LordoftheMorons posted...
WhoopsyDaisy posted...
Why is it important to teach it, though? All I hear is THAT it's important, but not WHY. Only a precious few people will ever use any of their art education. No one I know has learned anything in any of their arty-type classes except people who are or were in college studying art.
Consider this: The specific knowledge learned in most math classes past, I don't know, algebra is useless to most people. Then why teach it all all? The answer is that it develops problem solving skills, which is pretty much universally applicable. Similarly, the knowledge you learn in the arts is not typically useful unless you're going into that stuff, but it teaches creativity, which is important.
I do agree that incompetent teachers should be easier to fire, but developing a metric to measure the quality of teachers is pretty difficult ("obvious" metrics like standardized test scores of the students in the teacher's class don't work because that provides an incentive for the teacher to cheat, which is much more common than you would think already).
Art classes don't teach creativity, though. They'd like to, but there's still basically one right answer. The only thing they do is not mark you down if you suck or do a bad job of absorbing the lesson on perspective or whatever.
And I agree that it'd be difficult to develop a measure for the quality of a teacher, but once we have it then we can quit writing new standardized tests every year and focus on teaching.
SubDeity posted...
Because one major goal of public education is to produce strong, well-rounded citizens rather than mere economic machines, and having a basic comprehension of art and culture is a part of this goal.
Next question.
Are you suggesting that being able to draw, dance, act, and read music is a prerequisite for being a well-rounded person? If someone can't draw, are they not well-rounded?
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senorhousemouse