The arts are not supplemental; they are fundamental

There is not another county in the state, probably not another county in the nation, that has been home to two of the most creative individuals to grace the planet in the past century: Robert Rauschenberg and Thomas Edison. How tragically ironic it would be, therefore, if Lee County was to become the county that cut art and music from the curriculum in its public schools.

In 2008, The Florida Chamber of Commerce established the Innovation Caucus with the goal of making Florida a Top 10 Innovation State by the year 2030. In a 2006 study for Congress prepared by the Conference Board, U.S. employers identified "creativity and innovation" as the top skills needed by new hires to succeed in the workplace. CEO Jonathan Spector offered the following in his testimony to Congress: "Innovation, creativity and related skills such as entrepreneurship are clearly top concerns of the senior executives as innovation is crucial to competition, so is creativity integral to innovation." (from Robert Lynch's article, "Harnessing the Power of the Arts," Public Management, October 2008)

So, we need to ask ourselves how we plan to train our future work force so that they develop into these innovative employees that are in such high demand. It is the arts that train our students in new habits of mind that are fundamental to innovation. Studying and practicing the arts rewires our brains so that we think in terms of patterns, relationships and context. Too often, students are taught to compartmentalize knowledge: They learn about economics in one course and ecology in another without ever having the opportunity to examine how these disciplines intersect. And yet, in order to solve issues of climate change without creating unintended economic challenges, we need people who can forge linkages across both of these disciplines. This is what the arts train us to do: To combine information from multiple disciplines and apply it in original ways.

Unfortunately, many people tend to think of the arts as icing on the cake, a delicious luxury. We need to correct this misperception. The arts are not supplemental; they are fundamental to creating the next generation of problem solvers, the next generation of innovators and the next generation of business leaders, because the arts do not emphasize a single skill set, they cultivate the whole person. They generate supple and flexible minds necessary to succeed in any professional endeavor. These are the kinds of minds that both Mr. Rauschenberg and Mr. Edison possessed, and I hope we will honor their legacies by keeping the teachers who are specifically trained to cultivate more of these minds in Lee County.

There is one other crucial benefit to teaching the arts, unrelated to the argument I have been building thus far, but quite relevant to a nation that is engaged in a seemingly endless war. This idea is best expressed by the graphic artist Milton Glaser, who said: "If you like Mozart, and I like Mozart, then we have already found common ground and the likelihood that we will kill each other has been diminished." — Wendy Chase Fort Myers