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Future arts
Parents, no doubt, want the best for their kids. They dream of their children entering professions a step up from their own generation. Jobs with good pay, job security, a retirement plan. Careers that will allow those children to expand their horizons, get a leg up and even heighten their social status.
And, in all this, parents surely also want their children to be happy.
Somehow, in this mix, arts are greatly discouraged. Visual and performing arts, and to a lesser extent, music, are painted as frivolous pursuits, hobbies that offer little reward and are certainly not going to lead to the type of jobs parents want for their kids.
is understandable. There’s a reason we all recognize the phrase ‘starving artist.’ A career as a musician or a performer is difficult—-along with hard work, it requires a mixture of talent, passion, charm and luck. Very few artists can boast of having built a lasting, stable career by selling their work in galleries.
But while a disdain for education in the arts might be well-intentioned, it’s also misguided.
For one thing, a pursuit of arts doesn’t lead solely to careers as actors or painters. Many great careers benefit from artistic skills. And many of the soft skills learned in creating art or participating in building a performance come in handy for the types of career parents dream about—-performing skills improve bedside manner in doctors and nurses, drawing and fine motor skills help architects and engineers.
And even if a child is not destined for such a career path, studies show that in the long term, those who earned degrees in the humanities make about as much, and have more job security, than those with research science degrees.
And a constant disdain for the arts also makes it difficult to sell the arts. We take for granted those things that make our humanity greater. Books, music, arts and performance set us apart as a species. The arts make us soar, make us think, divert us from sorrow or plunge us into it headfirst.
With the ubiquity of the Internet, we’re slowly becoming numb to the value and the wonder of that creativity, though we continue to consume it. If, on top of that, we teach the next generation to have a disdain for it, we will stop including artists in our economy. The starving artist becomes a part of a vicious cycle.
But most importantly, I think parents forget. It’s easy for adults to lose sight of the wonder of creative thought, the glory of revelling in weirdness. But for kids creativity is inherent, and will only be lost once the strains of peer pressure, homework and planning for the future stretch it beyond its breaking point. Until then, it’s a part of learning, and a part of a happy, healthy child.
And for those kids who are just creative people, well, parents surely want their children to be happy. Perhaps part of that is relaxing, and letting young people take the path that suits them best.
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