Glee and Arts Education

“Arts education can literally save lives. I work with kids that are struggling with a lot in life whether it is poverty or violence or trauma,” [writer and youth educator Carrie Leilam Love] says. “Having an outlet and a teacher to guide them to express themselves creatively as opposed to internalizing or responding to violence with violence is vital. It is, in fact, an intervention.”

Of course. Or so I think; however, many of those makers of policy and government budgets don't. There is a prevailing belief that a degree in engineering or business is more useful to those that are disadvantaged, that arts education is just a little pretentious — 'cause heck, kids don't need Basquiat or Maria Callas or poetry. What they need are skills, damn it.