One Sacramento Politician With a Pac Rim Vision

If Californians envision themselves as sentries for America on the east coast of the Pacific Rim, then the territory of the 41st State Assembly District--which sprawls up from Santa Monica, snakes through Malibu and ends in Westlake Village--is surely California’s Gold Coast. And even if the most overused words in political parlance are “leadership” and “vision,” such terms of approbation nonetheless seem to fit the rising political star who represents that glamorous stretch of American turf and surf in the California Assembly. For Sheila James Kuehl, Harvard Law class of 1978 (and only the second woman ever to win that school’s famed Moot Court competition), has a vision about politics: that the way to lead is to ask the very Americans who are successfully competing in the world economy what our young people will need to follow in their footsteps. Kuehl asked those questions, then tried to act straightforwardly on the answers. And therein lies our tale.

“I asked a group of [San Fernando] Valley entrepreneurs and executives what we in state government should be doing for them,” Kuehl recounts. “Naturally, I figured they’d ask for some kind of tax cut. But they didn’t. They’re in the multimedia and computer business, one of our fastest-growing sectors. You see their names at the end of a movie, during those endless credits. Half of the firms on the screen are located right here in L.A. But what they wanted from government absolutely floored me: ‘We need more students who study art in school. We need workers who can use all their creative tools.’ ” They also told Kuehl that, because of the intensifying internationalization of their industry, employees who speak languages other than English are valued and too scarce.

Similarly, today’s multimedia recruiters often have to import computer artists from abroad because so few are being bred at home. They blame our schools for the intellectual crop failure. “Experts know,” Kuehl explains, “that arts as well as foreign languages are a necessary component of a fully educated person.” But what Kuehl discovered was that California state education law required public school students to take only one course in one or the other of those diverse fields. So she took it upon herself to trot through our supremely politicized state Legislature a minor cultural escalation: a bill to require all public high school students to complete at least one course in both areas before graduation. Hardly a curriculum revolution, to be sure, but a nice splash of common sense astride the Pacific: While it did not require students to study art or a foreign language extensively, it did require them to try both subjects at least once.

And such a simple idea sailed through California’s political establishment, right? Not so fast, PacRimsters. In fact, it was hammered, especially by legislators who view a foreign language requirement as an unpatriotic, divisive rebuff to the primacy of American English, or who regard anything remotely artsy as corruptively, disruptively leftist. Or both. In the end, Kuehl’s modest proposal was flat-out vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson, who declaimed: “This bill is unnecessary.”

Really? World economists and observers who have faith in Asia’s capacity to ride out its current economic downturn invariably point to such powerful fundamentals in these cultures as strong public education systems. Early in their education, Korean and Japanese kids are exposed to not just English but art and music, too. In most major cities in China, English is taught from the third grade on. Comments Russell N. Campbell, director of UCLA’s Language Resource Program: “How seriously do most Asians take foreign language education compared to us? Sheila’s bill, while a start, is actually ridiculous compared to where they are.”

Kuehl agrees: “It’s such a jingoistic notion, that we want to be only fluent in our own language. That’s the kind of arrogance that goes before the fall. And art, because it encourages free thinking, unnerves some politicians. They feel art is something dangerous.”

To survive in the world marketplace, our workers, present and future, will have to be multidimensional, flexible and intellectually supple. These days, economic value is a product not just of labor and capital but increasingly of knowledge. Art education advances analysis, synthesis, evaluation and critical judgment; it enriches vital thinking skills. And language study enables the mind to cope with different symbolic systems, whether verbal, mathematical or auditory. It helps us to get out of our own heads and into others’.

The old “Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” television series, where Kuehl got her start, may not have been true art, of course, but costarring as Zelda Gilroy, Kuehl was memorable as the young girl with brains, drive and ambition. Critics back then agreed that Kuehl was well cast and, as life follows art (or at least popular entertainment), many sense that she seems shrewdly cast now.

Kuehl says: “California must maintain its current status as a center of world trade for the United States and the Pacific Rim--and as the center of multimedia arts and entertainment for the entire world. Given the globalization of commerce and the technological transformation of the arts, our children must be given the opportunity to work and thrive on the cutting edge.” Her new role as a wake-up trumpet player on the PacRim watch may make her a star again.