President Barack Obama once said "The future belongs to young people with an education and the imagination to create." The arts, all of the fine arts, are vital to children, and adults even, as whole. Everybody gets something out of the arts. Music, art, theatre, speech and drama, all play important roles in everyday life. The quote by President Obama shows that even the most powerful man in the country, thinks that the arts programs matter to our children. The arts offer many children an opportunity to see life with a larger perspective, they help to see the beauty in life. The arts not only have the “opinion” effect on kids, the effect that some say is not true, and they also have the statistical effects that cannot be proven wrong. It is sad to see that the arts are always the first to go, always before sports. Just as many scholarships and great competitors come from speech and other art forms as they do from sports and cheer and all the other activities. They are equal in logic and success so why are they not equal in life and school. I believe that the arts need to be in school. This is something very personal to me as I am involved in the fine arts at BCHS. I believe that they truly have great effects on everyday life. I have always been involved in arts and music and it has always been close to my heart. I believe that life without art would not be good, it would be bland and boring. I know if art was gone, everyone on this planet would suffer. I believe that arts are just as important to life as, say, sports or other activities and they have an infinite number of advantages.

The arts are something that mean different things to everybody. There is not one art form that reigns over another. It is the same with sports. Arts and sports SHOULD be on an even playing field but they are not. Sports are treated like the gods of the school, when the arts are just as important. The arts are always the first to go, almost always starting with the speech teams, the only real thing that gives some sort of meaning to my personal life. When the school boards go to make the final cuts from the budget, they strive to cut the programs that have the least impact on students while avoiding controversy (Dickson). The sports are never the first to go because they would cause major controversy in the communities and the schools. Not to mention that the athletes who think they are the best of the best step all over the actors, artists, and musicians. I believe that the reason that sports do not go first is that when a community sees a team as “successful” they will do anything they can to save it, but when it comes to the lesser known arts, people tend to turn their cheek and let it happen, mainly because they do not know the kids who will be affected and the success that they actually have (Dickson). As a result, fine arts are always the easy victim. Now, I am not just bashing the sports and their programs, I am an athlete as well and the arts have always been more rewarding to me as a student. The arts have always made huge impacts on my life and I have always been very fond of the advantages of the Fine Arts programs, that I have always been involved in.

The fine arts have many advantages. Fine Arts have always been a huge part of my life. I would not have a life if I did not have speech, musicals, and performances. As I walked into Benton Consolidated High School as a scared little freshman, I never thought that I could have been an actor or a techie. The fine arts opened the doors to my life and it has never been the same since. Arts have always been my forte. I have always had great interest in performing and music. They have many advantages that could be argued and there are so many statistical facts that show how the arts affect kids of all ages. President Obama even fully supported the arts when he talked about his No Kid Left Behind program (Hulbert). Obama thinks that the arts play key roles in the lives and school times of children and adults. In my own personal life, the arts have affected my grades and happiness in school. They have made me focus more on my grades by making sure that they are appropriate and decent. The arts have made me so much happier in school and in everyday life. The fact of just having something that gives my life meaning and purpose. Having someone needing me for something is the best thing to feel. Not only that, but the adrenaline rush that one gets from the first sound of the music on opening night of their first big performance, is the best feeling I have ever felt. This is something that I am very passionate about and I am so terrified that the arts will be cut from my school. We have been lucky enough to have what little bit of art programs that we still have. Anyways, back to the advantages. Just in my own personal life, speech has given me the ability to express myself and tell people exactly how I feel. Speech has given me the ability to speak what I have to say and I do not hold anything back. I know that is exactly how artists feel with their paintings or drawings, and how musicians feel with their instruments or voices. We are all connected as one. Arts open up people's minds and show them who they can really be. The arts help people express themselves. The arts help people to see who they really are. Think about life, imagine how different it would be without art. Art is life and it helps people flourish and makes people happy. The arts have so many good effects. They open people's minds and make them flourish. Arts have so many advantages to life and it would not be the same without them.

Imagine life without; TV, music, paintings, animation, Facebook, Snapchat, movies, colors, prints, and designs. That is life without the arts. Our young students, who may grow up in a town where their art programs have been cut, will grow up to be our future. These kids may not get the chance to be an artist, or a musician or a spechie. They are our future and what a bland and boring future it will be without the arts. School arts programs are being cut left and right, and these unlucky kids are stripped of their opportunity for the arts. The fine arts, what a blessing. Not only in my personal life, but of all the other artists, performers, and speechies that I know, the arts are our life. I believe that our worlds almost revolves around arts and our performances. I believe that the arts have more value than what the school boards are giving them. I believe that arts are just as important to kids and adults as sports or any other activity. It sucks that the arts are always the easy victim when it comes to budget cuts. So, in conclusion, I believe that the arts are just as important to kids in school as sports and they all deserve to be treated equal.