Needed: Organic, Thriving Wonder

Published on July 22, 2011 by IAM

Last week, we came across this article at The American Spectator, in which the contributor calls into question the value of arts education for at-risk, inner-city youth. As an arts organization whose values are marked by the belief that goodness, truth, and beauty – especially as found in the arts – are vital for human flourishing, we, of course, took issue with the posture and conclusions set forth therein.

Thankfully, we are a community of thoughtful and articulate artists and creative catalysts, and one such artist, Kendall Ruth, has written a thoughtful response to this piece. We are thankful for his permission to share it here.

~   ~   ~

There are numerous angles of approach in response to so many things that are simply wrong in Christopher Orlet’s assessment of Arts Education in “Needless Things,” published by The American Spectator (July 15, 2011). In essence, he uses a visit by British Royalty to Los Angeles’ Inner-City Arts as a platform to criticize Arts Education to low-income children, summarily saying, “arts education is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

What is the problem underneath the problem? Is it that Orlet seems to have no place and, therefore, no understanding of the role of Art in the shaping of a whole human? Or a whole culture? Maybe it is the outright dismissal of research that has, against all attempts to find another explanation, shown that “arts-engaged low-income students are more likely than their non-arts-engaged peers to have attended and done well in college, obtained employment with a future, volunteered in their communities and participated in the political process by voting?” (The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, May 2011, The Case: Arts Education outcomes; p. 18)

When Orlet contrasts Arts Education and Trade Skills – “Of course, what inner city kids really need is for a trade unionist to 'give back' and take them on as apprentices and teach them practical skills…” – it appears to be another antiquated Industrial Revolution response to poverty: we need more utilitarian humans to do the work we aren’t willing to do ourselves. The issue isn’t an assumption that Arts Education equals wasted time and gives useless skills to impoverished children. The disturbing assumption is that there is no Art in Work. A good tradesman – be it an electrician, carpenter, machinists, plumber or other – will say there is a finesse to doing the job well. An Arts Education teaches the creative problem solving, conceptual thinking, and mathematical integration necessary to thrive in these fields. Certainly there are plenty of craftsmen that never had formal contact with the Arts, but underneath their work is the expression & application of human creative skill and imagination essential in the definition of Art.

During my years as a carpenter, in which I did everything from cutting two-by-fours for the framing crew to replicating a 19th century intricately designed dining chairs, we had a saying that anyone can throw the words “Carpenter” on the side of truck but that doesn’t mean they know how to design and shape wood like a true craftsman. For that it takes not only basic skills but also an ability to explore and conceptualize in a manner inherent to the Arts.

Wendell Berry, a man both familiar with the hard work of a Farmer and the hard work of becoming an award winning Poet, wrote: “Real – that is, living – art and culture…rise from and return to action, the slightest as well as the grandest deeds of everybody’s everyday life. How much excellence in ‘the arts’ is to be expected from a people who are poor at carpentry, sewing, farming, gardening, and cooking? To believe that you can have a culture distinct from, or as a whole greatly better than, such work is not just illogical or wrong – it is to make peace with the shoddy, the meretricious, and the false.” Instead of perpetuating a false dichotomy that sees the welfare of a people in opposition to the Arts, he weaves their dependency upon one another, proposing that excellence in skills, regardless of context, not only creates excellence in the Arts, but the Arts can bring out the best in Work, be it slight or grand.

The children involved in Inner-City Arts and other similar programs, at day’s end are children and, therefore, are endowed with an extraordinary capacity for being creatively fully human. In an essay titled “Playing with God,” Gregory Wolfe, though not speaking to the issues of impoverished children, makes a wise argument for the Arts in a child’s life: “…children can withstand the shock and dislocation that wonder entails. Indeed, they need such multi-dimensional wonder as much as they need food and drink, light and love.” (Italics added) It has been a cultural tendency for far too long to consider “basic needs” as air, water, food, and shelter. Give a person these and they will survive, or so goes the thinking. Any organism that strives only to survive will soon become extinct. A human being, and more so a society of human beings, must thrive. In all its various forms, Art is catalytic to the thriving, spurring the kind of wonder and space for creative growth that any child needs to move beyond survival.

The problem isn’t that we need less artists, it is that we have lived too long dissected from Art in every aspect of out lives. We suffered this fragmentation so much so that the common response to Arts Education is a cynicism that proposes mechanical solutions to organic problems. Throughout history, the early signs of a culture’s demise, that a cultural organism is heading towards extinction is when the Arts are no longer part of the air they breathes. When we no longer feed our children’s wonder – regardless of their socioeconomic standing – we have given up the desire to thrive as a people in a world rich with artistic resources readily at hand. The enormous, and often unexpected, evidence in support of programs such as Inner-City Arts are signs of Life. Our children deserve their full humanity, much of which is integral with the Arts.

~   ~   ~

Kendall Ruth is a photographer, writer, editor, and more. Click here to follow him on Twitter.