Art Advocacy

Dear School Board's of America,

            I’m writing with the express intent of informing you of the absolute necessity of keeping school art programs open in our schools. Art is a necessary learning experience for the following two reasons: 1) Art is the means to understanding the aesthetic experience and 2) Aesthetic values relate to all other values.

            Art is the key to the aesthetic experience, an experience that as previously mentioned cannot be covered in any other subject. Think for a moment about your childhood art experiences. Perhaps you were in a classroom learning to paint with watercolors, or at home being taught by your Mother. Reflect on the experience of applying paint into the subject of something you loved. It might have been a rainbow, a house or an explosion. Art, or the aesthetic experience is the act of taking that thing, that emotion and placing it into a work of art, allowing us to separate ourselves from that experience and see it abstractly. You can’t get that same experience, that same ability from solving a math problem, or writing an essay. It is only the aesthetic experience that can give us this.

            The Second reason Art is so essential is that Aesthetic values learned from art relate to all other values. Everyday we and our children are constantly exposed to thousands of images relating to the fields of advertising. You can’t walk, drive or bike anywhere without seeing at least one add telling you to vote for this candidate, buy this healthcare, or eat here. Each of these advertisements are created by an artist with a background deep in the aesthetic experience. Because of this it is essential that we teach our children from a young age to interpret and understand the images that assault their senses from every angle so that they can make educated decisions about their daily life choices and not be swayed by what looks the prettiest.

     

I hope that before you make a decision that will affect the children placed in your care you will consider the reasons I have listed for keeping art as a vital part of our schools curriculums. Let us not seek to squash out the creative imaginations that fuel our youth, but instead help them to reach above and beyond as those who have gone before this. Everything we have become and we know is because people were able to separate themselves from reality and see something greater.

Sincerely,

Ashley Kaye Nelson