was in 1896. We will learn much in the next few years, and may begin to see arts
training, especially among young students, in a different light.
Summary
I have suggested that the process of intensive training in the arts teaches young people
the general skills and attitudes they will need to contribute in a postmodern world. Far
from being irrelevant, it is one of the most effective methods of educating a young
person I have observed, and one that finds itself in concert with many current ideas in
the school reform movement.
Many schools are seeing that the process of teaching as the master musician has taught
since the Greeks -- learning by doing, the teachers as coach, building on the desires of
the student, working in groups, evaluation as part of learning, and assuming that
learning never stops-is an effective educational process. Education through the arts is
not the only model that uses these concepts, but I would argue it is a powerful one and
one that could be utilized much more widely.
Postmodern society, service oriented, technologically sophisticated, and full of unknown
opportunities, needs people who are artists and people who think like artists; people
who are creative and critical thinkers, risk-takers, workers, imaginative and inventive,
able to work alone or in groups, self- motivated, and open to new experience. It requires
people who have faith in themselves and the future, and who want to be involved. This
new century is not about specific training for specific lifetime jobs. It is about flexible
skills and attitudes, yet with a firm grounding in the self, confidence built on a sense of
agency in the world and in one's ability to ask the right questions and find this moment's
answer. Artists are not afraid of what they don't know. In fact, it is what is unknown that
is most inviting, the most challenging to the artist.
In American these days we see everywhere the signs of poverty and decay that afflict
many citizens. What one cannot so easily "see" is the poverty of soul, of meaning, the
loss of hope that we seem to be up against. One place where we can "see" it is in the teen
suicide rate, in increased drug use, in killings in the street, and in the values promoted
in and reflected by the media. We see it in the Carnegie report on adolescents which
speaks of their loneliness and longing for family and for meaningful recognition.
It is the lack of a common civic and spiritual vision that leads to hunger, poverty, and
the dead-end world of drugs, not the lack of resources or technology. America has
resources and wealth that far surpass any other country in the world. As John
Frohmayer remarked: "We are not in an economic depression; we are in a depression of
courage."
America needs a greater vision for itself and faith in its own capacity for right action. We
need to use what we have learned from our past experience and revision the future in a
way that leads us forward to the future rather then remaining, as we sometimes seem to
be, stuck in ennui, cynicism, and a dysfunctional nostalgia for what was (and it was not
all that good. America in 1960 was great for Beaver Cleaver but not for Eldridge
Cleaver). Artists -- and those who live and think like artists -- can provide that vision