Thank you for publishing so many letters and opinions regarding the budget cuts that were proposed (and now approved) for the music program(s) in our public schools. Without a child who will be directly affected by these cuts, I failed to express my strong feelings on the matter. However, Jennifer Martin, director of instrumental music at Cuesta College, made a very salient point at a concert we attended at the Harold J. Miossi Cultural and Performing Arts Center in December, which indirectly addressed having “skin in the game”: Music programs in elementary and high schools serve to discover, encourage, and nurture talent, and then “feed” talented (or enthusiastic) children to music curriculums in the colleges, universities, and professions, thereby keeping the arts alive for all of us.
I believe that the creative arts add color and soul-searching emotion to the human experience. There is nothing wrong with an education that focuses on science, technology, economics, or math, where facts are sought in black and white. But a student whose creative side is nurtured and encouraged in any (or all) of the liberal arts becomes an impassioned liberal thinker and, I believe, a more rich, cultured, and kind citizen. The tRumpsters seem to want to kill culture and kindness—possibly equating that word “liberal” with their fear of DEI and “wokeness.” Maybe all they need is a dictionary and the willingness to read it. That would be rich!
Gail Johnson
Morro Bay
This article appears in 2025 Year in Review.
All the humanities are fake now: AI writes books and AI composes music. This is the apex of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
While the arts may enrich the lives of the individual students, they are an indulgent luxury of an affluent society, and as such, have no need to be subsidized by struggling taxpayers who receive nothing back from the expenditure. In earlier times, an art education was an extravagance enjoyed only by the wealthy, and at their own expense. The arts originated and existed long before public funding, sustained by creative people with something to express, and will survive without soaking the taxpayers. While public spending on the arts for the enjoyment of students was a nice benefit back when we had more funds available and fewer demands on the public treasury, we now have far more competing expectations. Ironically, it is the extravagant social spending demanded by liberals like Ms. Johnson which is depriving our schools of the ability to fund such pleasant but unnecessary programs.
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John:
“While public spending on the arts for the enjoyment of students was a nice benefit back when we had more funds available and fewer demands on the public treasury…” Why don’t you follow this line of reasoning to its conclusion and actually ask why there are no funds for the arts?
I’ll tell you, because your generation exported our industrial base. The factories that used to exist provided mass employment and a source of tax. Public schools have morphed into the bloated monstrosities they now are to provide just enough employment to keep the public from torching the houses well-off people like you may own. If you resent paying taxes, perhaps you your generation shouldn’t have sent our jobs overseas.
And the band played on.