William Shakespeare wrote, “If music be the food of love, play on.” Apparently America’s children are in the midst of an artistic famine. According to the New York Times, eighth graders are concluding their junior high careers on a scholastic low note, performing at a “mediocre” level in fine art courses. The study further shows that all of our would-be Beethovens have been steadily declining in artistic aptitude for over a decade. The United States has had a great tradition of developing amazing artists. From Philip Glass to Anne Akiko Meyers, America’s artists have been magicians, waiving their wands and enchanting the world with their developed genius. But now, poof…it seems to have gone, or is going, away. Help bring the prestige back to this country’s art education.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress in Arts is the study that revealed our poor standards in artistic education. This is the first time since 1977 that the test has been administered, a cause of concern for many advocates of arts education. The twenty-two years of distance that time has traveled since the first administration of the study leads many to believe a miserably low priority is put on national art assessments. The actual data recovered prompts many to feel that America’s schools are cutting back emphasis and funding on fine-arts classes to stress improvement in core course performance in math and science. While no one argues that a student should be conceptually disabled in math and science in order to make way for music and sculpture, parents and art officials believe that a spotty stress on arts courses is leaving our students with a gaping hole in their educational foundation. Remember, the brain is divided into halves, and it seems the right brain is being underdeveloped for the sake of the left brain’s practical usefulness.

Now, for this version of the test, a sample of 260 schools, both private and public, were examined and nearly 8,000 students analyzed in their artistic knowledge. Seems like a large sample when seen alone. However, it looks more like an insult when seen in comparison to federal math and science assessments that take a sample size of 700,000 students. This striking disparity is confirmation that an overwhelming emphasis and supervision is placed on traditional subjects and not fine arts.

Another salient piece of data is that only 16% of students registered going to a museum or art exhibit with their classes over the last year. This is down 6% from over a decade ago. Students are hostage to their schools and curriculum, and to hijack their potential love for art by limiting their exposure to proper classes and exhibits is akin to telling them “art sucks.”

According to the study, only half of the eight graders tested could identify the instrument being used in classic pieces of music. Students are not being given the means or motivation to develop artistic interests, an educational homicide where the school systems are the culprits. School administrators even refuse to identify the body, continually denying that arts are in jeopardy or students are underexposed.

Although these tests do not show a disgraceful incompetence on the part of students, it does indicate that schools have been allowing a tolerably low level of artistic exposure to their dependents. Nonetheless, even though the scores are not depressingly bad, the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts commented that the data collected shows “evidence about issues of concern in arts education.”

Art is one of the ways history has been traditionally recorded. In ancient times, when there were no written records kept, accounts of wars and heroes were “sung” in order to honor the participants and preserve the occasion. However, today’s study suggests that we may no longer have much more to sing proudly about, except perhaps for the distant memory of a country whose schools and teachers once let fine arts be an atlas of unknowns for curious students to explore with their senses. Be that teacher to once again provide a passport of possibility to an eager eyed child. Give children something to sing about.