Unexcused Absence
By Pat Boyd, Executive Director, South Dakotans for the Arts
 

There is no excuse for the absence of the arts in an American public school system.  The current economy of recession, with its cutbacks, job losses and exportation of labor to cheaper workforces, is certainly no such excuse. It is a hard-hitting reminder that we have always relied on our public education to prepare the next generation of students for the next generation of jobs.

A report by the National Center on Education and the Economy’s New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, entitled “Tough Choices or Tough Times” is critical of our test-based educational policies, finding that, “Too often, our testing system rewards students who will be good at routine work, while not providing opportunities for students to display creative and innovative thinking and analysis.”

Routine work, whether blue collar or white, describes the jobs that are being exported at an accelerating rate. This is the basis for the criticism that we continue to prepare today’s students for yesterday’s jobs. Even as we intensify our focus on science and mathematics knowledge and skills, we constrict student exercise in the innovation and creativity they will need to use them.

This report predicts that now “the best employers the world over will be searching for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth, [who are] comfortable with ideas and abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis, creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well-organized, able to learn very quickly and work well as a member of a team.” Several generations of American students have now passed through an educational system that has seen the continuing diminution of time and resources devoted to instruction and exploration in the arts.

Despite a growing body of research and evidence that the arts improve academic performance in all areas, and dramatically increase a child’s prospects for success in school, work and life, the arts have been crowded out of the school day for the students who need them most.  Another study, by the Arts Education Partnership, tracked schools in economically challenged communities, and found that arts programs keep children in school. Children who might otherwise misbehave or drop out can become enthusiastic learners. Teachers increase their effectiveness, and arts programs reduce teaching turnover in these struggling schools.

We arts advocates have spent a lot of words on the economic impact of the arts, about community growth and development,  quality of life issues, the business climate on Main Street and tourism.  We naturally tend to describe arts education with a different affection, but the economy is rapping our knuckles with a ruler to make us stop daydreaming, sit up and pay attention.  South Dakotans have been valiant in their efforts to keep arts in schools.  It is becoming an increasingly difficult debate in nearly every school district, and will only get worse as the year goes on. The recession took longer to hit South Dakota than many states, and recovery will likely come later as well. This is not the time to give up on education, and definitely not the time for the arts to drop out of school. 

Our finest argument is the economy; we must understand and use it. Contact South Dakotans for the Arts for information on the studies and reports I have referenced here, and for much more research and findings on the efficacy of the arts in education. The arts matter when it comes to educating the workforce of today, and even more importantly, tomorrow. Education propels our economic engine forward. Without the arts, we will all be left behind.