Pack up your paintbrushes and take out your number two pencils. Many schools are erasing art programs to make way for more core classes.
However, despite a rapid decrease in the amount of students enrolling in a fine arts class, art is still a very important class, as it trains the left side of your brain, making you more creative and better trained to make things such as sculptures, buildings, stories and essays. It can even make you better at spray painting and graffiti.
Most of the people who decide not to enroll in an art class don’t enroll because of a little thing called the “I can’t” mentality, but that’s not completely true. Admittedly no one (well almost no one) can just wake up one day, decide to take an art class and just make a Picasso in five minutes. It takes a few days to get the hang of it, but once you do, you can make any masterpiece you want.
“The most fun part about teaching art is when you see your students look back at their work and say, “Man I did that?” Art teacher Cindy Pacyk said.
Even with all of these important values, cuts to art classes are on the rise and are at risk of being erased from high schools permanently.
Since 2001, 71 percent of 15,000 school districts across the nation have cut instructional hours spent on music, art and other subjects, according to a recent Center on Education Policy survey.
For example, according to an article in The New York Daily News, Intermediate School 218 in East New York, Brooklyn, is losing one third of its teachers with the majority of them being from art, music and computer programs.
Even here at Elk Grove, the art budget is dwindling.
“It’s the beginning of the second semester, and already we are out of money for the rest of the school year,” Pacyk said.
The problem also is that the price of the actual art materials is going up and at the same time the budget is being cut more and more every year.
To put that into perspective, the tempera brushes used to be $1 per brush, and now are $2.05. The price of clay is also going up, and according to Pacyk for the past couple of years the school has even had to go as far as to re-use clay in order to stay within the budget given to them.
And all of this means modifying the curriculum by tapering down the amount of stuff taught and limiting the depth of each assignment.
Despite all of this, students feel the importance of an art education is immeasurable.
“I’m sickened by these cuts,” senior art student Marianna Ferdinardo said. “Art is very important because everything around you is processed through art and it is a medium you can express yourself through. After you take an art class you look at the world in a different way. People don’t realize how much they take the beauty of our world for granted.”
Junior Caitlyn Schluep feels that expression is important and art has allowed her to do so.
“I chose to do art because I think I’m very creative, and I wanted an outlet to express myself,” Schluep said. “I also wanted to enhance my knowledge that I gained in Photo 1.”