A Clarion Call to Retain Arts
When the Irvine Unified School District announced it is seriously thinking about eliminating or charging fees to educate elementary schoolchildren in music and the other arts on grounds that the arts are “nonessential,” the cause of education reform, to paraphrase astronaut Neil Armstrong, took one giant leap backward in the name of one small step to balance the books (“Strapped Irvine Schools Advised to Focus on the Basics,” Oct. 2).
The suggestion is outrageous. Why? Because it arises from a totally impoverished philosophy of public education. To take a leaf from the book of the reformers themselves, who seem so determined to get “back to the basics,” an education in the arts has been at the very core of what it means to be “educated” for 2,500 years. The long-term lesson of history is that music and the other arts are “basic” because to be artistically illiterate is to be blind, deaf, and mute at the most fundamental level of all--the level of the human spirit.
Indeed, we have to reverse the basic assumption. The creativity, self-expression and self-discipline intrinsic to the arts are essential to the health of any society or economy. Unless our children learn these, no amount of math and science, geography and history, will avail them anything. Our children may not succeed in a high-tech world if they cannot do algebra, but still less can they succeed if their imaginations atrophy from lack of exercise.
School board President Greg Smith was surely correct, however, when he said that the recommendations of the consultants who came up with this idea are likely to encounter stiff opposition from parents.
According to a recent Harris poll, more than 90% of all Americans believe that arts education is important for their children. By a 3-1 margin, they indicated a belief that arts education should be part of the regular school budget. Nearly 70% were willing to make cuts in other budget areas (e.g., school administration and extracurricular activities) to make sure their children got an arts education.
Parents and taxpayers who care should show up at the Oct. 20 meeting of the IUSD School Board and get on the speakers list to tell the board what they think of this scheme to gut “nonessential” programs like the arts.
KARL BRUHN, Anaheim. Bruhn is executive director of the American Music Conference based in Carlsbad.
