Public school boards and administrations face the thankless and impossible task of taking the leavings of public funds, waiting in line behind all other government programs, and distributing those funds in such a way as to teach students enough to succeed on the tests administered by the government who distributed the paltry funds. The challenge is exacerbated by the nation's religion of the marketplace, in which the fervently-held belief system includes the doctrine that wealth is the only value worth pursuing, and that fields of study that don't lead to wealth are not worthy of resources. This situation has led to a dynamic change in the goals of education, from a system designed to bring the accumulated knowledge of civilization to the minds of modern students, to a system designed to vocationally educate a new earning class. In this scenario, it is easy to see why administrators and school board members can easily discard aesthetic pursuit, and can just as easily mistake the spirit of competition in athletic endeavors for an atmosphere of educational success.
Church and community decision-makers would celebrate if they had the paltry funds available to educators. They fund their work entirely with donations, and must be daily advocates for the things they value. In their world, necessity dictates the funding of efforts that receive the highest popularity. They are frequently driven by the marketplace just like education, for expert opinion about what serves the long-term interests of the community or congregation are drowned out by the desire to produce whatever brings today's crowd to the church or community venue. In a budget that is completely reliant on donations, there is no place for the funding of activities that are designed to preserve a place in an historic continuum, or to present a bold, long-term approach to the future of the community.
Those of us who seek to advocate for the arts tend to speak from the passion instilled in us by our own arts experiences and educators. We also speak from a place of self-preservation, since we have a responsibility to our families and ourselves to earn a living. But we seldom speak from a sense of honest introspection about the value of what we do. We immediately take sides, knowing the rightness of our argument, without considering that some of the responsibility for the dim view of the arts might be ours to assume.
In our modern life of constantly judging the economic value of any subject, we tend to view the art we love as possessing a high value, and we estimate that our lives are richer for having encountered it. I would like to suggest that we take a more objective look at the art we produce. It seems to me that we sometimes produce art that has a low value in comparison to the cost of producing it. When we present songs in concert or worship that come from "pop" culture, and have a short shelf-life, we strain the economics of arts education. It costs far too much to provide a teacher and the necessary infrastructure to present a performance of the latest song celebrating teenage love, for another or for God. When we hear an instrumental effort that is not reflective of the best teaching methods, and only prepares a student for the playing of cheers for an athletic crowd, we have shown another way in which the cost-benefit analysis doesn't withstand scrutiny. Taking years of classes in an instrument, only to find the effort obsolete at the end of an athletic season is a poor way to spend precious resources.
My point is not to disparage the efforts of arts educators who are making decisions based on their own context. Rather, it is simply to point out that playing by the rules of the religion of the marketplace makes what we do too expensive. If, on the other hand, the singer in the school, church or community choir has enjoyed a strenuous, challenging and joyful encounter with Mozart or Bach, their life has been changed. They and their audience have received a priceless aesthetic product. If the instrumental student has passed through the responsibilities of the athletic band on the way to the rigors of the symphony orchestra, and has met Beethoven or Berlioz along the way, their journey has gone from "expensive" to "a bargain at any price".As arts educators and advocates, we must ensure that our performers and audiences experience excellent presentations of art whose value is so high that it is beyond measure. We must prove to economic decision-makers that, while commercial "art" is an expensive proposition, timeless art is priceless. We must stop relying on the arguments that the study of art makes students more disciplined, more inclined toward mathematics, more valuable to the school or community. Instead, we must take the position that we know to be true: real art changes our lives, and as the years go by, it continues to change them. We are not working toward something as ephemeral as economic success. We are working toward something more real and satisfying, a life of self-actualization and growth, characterized by an understanding of real value, rather than price tags. Let's be bold enough and excellent enough to change the world through priceless art, rather than seeking to attract the world through expensive entertainment. Then let's make our case for the necessary funding, relying on Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz and countless others to be our advocates.
