It’s no secret that the most valued thing in almost all American public schools is, barring football, STEM. Now, am I saying it’s not important? No. That it shouldn’t be taught in schools? Of course not. That I just have some deeply-rooted hatred towards it? No! (Although, I must say, chemistry class was an unusually miserable experience).
What I am saying is that we can’t keep kicking the arts to the side in favor of it. The traditional argument against that statement is that STEM is just … well, more important. To that I say, look around you. Look at the world you’re living in. And then, think how different it would be without art.
Now, when I say “the arts” I’m sure a lot of you think of stuffy old men and their stuffy old paintings, locked away in stuffy old museums. And sure, that’s the arts. The most shining example of it? No. All it encompasses? Certainly not.
Almost everything is art. Think of the music you listen to on the car ride home. Of the house you grew up in. The decor sitting in your living room. The clothes on your body. Think of food, film, books, makeup, architecture, drawings, paintings, sculptures, instruments, anything that takes creativity to make.
All those things are art. This article, yes, the one you’re reading right now. Hi! This is art! And through this art, you’re getting to know me. Know my thoughts and feelings and opinions. Connect with a person you will probably never meet. One of the many things that makes the arts so important: Human connection.
So, after remembering, or maybe realizing, just how many things are art, imagine again what the world would be without it. There would be no chef trained in the culinary arts making your food, so you’d probably be eating the beige mush found in many futuristic films.
Speaking of futuristic films, those wouldn’t be around either. Or any kind of movie you like, for that matter. And let’s roll on back to the human connection aspect. Think of the first time you watched “Schindler’s List.” If you were like me, and had an amazing mother who introduced you to amazing films (Thanks, mom), you watched it at home. But, if you’re part of the other group, you watched it in a high school classroom, probably around your sophomore year of high school.
And let me guess. Wasn’t watching that absolutely heartbreaking, masterfully made film a lot more effective in teaching you compassion for others than readings from a dull, lifeless textbook? Didn’t it make you feel for the experiences of those people more than any lecture ever did?
That, right there, is the perfect example of human connection through art.
Every time art stirs up an emotion in you, whatever the medium, the artist has done their job right. When a painting amazes you, when a movie makes you cry, when a show makes you laugh, when the first few notes of a song from childhood stir up that familiar melancholic nostalgia in you. So many emotions are tied to and caused by art.
And besides all this deep, sappy stuff, think of just how boring the world would be without the arts? No music, instead radio silence. No books, just that previously mentioned textbook that reads like an IKEA instruction manual. No films or TV shows, just the most strictly necessary news broadcasts. And even things that might not seem like art. That video game you like to play? Yeah, that’s art too, say bye-bye. The house you live in? That’s gone too, replaced with a brand new, completely unfurnished concrete rectangle. What a steal!
Imagine all the individualism that would be lost in a world without the arts. The clothes you pick out for yourself would become the same carbon copy uniform that everybody else wears. Your car would have the most simplistic, least appealing frame possible, probably something visually akin to a cardboard box. You would no longer have whatever haircut you currently do, seeing as cosmetology is an art as well. So many things that help make you, you would disappear.
So, if the arts are as important as I’m saying they are, which I think I’ve proven at this point, why are schools so eager to abandon them? The honest, and sad, truth is the very thing this country revolves around.
Money. The never satiated desire for more money, all the time.
The arts just don’t bring in the same amount of money that STEM does, not by a long shot. And another sad truth we all know, school is not meant to foster dreams. Letting a student’s passion for the arts flourish is the least of most schools’ concerns. Public schools were created to churn out factory workers, and the way they operate hasn’t changed since. The destination may have changed to big tech companies, but the goal stays the same.
Create human robots whose only goals in life are to make money, specifically for their boss more than themselves.
And just how dim does a future like that sound?
So, I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue a career in STEM. If that’s your dream, chase it with everything you’ve got. Put your all into spending the rest of your life doing the thing that fills you with passion. And hey, have fun with the money you’ll make doing it.
But, if your aspirations lie elsewhere, if you’ve just never been the math and science kid. Is art class is the only place you ever really wanted to be in school? Chase that too. It’ll be harder to find a job, and even harder to beat out the other people vying for it. But do what you have to do. Drag yourself through the mud to make sure what you dream of isn’t squashed by somebody touting “realism.”
Because while it might not be advertised much in schools, there are so many more options for careers in the arts than the stereotypical struggling author or freelance artist. There’s a wild world of options out there, more than I have time to list.
But please, if the arts is what you want in life, look into it. Find the career you want, because I guarantee you it’s out there. Whatever we do, we cannot let the arts die. They are an intrinsic, deeply important part of society. They are what makes life interesting. And because of them, I have a voice. Through my writing, I can tell everybody reading this article not to discount the arts as a pipe dream, because they don’t have to be. And if we want to stop the rapid decline of their value, we need more artists, of every kind. Schools need to stop dropping art programs. They need to stop cutting funding, and they need to acknowledge the importance of the arts in our world.
