FOCUS: Orange County Focus is dedicated on Monday to analysis of community news, a look at what’s ahead and the voices of local people. : IN PERSON : Performing a Duty to Teach the Arts : Ralph Opacic Says Teens Lack a Vital Outlet

In an arts-starved public schools system, Ralph Opacic runs an oasis.

Students with stars in their eyes come from schools throughout Orange County and beyond to attend his 8-year-old Orange County High School of the Arts, where only one out of every four who audition is accepted.

But Opacic, 35, is not quite sure whether the success of the Los Alamitos performing arts high school signals a revitalized interest in arts education or a last dying gasp. For most public school students, Opacic says, there is an appalling lack of introduction to the more sublime expressions of the human condition as rendered through art.

We are in danger, he says, of becoming a society hostile to the fine arts, a society slipping into a cultural abyss.

“I’m concerned that someday the Orange County Performing Arts Center is going to be like the old cathedrals in Europe. Tourists will walk through and ask, ‘What did people do here?’ If we don’t start with our young people and help them realize what a vital part of our culture the arts are, we’re going to be in deep trouble. They’ve already become an MTV generation; that’s their artistic influence.”

*

Opacic, founding director of the county’s only performing arts high school, a man who sang disco tunes in nightclubs during the 1970s and was a vocal soloist at the Crystal Cathedral in the early 1980s, says the consequences of arts illiteracy are easy to see.

“I don’t want to be critical of rap music, but if we don’t give young people the elements and the fundamentals of music, if we don’t tell them about melody, if we don’t teach them how to play instruments, then they’re going to resort to primitive music. That’s what rap is--it’s rhythm and words. That’s what they can understand and what they can feel. There’s a concern about rap music and the language of rap music, but where are the kids getting the alternatives?”

By cutting back on opportunities for artistic expression in public education, school districts are increasing the odds that adolescents will turn to violence and drugs, says Opacic, who has played piano since age 5.

“There is tremendous turmoil in the teen-age years. There’s all those emotions there. They are trying to find themselves.

“They’re discovering their sexuality and it can be really frustrating. Every teen-age kid needs that outlet for expression. That’s what music was for me. You can express your feelings in a song and there’s not a whole lot of risk there, because you’re doing it in the context of a performance.

“At this age, every kid wants to feel a part of something, and it’s either going to be positive or it’s going to be negative.”

Opacic, who headed the Los Alamitos High School vocal music program before founding the performing arts school on campus, said that by creating an artists community for the younger generation, educators are creating a climate of hope.

“We had kids who came from broken homes, troubled homes where they didn’t feel loved or supported, and then they came into an environment in the high school vocal music program where it became their family.

“Similarly, you have in the Orange County School of the Arts students who are struggling with substance abuse. They might be on the fringe of dealing with gangs, but they come here and they see an alternative, positive choice. They are affirmed. They are told, ‘You have talent, you have potential, you can achieve, you can be something.’ They may not have heard that before. All of a sudden they realize they have a choice.”

As public school districts continue to cut arts programs in the wake of the Orange County bankruptcy, Opacic says student art programs must be largely self-supporting. “Educators recognize the need and they recognize the importance of arts education, but they feel like they’re doing the best that they can with the resources they have,” Opacic said.

“The high school bands, the vocal music programs that are vital and alive, they probably have booster clubs that are raising from $10,000 to $25,000 each year to make sure those programs continue to exist. You have elementary school music programs that have developed arts foundations that are raising money to keep them in place. It’s unfortunate that public tax dollars are not providing for that, but while we fight that battle, the arts programs are dying. We need to figure out how to survive.”

*

The ripple effect from a lack of arts education can be seen at the high school level, Opacic says, where there are fewer students each year able to play an instrument well enough to perform in a school orchestra or band.

“The way that arts programs are being cut at the elementary school level, they’re basically starving the junior high school, middle school and high school programs. By then, it’s too late. Most 12- or 13-year-olds are going to move on to something else they can feel successful at.”

And Opacic says these arts-deprived students are increasingly defining the character and content of our culture.

“The culture of the ‘90s right now is MTV. I have teen-age girls who watch it, and their role models, their heroes, their choices of music are from that influence. Even with my influence of being immersed in the arts, it’s a battle. What will happen when these teen-agers become adults? The arts are our artifacts.

“What will our legacy be? It is frightening.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile:

Ralph Opacic

Age: 35

Residence: Los Alamitos

Education: Ph.D. in education from USC

Family: Wife, Sherry, director of curriculum and staff development in the Magnolia School District; three daughters

Background: Grew up in Annandale, Va., where he played piano and sang, dreaming of a professional career; came to California to study music at Cal State Long Beach, where he earned a bachelor’s degree; performed with the Cypress Pops Orchestra and numerous Orange County churches

On youth: “If we don’t give them tools to express themselves in positive ways, they are going to express themselves in negative ways. Look at the graffiti on walls and on freeways. Those are kids expressing themselves. If we put a paintbrush in their hands or teach them how to draw, if we give them canvases or the tools to work with clay, they probably wouldn’t have the need to do that.”

Source: Ralph Opacic; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times

Los Angeles Times