Fresh on the heels of David Bowie’s passing, it might be relevant to consider the need for a comprehensive arts education for all, and more intensive resources for what the New Statesman calls the “intellectually marginal”. Without the post war investment in arts education, we would have no Bowie, no Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, et al. In short the sixties would not have existed as we have come to know them, a spiritualising force for progress and enlightenment. Talking last year with a man I consider a mentor, portrait artist David Goatley, David shared tales of his own time in art school wherein he met and mingled with many of the vanguard of the sixties, including David Bowie. With regrets to those who feel otherwise, I believe it to have been a uniquely English era, wrought by deliberate educational policies and strategies; but it influenced the entire world.
For 22 years I taught in the public school system. I have met distressingly few teachers who deserve the appellation, and too many who would serve the world better by finding otherwise employment. Too, I have met an overwhelmingly continental volume of mindless administrators who tow the political line and intimidate (along with senior administration) staff.
Bottom line. . . without arts education we are nothing. . . you are nothing; just a collection of empty paint cans with no tools or ideas. Creativity is an ART. You may bring it to industry and business, but the ARTS are the fuel which impels all humanity.
Were we to survive to 120 would we remember, in our hearts, the personifications of greed and power or the purveyors of beauty and vision? For myself, I will remember David.
