Where is all the art going?

The school systems in California have been seeing a great deal of trouble over the past few years. Mainly in the form of budget cuts that affect many different aspects of the school system. At a college level it is raising the price of tuition while lowering the number of available classes. Being a college student myself, I have personally been affected by this. It has caused many protesters to fight back, using the wave of the recent occupy movement for their forward momentum.

There is also another big problem, the sizes of classes are increasing, which means the amount of individual time a teacher would want to help students is slim to none. This could mean a depreciation of actual learning for the students, which makes even less sense considering we are paying 20% (this is from 2009, its probably more now) more than we had to before. More money for less education!?!



Lets trickle down and see how the budget cuts affect k-12 in California. For one thing schools are forced to cut corners to make ends meet. This means using outdated textbooks.

Imagine a teacher saying this:

 "So class, looks like the world is round, how many of you figured that out after your reading last night?"

Having multiple jobs for single teachers instead of hiring someone who specializes in that aspect:

"Hi, I'm Mr Johnson, I'm your vice principal, janitor, librarian, English teacher, basketball coach and Principal!"

There is also a lack of available seating for overcrowded classrooms:

"Ok bobby, you sit on that windowsill, but be careful because the window is open and we really can't afford a lawsuit..."


This also causes an increase in home-schooling, which in itself isn't necessarily bad, but one of the most important things about school that may not be realized until later is learning social skills. Not every adult will use trigonometry later in life, but at some point you're probably gonna have to take or give orders from someone. Transportation is affected as well, as schools find it hard to maintain and fill school buses, but on the bright side, all that walking should decrease the child obesity problem we have in America.

Wait a second... don't they have McDonald's in Oregon?!?

Now there is also the problem of classes being cut. The First programs on the chopping block are the physical education classes, the music classes, and the art classes. For someone like me, who is advocating bringing art to the mainstream, basically everybody, this is especially heartbreaking. If the school districts show little faith in the importance of art, the students are going to grow up thinking that an art education is useless and unnecessary or even unreachable.

Just a few months ago, my brother told: "That's cool that you're an artist, I'm not smart enough to get it."

Me: "Yes you are... and you have better grades than I ever did in middle school and high school!"

My brother likes cats...I don't know why

Art to him is a bunch of intellectuals devising new ways to mess with people and then call them idiots for not understanding the work. Indeed there probably are people out there that do that, but that's not exactly a normal artists way of thinking... that's more of a smart asshole way of thinking. Yet I can't blame him for his preconceived notions of art, he never had any form of art education (I took it upon myself to teach him and he enjoys it now more, but not as much as me or my sister). By the time he started going to pubic school, budget cuts were well under way, and art to him now is as foreign as an Facebook account would be for my great-grandmother!

This blog is just a fraction of the what I have to research and say about the state of art education in California so look out for more... to be continued...