Not long ago I was dragged by a certain female member of my family to see 'Mad Hot Ballroom', a charming documentary about a mandatory afternoon ballroom dance program in certain New York public schools, all provided and staffed by the American Ballroom Theater's Dancing Classrooms. This leads up to a citywide dance competition in which the underdogs come out on top. At least, for this movie.
It's a wonder these dance lessons ever got taught. The sense in America is that extracirricular programs, especially those in the arts, are just that - extras, and unnecessary. Why bother teaching these poverty-stricken immigrant kids to dance the foxtrot, even if it will improve their lives? The only solution social conservatives ever offer is 'two-parent families'. The fact remains is that you can't mandate two parents when there is only one, or replace the parents if both are gone. Besides, you can have a dozen parents and it won't cure all ills in a school district with a 97% poverty rate like Washington Heights.
Politically, this opposition to creative expression is not hard to understand. Few if any noteworthy artists have been uncritical admirers of the status quo, and the ascendant right-wing philosophy views 'art' as pleasant, soothing sounds and images without meaning behind them. Anything, be it music, writing, theater, painting, sculpture, or dance which causes people to be upset with the current order of things is to be discouraged.
This phillistine mindset continues even after the kids are all grown up, and supposedly have more sophisticated tastes. The ugly little fact is that culture is not profitable. The public arts budget for the city of Berlin is greater than that for the entire U.S. Anyone in England can go and see the opera for ten pounds. The entire NEA is equivalent to one fighter jet.
This isn't simply a matter of pedants whining that no one appreciates Mozart anymore. There's a wealth of evidence suggesting that involvement with after-school programs, especially those of an artistic nature, can help enormously in achieving academic success and reduce rates of truancy, drug use, teen pregnancy, and most other ills that people pretend are new. But too many people had already given up on these children as soon as they were born, and the opportunity is usually not given.
Arts are the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. If they die, our society dies with them, and our consumerist culture has precious little to replace it with.
