Art or not

"Well, I guess you can cut the arts as much as you want, Gene. Sooner or later, these kids aren't going to have anything to read or write about." From Mr. Holland's Opus This is what we are doing to our schools, and our future, when we cut the arts. It's like bread with no salt. A coat with no seams. Walls with no paint. A wedding with no music. Sports are so often trumpeted as the thing that can bring warring societies together. Everything from soccer games breaking out in the battlefield to the glory of the Olympics, there are plenty of inspiring stories of setting aside political ideologies and territorial disputes in the name of athletic engagement. But anyone who has learned to play an instrument, sing in a choir, throw a pot, write an essay, paint a landscape, or dance a reel, has felt that same exhilaration in executing a complex sequence of steps requiring that same practiced combination of physical acumen and mental skill. The absence of art is not simply boredom. It is war. And that is what we are setting ourselves up for, in spades, if we do not train our young minds in the abstract mental skills of the arts. Whether a child can draw or sing or act, even if it's not to marketable level, to develop both sides of the brain is to open it up to possibilities that can solve the world's problems. Art is more than pictures and songs. Art is medicine. Art is engineering. Art is space travel. Art is technology. Art is life. If we cannot afford to teach it to our children, then we cannot afford a future.