Although traditional teaching techniques are important, students respond well when words in textbooks and problems on chalkboards have a more hands-on approach.

The Selma City and Dallas County Schools both have found ample manners to bring life to lessons of distant cultures or times of the past.

Meadowview Elementary and Cedar Park Elementary students have learned about the dulcimer, a 19th century instrument, as well as how to play it.

Tipton-Durant Middle School students spent five days engrossed in poems and music of the Harlem Renaissance era.

And students participating in these programs agree that without the hand-on approach to learning, they might not remember as many facts.

Programs like these, along with grants like the Alabama Black Belt Arts in Education Initiative through Alabama State Council for the Arts, have made school less like, well, school.

In a time of proration and budgeting cuts, and concerns of arts programming receiving less attention than math and sciences, the Selma City and Dallas County Schools have proven arts education is, and will be, important curriculum.