“Arts education isn’t something we add on after we’ve achieved other priorities, like raising test scores and getting kids into college. It’s actually critical for achieving those priorities in the first place.”

These remarks were made by former First Lady Michelle Obama in May of 2014 at the Turnaround Arts Talent Show. The show is a project sponsored by Turnaround Arts, a program that stems from a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Education and reintroduces the arts into public schools. In her address, Obama remarked on the significance of the Turnaround Arts Program and how it has impacted thousands of students. Its significance is adequately exemplified in the former First Lady’s own words in regards to Orchard Gardens School in Boston, taken from a press release dated May 20, 2014 on obamawhitehouse.archives.gov:

“This school had had six principals in seven years, their teacher turnover rate was over 50 percent, and their test scores were among the lowest in the state. But they had a principal who believed in the power of the arts. So that individual replaced the school’s security guards with five full-time arts and music teachers. And today [May 2014], Orchard Gardens is known as one of the most improved schools in the entire state of Massachusetts.”

Fast forward nearly three years and we are witnesses to a completely different administration than that of Barack Obama. In less than 20 days as President, current commander in chief Donald J. Trump has already proposed a series of cuts to the federal budget, among these proposals is the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As the budgets for these organizations combined makes up a mere .016 of a percent of the overall federal budget, eliminating these programs would be detrimental not only to our education system, but to our communities as well.

In order to fully understand the effect that eliminating the NEA would have on our society, we must first recognize the importance of the Arts overall and the significance that these programs hold in terms of the taxpayer and the federal budget. First, I discuss some of the main causes of the problem, the accumulation of national debt and the stigma around arts. From here I will provide a brief history of the NEA and the attempts to eliminate the program altogether. Finally, I will discuss solutions to the problem on both local and national levels.

The Notorious B.I.G perhaps said it the best when he said “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.” According to usdebtclock.org, the national debt of the United States is at $19.9 trillion as of 6 PM Sunday, February 5, 2017. If money is confusing to you, in terms of Galley Boys at your local Swensons we’re looking at about 5.6 trillion burgers. As reported by Vanity Fair, the budgets for the NEA and the NEH combined makeup approximately 0.016 percent of the $4.6 trillion US Budget, thus each organization costs approximately $0.46 per American, according to us.pressfrom.com. Whenever there is great financial hardship, funding for arts programs are often the first to see cuts or to be eliminated entirely as they are viewed as expendable and unnecessary. This stigma that the arts are something that we can do without is alarming and completely untrue. However, this isn’t the first time that the NEA has been on the chopping block, which brings me to my second point.

The National Endowment for the Arts was founded by the United States Congress back in 1965 as an “independent agency of the federal government,”. Since its inception the NEA has given nearly 128, 000 grants, with a combined sum is greater than $5 billion. According to arts.gov, 40 percent of NEA supported events take place in neighborhoods with high poverty ratings and approximately 33 percent of NEA grants given go to low-income audiences. With all that the NEA does for the arts, it’s hard to imagine any opposition to the program. However, there have been numerous attempts in the organization's history to abolish it. The first being in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. This attempt was soon abandoned when a special task force deemed it unwise to abolish the organization as they discovered "the needs involved and benefits of past assistance,". Objections to the NEA arose again in 1989 when the American Family Association thought the content of Andres Serrano’s exhibition was a display of “Anti-Christian Bigotry.” Although this controversy inspired congressional debate, attempts to defund and pose restrictions on NEA supported content failed. Newt Gingrich also attempted to eliminate the NEA along with the NEH and Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 1995-1997, but ultimately failed in his attempts despite budget cutbacks and labeling the NEA as “wasteful and elitist.”

So where do we go from here? One solution is to change this stigma that the arts are something that we can afford to lose. Let’s refer back to First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2014 speech. Obama reflected on the 6 million children throughout the United States that have little to no exposure to the arts. The majority of these schools are also the ones with the highest needs, having less experienced teachers, outdated technology, and are oftentimes the ones with the lowest test scores and highest dropout rates. The NEA funds art projects in these areas from theatre productions to music and painting classes. Through musical education alone, students that have had some experience in either performance or appreciation tend to score higher on the SAT, scoring 63 points or higher on verbal and 44 points or higher in the math section. Music also helps with the development of the left side of the brain, more notably areas related to language and reasoning. Another solution is to recognize art programs that have are known to be successful and start using them as solutions to problems. Take, for example, the impact of Art Therapy. How many times have you seen someone you know take out an adult coloring book? Or have taken a few of the free coloring pages left on a table in Bierce during finals week? According to an article on bebrainfit.com “[c]reating art trains you to concentrate on details and pay more attention to your environment. In this way, it acts like meditation.” Adult coloring books and art therapy have also been a major success with veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and those that have experienced art therapy have also found that they rely less on medication.

The question we must ask ourselves now it “What can I do?”, and the answer is a simple one. The first, on a local level, is that we can start passing school levies. Property taxes are perhaps the only way for cities to “raise revenue for community services”. Cities use levies to fund public schools, pay for emergency services and law enforcement, as well as other projects that could in any way benefit the community (such as roads, snow removal, and picking up trash). When we choose to raise property taxes, we are choosing to invest in our own lives and futures. Some of the best public schools in the nation are those located in areas with higher property taxes. These schools can afford to fund arts programs, and, whether knowingly or not, by providing these programs those schools are giving their students a better chance of scoring high on the SAT, helping them to do better in subjects such as math and science, and are keeping students interested in school and ensuring lower drop-out rates.

In times of financial hardship, often the first programs to go are those centered around the arts. Since its inception in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts has faced multiple threats of being defunded, the same thing is happening today. In a society that is so engrossed with progressing in math and science, we are neglecting the very subjects that increase our success in them, as too often the arts are viewed as ‘unnecessary’ and ‘wasteful’. There are, however, multiple ways in which we can change this stigma around the arts. We need to start viewing the arts as a subject that we cannot afford to lose and continue to fund these programs, particularly in schools in low-income areas. Additionally, we need medical professionals to begin to offer arts therapy as an alternative to medication, especially as too many people in the United States are becoming addicted to and overdosing on prescription pain medication. Whereas addiction to medication can lead to an untimely death, an addiction to the arts can lead to better test scores, healthier, less stressed college students, and a society that is more sympathetic to the hardships of others.