America used to be seen as a place where the schools were more focused on the liberal arts, the country’s strongest part of the education system (Coleman). Over the years as other countries advanced with respect to technology, America decided that the core of sustaining a strong country would entail the younger generations have a more focused education in classes from the STEM, Science Technology Engineering Math, curriculum. Ever since then there has been a drastic decline on the focus of the arts in schools because funding transitioned to the new technology and equipment needed for teaching STEM classes. As the focus on the sciences increased, the arts classes diminished. The funding for these programs deteriorated rapidly over the years, almost as if they have been forgotten. Although science and math classes stimulate the growing technology advancement globally, there is still a creative aspect necessarily to this development.  The arts stimulate a more creative side to the student’s brain development, learning abilities and overall they have helped student’s enhance their daily lives outside of the classrooms. 

In February of 2006, a British man named Ken Robinson spoke at a Ted Talk Conference about how there needs to be a revolution not a reform within the school systems. With regards to reforming, schools just had to the already broken systems that exist in our education. Student’s need to be exposed to all areas of study, if not some will never find their talent. Many go through lives with a poor use of their talents or not knowing that they had any at all. Some people need another outlet since the math and sciences are not their strong suit. It is always important for schools to keep a more versatile curriculum so that the student’s have a chance to test their true potential within education. If they can be exposed to the arts, they will become more successful in the future.

For example, there is a school out in California, Adam’s Middle School, that has described the loss of their once thriving arts programs. They talked about how it used to be a school that was filled with music and many other arts programs. Due to budget cuts, these art programs where the first to go. In this growing day in age, schools find them to be less and less important. “Today, Adams, located in California’s West Contra Costa school district, offers visual arts and band classes just 60 percent of the time, while drama, dance, piano keyboarding, photography, and television classes have been cut entirely from the school day. Despite the cutbacks, Myrick and her colleagues have been fighting valiantly to keep the arts alive at their school.” (Holcomb). They claim that through arts programs student’s would also be learning other important skills for the other classes. For example, by playing an instrument an student is learning and practicing their basic math skills (Holcomb). The science related classes and the art classes are not mutually exclusive. Constantly, teacher’s and those parents who are very involved, have had to fight to keep even the smallest presence of the arts exposed in the schools. Many after school programs have been started to keep the arts alive in the school, but it does pose many problems. First of all, it makes the arts seem like an afterthought compared to the other classes offered during the day. It is also hard for student’s to stay after school because they usually ride the bus while their parents are working (Holcomb). It is a work in progress, but there will be a way to keep the art programs running in this school and many others around the country.

The government recently tried to enact new laws to help make the education level equal so that student’s would have a higher success rate. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act. The act reaffirms,“ the arts as a “core academic subject” that all schools should teach. It puts the arts on equal footing with the other designated core subjects: English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, history and geography. And it paves the way for the arts to be recognized both as a serious subject in its own right and as a part of a proven strategy even though the arts have been stated that they are equal by the government.” (Ruppert 6). Even though they stated that the arts are a very poignant part of a student’s education, there is still the question of where should all the funding come from within the government. The reason schools are losing the arts programs in the first place is because the funding for the programs has been lost. More recently, former President Obama tried to reinvest in arts programs for the schools. The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities conducted research on schools with rich arts programs and those that fell below the line. They looked at the benefits and areas to advance arts education (Re-Investing in Arts Education). The goal of the study included looking at schools now to find areas for improvement and finding more ways to use their authority to make sure student’s education would be improved. These new government policies are only a start advancing student’s well-rounded education, still more room for improvement in the future. 

Arts education helps student’s brain development, enhances their learning abilities within school and increases their overall quality of life. They become more engaged in the community around them and in school. All together students that have been exposed to any form of the arts will go on to succeed in higher level classes and are more likely to go on and receive a bachelor’s degree. The reason that the art programs are evaporating from the school systems would be because there is a lack of funding. Many people see STEM classes as more important and that all money should be put into resources for those classes. What they do not realize is that those science classes would be enhanced by the creative classes. The government has stepped in and tried to find ways that they could help ensure that children would be getting a full education. There is still a lot of room for improvement, but every year a change is being made and the arts are revitalized. 
