The Arts and Education

In my previous role as the Executive Director of an art museum in rural Appalachia I dealt with a number of issues relating to the arts, poverty and education. One of the principal concerns I had is how we as a society encourage participation in arts and cultural activities. The demographic profile of arts and culture consumers strongly suggests that they tend to have a college degree, higher than average incomes and other similar quantifiers.

We know that all people have the capacity to enjoy and appreciate the arts. Socio-economic status should have no bearing on who participates. But for many reasons, it does. Education, acculturation, familiarity and comfort level certainly play a part. These are the same quantifiers which often predict a person’s economic competitiveness.

While official US statistics suggest that the US literacy rate is 99%, the standards for this are despairingly low. Contrary to the official statistics, one recent government study demonstrated that between 21% and 23% of American adults were unable to locate information in text or could not make even low-level inferences from printed materials, and many were unable to process comparatively simple pieces of written information. In short, lowering the standards may make the official statistics look better, but it won’t help our children prepare for their future.

So what can we do as a society to change this? The proverbial 3 R’s alone are insufficient. All too often they are invoked as cover for budget cuts and bias. We should start by recognizing the importance of art, theater and music in our development as human beings. Studying the arts aids in developing our critical analytical abilities, it increases our ability to think creatively and in many ways it reinforces all facets of learning. If our children are not exposed to art, literature, theater and music, we are placing them at the back of the line in the competitive global economy.