The Arts Journal Debate on Arts Education

This Conversation

By Douglas McLennan

For decades, as teaching of the arts has been cut back in our public schools, alarms have been raised about the dire consequences for American culture. Artists and arts organizations stepped in to try to... take up some of the slack. Foundations funded programs to take art into the schools. But producers of art aren't primarily in the education business. Schools increasingly focused on meeting basic skills benchmarks have less and less time to make room for study of the arts. And technology has spawned a vast, crowded, and alluring marketplace of creativity competing for attention. New research Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement, and State Arts Policy by RAND and sponsored by The Wallace Foundation suggests that a generation of Americans has not developed the knowledge or skills to engage with our cultural heritage. Without that engagement, the arts as we know them are unsustainable over the long run. Can anything be done?

This Arts Journal blog brought in some key thinkers in the arts to debate about arts education.

http://www.artsjournal.com/artsed/2008/11/this-blog.html