Arts education makes for better students

In our rapidly evolving technological world, the kinds of information that will be relevant and the kinds of jobs workers will be facing are not imaginable. More important than information acquisition will be the way knowledge is interpreted and implemented. This fact has implications for school reform.

Act 51 (Reinventing Education) attempts to modernize Hawai'i's educational system. Among a number of mandates, it funds students rather than schools, empowers all stakeholders at the school level, and provides incentives for training and retention of teachers and principals. Act 51 also acknowledges some value in the arts: Students are required to choose a credit among one of the three following subject areas — vocational training, an art form or a foreign language.

However, the arts offer a more fundamental partnership in learning. In a recent "Champions of Change" study predicting success in math, students who participated in music education scored roughly 10 to 15 percentile points higher than those who did not, all else being equal; 1995 SAT scores revealed that those studying arts longer than four years scored 59 points higher on verbal tests and 44 points higher on math tests.

Partnered with other subjects, project-based learning in the arts promotes the knowledge-implementation skills, indispensable in the 21st-century work world. These habits of mind cultivated by arts education are essential for the world of tomorrow. The arts engage the whole person — mind, body and spirit.

Lingle must release drug addiction funds

Gov. Linda Lingle has yet to release the funds supported by most of the attendees at Hawai'i's drug summit, money badly needed to provide treatment for drug addiction so that our campaign against ice and other drugs in Hawai'i can be won.

It should be recalled that it was Lingle's own lieutenant governor, Duke Aiona, who convened the Summit on Ice. What hypocrisy!

HB 2004 passed with bipartisan support this year, promising $14.7 million for needed drug treatment. Because of the passage of that bill, many of us set aside our efforts to pass a law that would have transferred a portion of the funds received from drug forfeitures to pay for drug treatment.

Now Governor Lingle has failed to release the promised funds, and we are told that several hundred addicts here in Hawai'i who want to overcome their addiction and who have applied for treatment are not getting it. Some of them are dying as they wait for needed treatment. Our community is much the worse for that failure.

Being a fiscal conservative is perhaps forgivable, but it is unwise and inappropriate in dealing with the horrendous affects of ice and other drug abuse.

Write Governor Lingle and urge her to release the funds provided by Act 40 to treat drug addiction, now!

Brunch on the Beach made visitors' day

Aloha! Just a quick note to let you know how much we enjoyed Brunch on the Beach in Honolulu on Aug. 22.

We live in Washington state, but we were in Honolulu helping our daughter get set up at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and we read about Brunch on the Beach in the newspaper and decided to check it out. What fun!

Very well organized, very yummy food, fun entertainment — perfect! The speakers on the platform were great. We learned things about Hawai'i and different political views that we weren't aware of before.

We will be coming back to Honolulu to visit our daughter, and we hope to arrange it so we can attend Brunch on the Beach again. Mahalo nui loa.

O'ahu desperately needs alternatives

Well, Cliff Slater finally got something right. The traffic congestion problem is about cars. Too many cars. Enough said.

Honolulu residents deserve the opportunity to make travel choices, whether by vehicle, bus, bicycle, walk, ferry, rail or all of these. Rail provides the opportunity for people to fly by the cars entangled in traffic congestion. Ferry service provides people the opportunity to cruise by all of those cars. Bicycle lanes provide people the opportunity to safely pedal by cars.

Alternatives need to be provided for people to make mobility choices.

All of these alternatives combined have less impact on our available land than building a reversible elevated roadway. Freeways require substantial amounts of land for ramps, local access roadways and parking garages.

All of the other transportation modes allow for additional capacity in both directions at all times.

This is not an either/or situation. We desperately need alternatives. We need to expand our bus service. We need to step up our maintenance on existing roads. Is just building more elevated highways the way to go? Or, should we develop a comprehensive system of transportation alternatives that provide us with meaningful mobility choices that get us to where we are going in a safe and efficient manner?

Production community should create industry

I read Wayne Harada's commentary on the current round of TV shows being filmed in Hawai'i. I agree with him that the local talent pool is highly capable and available if producers are willing to take the time to look.

But the reason the current TV shows filming in Hawai'i are, as Wayne puts it, ho-hum, ethnically white-bread plain, formulaic, etc., is due to economic forces. TV networks are notoriously unwilling to take chances during times when profitability is in decline. When times are bad, TV executives retreat to the formulas that worked before, and while history has shown that repeated formulas often DON'T work, promising to repeat a prior success sounds good to skittish stockholders and advertisers. That means, do the formats that worked before, hire the "look" that is "in," and never, ever, tell a story so engaging that the audience will be thinking about that story right through the commercials.

For Hawai'i, the solution is not to wait for Mainland productions to come and produce a TV show that showcases Hawai'i's talents but for the Hawai'i film community to band together and produce our own shows and films for Mainland and international distribution — shows that feature our local talent.

There is an economic reason to emphasize local versus Mainland production. When a Mainland film or TV show shoots in Hawai'i, it does indeed bring cash into the state. But when such a film or TV show is a success, the profits flow back to the original Mainland company. Very little of the "back end" remains in Hawai'i. In contrast, TV shows or films produced in Hawai'i and owned by Hawai'i production companies bring the back-end cash flow back into Hawai'i, to fund further productions owned by Hawai'i's production companies. Once started, such a cycle creates real sustainability of a Hawai'i film industry.

So, we can do one of two things. We can sit waiting for Mainland production companies to come here and wish they would use more local talent. Or, we can say, "Hey, we really DO have the local talent" and change emphasis to creation of a Hawai'i film industry that creates its own content and is in charge of its own destiny.

That's a pretty easy choice to make from where I sit.

Public given wrong idea on BRT

Opponents of Bus Rapid Transit like to say that the project's time savings will amount to only 1.9 minutes. That leaves the public with incomplete information and ends up being part of the back and forth of the mayoral campaign.

Artist's conception of the Bus Rapid Transit system.

BRT, set to open later this year, will be the fourth limited-stop express line offered by the city. It starts at King Street/'A'ala Park and goes to Kapahulu Avenue/Zoo. There are 10 stops in each direction along Hotel, Bishop, Aloha Tower Drive, Ilalo, Auahi, Ala Moana, Kalia, Kalakaua and Kuhio.

So, what time savings can travelers expect?

If you are going from Waikiki Trade Center to Harbor Square (Alakea Street), the BRT Limited Express Line will take 21 minutes, saving you 12 minutes over any other route.

If you are going from Ward Center to Waikiki Beach, the BRT Limited Express Line will take you 18 minutes, saving you 15 minutes.

If you are going from Union Mall to the new UH Medical School in Kaka'ako, which is a totally new stop, the BRT Limited Express Line will take 8 minutes, saving you 8 minutes over other routes and eliminating the two-block walk from Ala Moana Boulevard.

If you are going from 'A'ala Park to the zoo, you can take the BRT Limited Express line through Kaka'ako or you can choose a different Limited Express Line called Route B, with a different routing along King Street. You'll get there faster on BRT Limited Express by 1.9 minutes.

We're also pleased to note that the BRT hybrid buses will use less energy, will be quieter than the diesel buses and will cause less pollution.

For the record, over the past year, BRT rapid lines have opened in Las Vegas, Los Angeles (seven lines), Oakland, Phoenix and several East Coast cities. BRT express service with limited stops is fast and frequent service, branded for easy identification, and runs all day, not just during peak hours.

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