What About The Arts?

In January, President Obama presented Americans with his State of the Union address. Obama pressed the importance of sciences in higher-educational systems, but one “little” area was left in the dark yet again: ARTS.

Not once did Obama mention any importance of the arts systems in America, but instead refused to address the issue entirely, placing his full attention on the S.T.E.M. subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Obama kept his promise of supporting the S.T.E.M. subject areas by recently presenting California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) with a $5.6 million dollar grant “to enhance curriculum” according to the CSUMB News webpage and reporter Joan Weiner. The money will be used to “[add] 17 new courses – and [buy] the equipment necessary for those classes – and [update] nine existing courses in biology, marine science, computer science, chemistry and statistics,” said Weiner.

When actions like these are taken, it gives students earning degrees in art subjects, added stresses and skepticisms about their choice to pursue a degree in this area. I personally am majoring in Human Communications, which falls under a Bachelor of Arts degree. In an earlier class, I analyzed President Obama’s speech (yeah, ask a math major to analyze a piece of literature. I dare you!) and noticed a deep absence for arts in his future plans for our country’s educational systems.

My first reaction was not only frustration, but disappointment. The idea that arts were not seen as “important” made me, as a part of the arts community, feel equally as unimportant. As I researched more on this issue, I found many programs for the advocacy of art education in California’s educational system, including the California Alliance for Arts Education (CAAE).

The Alliance states specific laws that have been instituted within all CSU systems which states: “University of California and the California State University require the arts as a college preparatory subject for all high school students who wish to enter the state’s higher education institutions.”

“By 2006, all students entering the UC/CSU system must satisfy the visual and performing arts requirement by completing an approved year-long, sequential course in dance, music, theatre or the visual arts that is aligned with the state arts standards.”

These laws were formed five years ago, and we have yet to see much focus within arts programs since.

In January, Governor Jerry Brown issued a $500 million budget cut to all CSU system, leaving CSU’s scrambling to arrange their educational programs around the state’s monetary issues. Now, students’ four year graduation plans suddenly turn into six year plans, with increasing loan payments, and that whole “stuck in a rut” is an understatement to what we are experiencing.

To see a grant being presented to specific areas of education like science, technology, engineering and mathematics makes me envious. To see others being able to choose classes of interest to them and their career goals, when I am unable to do the same, seems like an unfair advantage.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have no doubt had a major impact on the progression of the United States as well as the world as a whole. From engineering and technological-wonders from the microwave to the iPad (RIP Steve Jobs) have all been claimed as “necessities” amongst a large percentage of Americans.

To say that art has not done the same to shape American culture would be ignorant. If you take a step back and look at our country’s history, and then imagine a country without arts, without the American flag, without a National Anthem, without an understanding of how our forefathers came to create this country, we would all be sitting on a very well-engineered couch, but life would be comparable to C-SPAN: long, boring, and confusing.

CSUMB has begun to take its path towards focusing on the Arts with recently being chosen out of 23 CSUs to host the CSU Summer Arts Program. The program features extensive, 12-14 hour work days with a large list of “highly accomplished professionals from the world of dance, music, art, theater, poetry, filmmaking, design, writing and new media” according to an article by Walter Ryce from the Monterey Weekly.

Our campus was chosen for it’s “blossoming arts program” and “great location” the latter of which is proven to us daily. Just as well as a science major can measure the depths of the Pacific or the times of the tides, an art major can create a masterpiece of the same importance.