If you read the newspaper or watch the news then you know that over the past few years many schools have had to drop art programs. You probably think that the arts are a low priority subject and that their demise is inevitable.

The media has painted the arts in a dark light by focusing on the debates about its value compared to the core subjects and standardized testing.

Only about 20% of the articles written about arts education are about saving this valuable part of our culture. The rest are about bufget concerns and whether or not they should be replaced by more lessons on the core subjects.

There are a lot of things we and the media can do to help promote arts education/integration. One is simply to promote success stories; everyone is more willing to try something if they think good will come of it. Another thing that we can do is deconstruct the arts vs. core subjects idea. Integrated arts is a valuable resource to use to help teach the core subjects; it does not need to take away from the core subjects. Remember, the benefits of Arts Education/Integration really DO outweigh the costs.