I saw artist Andrew Wyeth’s exhibit ‘Helga’ in Omaha a few years back. It changed everything I knew about art, and further proves that an arts education is important to our growth as a society.
The other day I was on the fence about cutting arts funding, but as more information funneled in, I changed my mind. A majority of the almost $700,000 dollars goes towards education.
Robert Joyce (Sioux Falls Jazz & Blues Society) sums it up in an email;
In addition, that 86 cents for each citizen sent 26 artists to 162 schools for 231 weeks, bringing arts opportunities to 35,000 South Dakota young people.
Arts education is extremly important. Students who combine an arts education (music, dance or visual) with math and science do better than students who don’t. A lot better. An extensive study done in Chicago a fews years back showed that an arts education produced students who are not only faster at understanding math and science problems, they are better critical and creative thinkers and usually breeze through college and get better paying jobs.
So why does Rounds want to cut arts funding? Who knows? Trying to figure out his clowning around with the budget would make someone sick to their stomach. The silly part about the cut is that it is so minimal, you would think he has an axe to grind with the SDAC? Maybe he does? I’m not a fan of the organization (a very long story), but I do support arts education, this isn’t about the who runs SDAC, it’s about the kids.
The money could come out of the very lucrative tourism budget without even impacting them one bit (An ad agency employee may lose their job, but oh well).
Cut a few Deadwood Casino ads, and fund arts education. It’s important.
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The reason the arts (and phys ed, and tech ed) get shafted is because there’s no federally mandated test students take every year to measure their progress in those areas.
NCLB needs to be circular filed.
What is dumb about the arts cut is that we we receive matching funds from the NEA. By not funding it, we are basically saying no to a $700,000 check from the feds. I liked Rob’s point in the KELO story;
“The amount of money that we receive from the state, from the arts council, is actually smaller than the amount of money that we pay back to the state in sales tax and use tax, so for us, we actually provide a revenue for the state rather than an expense,†Joyce said.
But Rob, taxpayer’s money shouldn’t go towards evil Blues music, don’t you know all those songs are about sex, or is it food?
Cutting out the arts is a knee-jerk reaction because people out here in middle america (for the most part) don’t see it as needed. It’s just a fancy elective for kids who will go to college and leave the state. Actually, that pretty much sums up the local attitude toward education in general around here.
Though Sibby is wrong about 99.9% of the time, he does have a good point about using a crisis for political advantage, like Bush did with 9/11. Rounds may be doing the same to cut education and covert more money over to his FTE’s and no-bid contracts. I lost what little trust I had in the man when the Argus uncovered the plane’s for personal use story.
Dude-
Funny you brought up testing, it reminded me of my art class I was in HS. The teacher graded on ‘effort’ not ability. Though my work was always the top of the class, she said I could always ‘do better’ and I got a C+ all year. But I used to do the football players ‘at home’ projects for them and they would pay me, they always got A’s. My point? It is impossbible to grade art.