It wasn't many years ago that shortsighted legislators noisily criticized teaching art in North Carolina's public schools.
"We must stress the basics," they demanded. To them, arts education was frivolous.
For anyone who has looked around Winston-Salem, with its many art galleries and museums, its performing-arts venues and historic sites affiliated with the arts, an old bumper sticker comes to mind: "The Arts ARE Basic."
Arts education is a basic. It spurs creativity and intellectual curiosity. So teaching art in public schools should be a given, just as we teach the basics of math and language.
The arts are more than basic. They are also an economic engine, and a joint study conducted by the state departments of cultural resources and commerce underscores that. In North Carolina, arts employers provide nearly 165,000 jobs. The whole industry has an annual economic output in the range of $41 billion.
That means that various arts endeavors produce more paychecks than the financial industry -- more jobs than the banks and stock brokerages combined.
For sure, these arts-related jobs don't produce the kind of salaries paid to bankers and stockbrokers. Most writers, artists, dancers and choreographers focus on something other than money, anyway.
But few regions prosper without the arts. Corporate headquarters rarely land in artistic wastelands, but when they do, corporate officers soon get to work developing the arts in that neighborhood. North Carolina leads the nation as a site for new and expanding industry for many reasons, not the least of which is the high quality of life to be enjoyed by corporate officers and their skilled employees when they come here.
As bad as this economy is, we in Forsyth County know that there will be a rebound because business continues to locate here. Our high quality of life, including our arts venues, plays a big role in those decisions.
In the late 1990s, a legislator ranted at the Journal for an editorial supporting arts education. North Carolina must educate students for work, for jobs that produce products and services, he said.
Our response was to point out that every product manufactured in a North Carolina factory came wrapped in a package designed by a graphic artist. And the quality of that artwork is often more important to sales than is the quality of the product.
So, let's consider any lingering debate as settled. The arts are basic, and not just to our souls and minds. They are basic to our wallets, too.
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