Among the many programs the legislature is looking at cutting in order to balance the budget are school arts programs. According to the Deseret Morning News, as many as 52 schools statewide could lose their arts specialist as cuts to arts education is added to a growing list of bad ideas circulated so far to balance the budget - a list which already includes brilliant brainstorms like eliminating the 12th grade and/or busing kids to and from school.
It is not as though the arts have generally been a top priority in Utah schools lately, or in the American K-12 educational system as a whole. For years now arts programs have gone through cuts during periods when states were experiencing shortfalls, typically to have only a portion of the funding restored when revenues improved again. As a result, the trend in funding for the arts has been declining for quite some time.
One does not need to be gifted artistically to benefit from an arts education. The creativity essential in the arts, if nourished, bears fruit in many other aspects of life. A society which likes to boast how much it values innovation cannot long be a leader in innovation if its people lack an appreciation for the arts and the creativity essential to them.
The time has come for the legislature to stop looking for places to cut education spending and start looking for more fair and balanced means of funding it. Restoring Utah's progressive income tax would be a good place to start.
Unfortunately, the emphasis continues to be on running government like a business, something it most assuredly is not and never will be. A well rounded education is an investment in our future that will pay back society many times over in ways both monetary and that cannot be measured. That includes the arts as well as math, language and the sciences. A vision that does not extend beyond the current fiscal year never fails to miss this fact.
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