May BlogByJeremy Goldson

As artists, we are often put in a seemingly precarious position of needing to justify our life'due south work, and its purpose. Artists often have to justify their profession in a way that neurosurgeons, for example, don't. We never hear of neurosurgeons being asked to explain the massive expense of their equipment because it so clearly saves lives.

Of course, on the other hand, the national neurosurgery awards are not televised for the world to run into, and, for ameliorate or worse, naval captains who perform acts of bravery do non capture the flashing gaze of the paparazzi.

Merely the point is that we, as artists, educators, aesthetes, and supporters feel forced to justify our artistic worldview and activity. And we often do so through the language of spending and acquirement, through market capitalism and its brethren. There is nothing wrong with this, simply it is not the about critical or powerful tool that we have.

I argue that the most important investment that we brand in the arts is not an investment that will return itself three hundred-fold or more in terms of dollars and cents (though that is impressive), but that the investment is metacultural and, actually, that the return is humanness, the currency ourselves.

Every artistic achievement, from a pencil sketch to an original song to a slam poetry competition is vital, because Art is the about shared human being form of expression and communication. In a world that can be mystifying, turbulent, and unfathomable Art is the way that nosotros always have, and always will, strive to comprehend and express our beingness.

Albert Einstein understood this. Einstein's greatest pleasance was playing the violin.

"Life without playing music is inconceivable to me," he once said. "I alive my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music…I get most joy in life out of music.

Imagine that. The man whose exploration of the beliefs of light, gravity, and fourth dimension blew the doors off the twentieth century, and who was voted the most important person of the century by Fourth dimension Mag found playing the violin to exist the most rewarding thing that he ever did.

We don't enter into enough discussions about what purpose art serves our souls, how it is at the center of how we communicate. Nosotros don't convey or award how it underpins our civilisation and our cultural identity.

An investment in art is an investment in the essence of what makes usa human. Art reveals our desire to understand the globe we alive in, to share our experiences with each other, and to limited that which we accept been unable to express in any other way.

Art transmits ideas more powerfully than everyday words.

This is why our art is one of the things that nosotros preserve over history.
It communicates over time epochs, enabling u.s.a. to acquire about who we were and therefore are. But Fine art tin resonate in its own era and also ten thousand years afterward.

Do we consider information technology supremely important today?

In this time of schools and teachers existence "measured" by their students' performance on standardized testing every bit both President Bush and President Obama's educational agendas take prioritized, the Arts find themselves in an unfortunate situation.

But hither's the matter – and it comes back to the general thesis. Investing in the arts, financially and educationally, yields remarkable and long lasting returns.

There is enough of documented bear witness that students involved in the Arts perform significantly ameliorate on standardized tests, as a 2010 College Board study institute. Researchers have consistently found that sustained learning in theatre, for case, correlates to greater achievement in math and reading, and that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds see the greatest do good.

But almost impactful is the fact that students who take arts classes are actively and precisely learning the very skills that educational reformers are parading.

While the literary catechism and the understanding of the Pythagorean theorem and the elements of the periodic table are still required knowledge for nigh anyone in a 21st century schoolhouse, teachers are just as likely to talk about Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Systems Thinking, Problem Solving, and Financial Literacy. Nosotros can question whether those skills are at the core of what makes the states homo, too, but they are certainly more than humanizing than … knowing all of the state capitals.

Our theatre curriculum at Mount Vista blends these current expectations with the essential skills of acting, directing, and design, to name a few.
Our interim classes do teach interim skills, but our main intention is to enable within our students a dexterity that they can use in all that they encounter.

We teach empathy, which requires analysis, rational thought, and creativity.

Nosotros cultivate stiff advice skills, exercise creative perspective and thought, bolster squad building, and requite them guidance in how to meet deadlines. We teach characterization, which requires enquiry, problem solving, some systems thinking to understand the world in which the character lives, plus a healthy dose of metacognitive critical thinking, considering every moment the role player creates as a grapheme requires they are analyzing, refining, experimenting, deducing, and so executing a new moment.

Theatre (and the Arts) is the most comprehensive, holistic, and meaningfully practical education that there is!

Investment in the Arts produces a return that is immeasurable. The very skills and attributes that we strive to see in our friends, our children, our bosses and peers, these are the talents that the Arts elevate.

Furthermore, Arts instruction must conduct the insights into what has come to be and what must be preserved as our shared cultural heritage.

Trumpet player and bandleader Wynton Marsalis explicated this brilliantly in his Nancy Hanks Lecture at the 2009 National Arts Advocacy Day, saying, "Our Arts demand and deserve that nosotros recognize the life we accept lived together. In this fourth dimension, we need to be educated in who we are, and with the arts, educational activity extends far outside the classroom."

For Marsalis, the dejection carried with them the story of America, and their perpetual reinvention and immersion into all other forms of music throughout the 19th and 20th century created an American Vocal.

That's the ability of Art.

In its attain and capabilities, Fine art brings us together as species. Whether we are standing in the Sistine Chapel, or going to a middle school arts prove or band concert, we are experiencing a singular shared experience, non just with our boyfriend audition members, just with anybody who has ever witnessed that art, including a direct pathway to its creator. Art brings u.s.a. closer to our predecessors than any other medium, for they are truly communicating to united states of america, imploring usa to experience as they feel.

Through that communication is an attempt at commonality, a belief that there are things that tie us together, and that this similarity is at the core of our oh-so-brief and delicate living existence.

Art is a necessity because it reminds usa that existence live is simply wondrous, and can provoke in usa startling responses that stimulate our very essence and purpose.

Finally, Hamlet, who is gifted with some of the nigh beautiful language that captures the angst and struggle of being a homo:

What slice of piece of work is homo – how noble in reason; how infinite in faculties, in form and moving; how similar an angel in apprehension; how like a god; the dazzler of the world.

Jeremy Goldson is the Theatre Director at Mountain Vista High School, where he too teaches Movie and Sports Broadcasting. He started the theatre program at the school and has directed or tech directed over 40 productions since 2002. Goldson has been a member of the State Lath of Colorado Thespians since 2002, serving at Chapter Director from 2011-2015. He has been a contributor/editor to both the Colorado Department of Education and the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. Mr. Goldson was named the 2011 Colorado High Schoolhouse Theatre Teacher of the Year past the Alliance for Colorado Theatre. He holds a principal'south degree in theatre directing from Roosevelt Academy and a bachelor'south degree in history from Oberlin College.