IT ALL STARTS AND ENDS WITH THE ARTS

Even more than "accumulating knowledge", education is about teaching students to THINK... about honing the ability for abstract thought. 

Problem solving is more than regurgitating formulae and punching data into a computer.. it is being able to actualize the formulae... design the computer.

We need visionaries more than we need expeditors... creators more than dispatchers.

The Classical Greeks knew that music was the most important focus of all study (in fact, those without a knowledge of it were considered illiterate for thousands of years hence in just about every enlightened society)...  and that math and science were outgrowths of it.

Believe it or not, art and music, literature and drama are all as important subjects as are math and science (the "panaceas-du-jour").. for without them, creative abilities atrophy and we end up with a society of drones... which might very well be the goal of the corporatists, the oligarchs and the plutocrats who seem hellbent on establishing a permanent underclass of indentured servants.

Milton Friedmans wettest of dreams.

It also never ceases to amaze me that so many republicans, teabaggers and right-wingers in general feel that a comprehensive liberal arts education is somehow a “liability”... that being "creative", an "intellectual" or an "academic" is somehow a “fault”…. that to be a "scholar" and to be honored as part of an “elite” group of achievers somehow makes one worthy of contempt. 

These are not pejoratives. These are things to take great pride in.

What I find even more disturbing is that these very same semi-literates insist on controlling our schools in what all evidence points to is a deliberate move to dumb this Nation down even more than it has already been (if that is even possible), not only intellectually but morally as well.

An uneducated populace is easiest to control.

We must no longer allow the thugs and the haters, those who conjure the pounding of jackbooted lockstep with every utterance to hijack the language and sciences.. our history (warts and all) and the arts... just as they have our culture.. a slimy, cynical tactic used by those craving despotic power who once (and still do) sport virtual armbands to try to lull the masses into thinking that they are somehow in danger by those who have dared read a book or go to a museum.

Filling them with ignorance, with fear, with hatred.

FDR, in similar economic circumstances to that we currently suffer knew, in his infinite wisdom, what we must relearn today.

Amongst other stimuli, he created the Works Progress Administration which commissioned artists and composers, architects and writers that not only created an American culture enjoyed by all, but introduced and made accessible to the public great works that defined a nation comprised of literate, refined, cultivated people.

Our “Greatest Generation”.

There is more to a country than just it's “economy”.

There is also a tremendous need to rejuvenate our culture and to, once again, promote and fund more Art and Music, more Literature and Theatre, and finally retake our National Identity, one that has been hijacked by "cheap imports", vapid amusement and corporate mediocrity.

It’s finally time raise the bar for a change.