ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702100101
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
KATHLEEN NEFF is a Vinton mom who thinks her kid's first place in a state poetry contest should get a share of the attention heaped on student athletes. She's right. And a small but insistent number of successful businessmen from around the country would agree.
Neff wrote a letter to the editor ("Kids who excel in arts are ignored," Feb. 4) bemoaning how, at a recent awards ceremony in Roanoke County, television cameras focused exclusively on three young athletes, overlooking her 16-year-old daughter and eight other students who had won art and writing honors.
"This incident really bothered me because it illustrates again how important athletes and athletic organizations are in this state, and how irrelevant are the arts."
It bothers us too - not because the arts are irrelevant in Virginia, but because they too often are treated as though they were.
The arts enrich our lives. They're valuable for their own sake, as an expression of humanity, of our aspirations to beauty. Every kid should do art and music and poetry for the fun of it. So should every adult.
But a sound arts education is also economically valuable. Indeed, it becomes imperative as repetitive, standardized tasks in the workplace give way to jobs requiring more creativity.
Interestingly, a cadre of businessmen is convinced of this, having found it out the hard way: by coping with business reversals and worker shortages. The arts, they say, comprise the fourth R of the basic education that students need to compete in the job market. And American schools aren't providing it.
James Houghton, chairman of the National Skills Standards Board and retired chairman and CEO of Corning Inc., is among those once-burned, who now believe. Corning's Montgomery County plant has become a model of the high-performance workplace likely to prosper into the next century. A decade ago, the company was ailing. The difference? Ongoing, companywide training that includes computers, graphics and design.
In an era in which technology changes rapidly, the work world needs people who can learn constantly and see problems in new ways. Yet most school systems aren't changing accordingly - certainly not fast enough.
Schools that marginalize arts education - here a part-time teacher doing it on the side, there an elective course first to be cut when the budget ax falls - are failing not just their students, but the nation's future.
So, please, school officials across the region and Virginia: Get with the program. Well-integrated into basic subjects such as math, English and science, an effective arts education not only civilizes; it helps students prepare to think and solve problems creatively. It's no frill.
On top of which, Houghton told The Christian Science Monitor recently, "Art classes are the only ones where students do their personal best, not just enough for a passing grade."
Very much as sports nurture personal excellence.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 linesby CNB