Step one: Be Loud in Defense of the Arts

Every day I wonder how stupid we are, that we spend millions of dollars on programs and studies to find out what we already know: Children who are engaged show up more and achieve greater success.

It is no secret that students receiving classroom arts instruction outperform other peers and that instruction increased their ability to create works of quality that communicated complex ideas. This is not opinion -- this is fact.

When a school system stresses the arts, it engages the minds of the students and draws them in to a larger world. Children in the band in Lowell for example, have a significantly higher GPA and attendance record than the average school population. Showing up for something they love, means they show up for the things they do not love as much and their performance is then increased in the so-called core curriculum.

But the benefits of art in the class room go far beyond such immediately obvious factors. Students engaged in the arts are more able to think and reason in non-linear ways. Intuitive, inductive, parallel and circular types of thinking are all improved by art education. While scientific and mathematical style linear and deductive thinking are vital tools in argument, rhetoric and persuasion, they are not the only tools our students need. Success in all professions requires an ability to see connections at all levels between all things.

Art is that connection. Art connects us all to our past, and relates us to future generations. Art communicates who we are, what we care about, what we feel, how we think, and what we dream. These things are not some hippy wet-dream These are the very core of humanity, and understanding them improves our ability to relate to each other, to understand each other, and to create a better future together.

Art isn't some great ideal that we make time for, or not, depending on the budget -- it is at the heart of everything that matters at all. As we de-emphasize music, painting, drawing, sculpting, poetry and dance, we snatch away our children's ability to see and reveal beauty in the world around them. So what? What is the point of beauty?

We talk an awful lot about job skills and literacy -- but what are these without beauty? Do we wish to create automatons that live for nothing more or less than money? What values do we show our children when the only thing that mattered was work and status? What point is there, when the only aesthetic is the green of the dollar bill? Who will we be if we let ourselves be defined by our politics and our jobs? Or worse yet.. what are we if we are defined by our bureaucracy?

Politicians and bureaucrats pay lip-service to helping prepare our children for a modern world, but when the time comes, they put our money to unproven programs, new-age quackery and pork. This is not a request -- it is a demand. Support art programs in our schools.

We need a Commissioner of Education who will battle tirelessly to fund art
education through private and public sources and partnerships, because of its value to every individual student and to each of our communities, now and in the future. Anything less than a passionate and vigorous defender of art programs is tragic, misguided, ignorant and foolish.