What gives with this guy wanting to kill the arts in OK?

[ez bake]

What a disappointment. This thread is not about killing farts at all...

 

[saddlebum]

What we really need is some more 40 year old finger painters living on .gov assistance

 

[tntrex]

Looks like he didn't have support for it.

http://newsok.com/measure-to-cut-ok...ont-advance-bills-author-says/article/3750221

 

[Cinaet]

What a disappointment. This thread is not about killing farts at all...

The earth without art is just eh.

 

[mugsy]

The decline of public school art education funding over the years MIGHT have something to do with the absolute WORSHIP of standardized math and reading tests due to NCLB and other nonsense.

It might have something to do with NCLB but it isn't really that likely. I remember that when I was in grade school this same basic argument was raging across various school districts - always the same basic framework - our kids aren't proficient in math/science but the schools are spending money on art and shop classes (of course shop classes or, God forbid, industrial arts classes have been hit far worse than conventional art).
Maybe we need to accept that unless we are willing to treat kids like they do in Japan or China - cogs in school wheels who get ram-fed data only about 10-15% of our students have both natural inclination and interest in math science and that's the way it will stay until they see a strong economic motivation to study hard and that may take some serious life lessons to instill.

 

[ttownokie]

trade skills are more in need than more art of BSing degrees anyways outside of engineering, or doctors. Students would end up with better careers as carpenters, gunsmiths, welders, plumbers, home builders than most of the degree those rip off schools offer.

 

[Raoul Duke]

...and if any of that $4M actually goes to school art programs, why does it need to be funnelled throught the OAC? Cut out the middle man...

I agree. I'd rather see they money go directly to the schools on the stipulation that the funding would indeed be dedicated to arts education and into the classrooms rather than get filtered and funneled through the OAC first.

That's one of the biggest problems with Oklahoma is any public dollars spent on anything have to go through appointed, unelected, bureaucratic authorities, boards, commissions, trusts, task forces, etc. who each take a cut for their, in many instances, duplicative "administrative services" in the process. Which is supposed to provide accountability, but more often than not results in wasteful spending and even corruption. GRDA and EMSA come to mind.

 

[n2sooners]

What bothers me the most is how there is an assumption that if a program is getting government funds and the government decides to defund it then all of a sudden the government is killing it. PBS and Sesame Street won't die without federal taxpayer dollars and art won't die without Oklahoma taxpayer dollars.

 

[ZombieHunter]

I'm all for smaller government. I think we should privatize education, problem solved.

IF we FULLY privatize education then only the wealthy will remain in power, and no one will be able to afford DECENT education. I say DECENT because that is what Public Education has been reduced to, We are nowhere near the top http://www.nationalmathandscience.org/solutions/challenges/staying-competitive, we are actually in a TERRIBLE position for the future. Countries like Sweden where kids are being taught computer science and programming from the age of 5! are going to be the future of science and tech. Those are not privatized schools they are Government funded.

America's problem to BEGIN with is that education was made a FOR PROFIT corporation all while being endowed with tax write-offs and MASSIVE sums in the form of Government subsidies, which they in turn Invested into Hedge Funds and Stocks or Bonds, a LOT of schools invested in the sub-prime mess as well. Once we allowed schools to invest and speculate with public funds as though it were a private entity we were screwed.

Getting rid of the ARTS will only further our decline as an educated nation, I for one learned more about mathematics and science, and UNDERSTOOD quite a bit more about the world in general once I learned Music Theory at the age of 8, was taught Piano and Violin for years, then on to Guitar. Still play today 19 years later. How many people still create or use imagination in ANYTHING for that amount of time? I would guess a small percentage, lots of people noodle and pick up an instrument now and again, but how many of them play hours and hours per day? Get rid of the arts and musical education and you lose alot of the ability to produce a free thinking society, look at Communist China, they do NOT ALLOW freedom of expression with arts like in America, that is where we head without Musical Education and The Arts.

 

[jcizzle]

Well, my mother was an artist and she definitely didn't like the state funding the arts. I suppose it would be OK if it was funding only in the schools.

However, if there is enough sales of art in Oklahoma to provide $29 million dollars of TAX revenue, why should the state be funding any other form of art subsidy? It would take a lot of art sales to generate that much in taxes. If there is that much being sold, why can't the artists operate like any other business? If one's product is crappy and can't sell, why should the state help one to create more crap?

I also don't like the fact that the state mandated at one time that when building any new state buildings they had to spend a certain percentage for art at those buildings. How many tax-payer dollars have been spent to have artwork that looks like used plow disks?

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