No Strings

The news dismays but does not surprise. Budget stress is leading school districts in Central Virginia to curtail or eliminate programs in the arts. The local situation probably reflects national trends.

Schools do not want to cut their core academic missions, and must not. The search for monetary savings leads to items considered extracurricular. Yet although the Three R's define the fundamentals, the arts remain essential to the education of the whole person. Schooling purged of the arts resembles training.

Is training important? Of course it is. But education demands more. The arts enhance the human experience. Culture is debased in part because education in America never has given the arts their due. Indeed, while the creation of special schools for the arts is a very good thing, the schools imply that the arts exist outside the regular curriculum. The so-called arts community bears some of the blame. A tendency toward superciliousness undermines its cause. Transgressive is a silly attitude.

In an ideal world, the arts not only would be taught as electives -- band, for instance, or dance -- but would be incorporated into academic standards generally. A course in World War II and its antecedents ought to include introductions to Picasso and Shostakovich. It is impossible to understand our world without having an acquaintance with classical sculpture and Renaissance painting. Study should not be limited to Western sources, either. Other civilizations have produced art of beauty and depth.

Difficult times compel difficult choices. We understand. No school is going to fully fund violin lessons while pruning English and math. We also remain dubious of spending on bureaucracy and of costly technological adventures. When arts education takes a hit, the victims include not just students and teachers but society itself. The nation needs sweeter sights, sweeter sounds. This may be the most futile editorial every written.