it was the screen size, and now that it’s relevant in size once more, who knows, I may be due for an early upgrade…

In conclusion, Apple is trying to draw attention to its flagship once more by adding elements that honestly should’ve been on the previous iterations of the iPhone. Updates such as increase in processing power were somewhat evident and were thus left out of this list as these are more or less novel additions to Apple’s cellphone. So, are you excited for the imminent launch of the iPhone 6 (rumored to be early September)? Not impressed by Apple’s improvements? Chime in down below!

U.S. Exclusive with Actor, Guile Branco!

By Bridget Brady