...and then I checked my blogroll and realized it was because of this post.
I am 100% with him when he says art ought not to be cut.
I am 100% with him when he says that we would have better citizens if economics was taught.
Neither of these points lead to his conclusions (which, I understand, are not a call to action or anything).
Friday, June 10, 2011
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I think he might just be doing this as a way of looking at cut programs from a different perspective... putting history in art's shoes. Maybe? I hope?
ReplyDeleteWhy stop with history if the criteria is "what your career requires"?
ReplyDeleteEvan - yep, see my parenthetical.
ReplyDeleteAndrew - a good question. Market exchange is not everything (although it is a tremendously important thing - as I remind my brother to make him feel self conscious of spending his time in dusty old books). If school were only about preparing people for jobs we could start youth in the labor market at 12 or so. Education ought to be more enriching than that. It's about taking an advanced animal and turning it into an enlightened human being.
Not sure whether this made a splash on your side of the Atlantic at all, but this was surprisingly big news coming out of the UK this week: Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson and Steven Pinker (and others) all on-board for the launch of a new private English college.
ReplyDeleteFor my part, I can't believe that anyone would be willing to shell out £18,000 a year to study a humanities-based curriculum, even with the star-studded staff line-up (and especially not in the current economic climate)...
I guess that may simply show that I am not representative of the intended target market. Still, while Mummy and Daddy may have enough dosh to indulge the exorbitant pursuit of your arts passion, you wonder how many budding applicants would have seen these charts?
Why is having "good citizens" a goooooooaaaaaaal again? I have a history degree; if anything, it made me more cynical of the whole "better citizen" notion.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, given how much the history curriculum is agonized over in public schools, I can only imagine how controversial a more purposeful art training program would be. "We're not going to be surrealism in this school!" "Teach the art controversy!"
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