Why Art?

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting drawing painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

I like this quote from Kurt Vonnegut. I wish all schools had this hanging in the school board meeting rooms.

How many kids get steered away from arts classes in schools because of the perception that study of the arts leads to a dead-end street? You need to take the sciences because it will lead to a profession in the medical profession, you need mathematics as it will lead to engineering career, you need AP writing because it will lead to better communication skills for success in college and upcoming career. “You’ll never get a job studying the arts”

Sir Ken Robinson wrote: “You were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music, you’re not going to be a musician; don’t do art, you wont’t be an artist. Benign advice-now profoundly mistaken.”

We should never make assumptions that science is not a place for creative thinking or that the arts have no room for analysis and logic. Students need both and they need to have all content taught by the best teachers.

Quincy Jones had it right…

“It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for pleasure, have strengthened problem-solving and critical thinking skills, are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, four times more likely to participate in a math or science fair…”

Now, time to get back to those watercolors…