Minds in Artistic Flux

I totally agree that arts funding in public schools is a travesty.  I'll never devalue school athletics -- the brain changes even more positively and actively under the tutelage of physical education than it does with music.  Even more so, I will refuse to complain about the extra focus required for mathematics and science education, given the hyper-emotional rhetoric of ultra-liberal and -conservative disciples in the country.  Cool heads need to prevail.

The problem is, that the plastic and musical arts teach mental skills that no other discipline instills to such an extent:  mental synthesis of disparate elements (using compare/contrast cognitive functions not used in other disciplines); deductive, inductive, and intuitive reasoning skills in tandem with each other (the other disciplines teach only one of each type of reasoning -- music, creative writing and the plastic arts teaches the harnessing of all reasoning skills to achieve an end result); synergistic thinking: the ability to take disparate elements and find harmony in new mental and physical structures.  Architecture achieves these benefits as well; even scientific engineering skills do this, to some degree.  But those subjects are not available in the public schools.

There is a wonderful book, called "The Brain That Heals Itself."  I have it in storage, or I would pull it out and begin quoting, because I think I underlined nearly every page.  Everything we do changes our brain -- falling in love, catching a ball, growing mold in front of a television set, playing quick-action video games, surfing pornography on the Internet, prayer and meditation.  Some of these are positive; some are negative.  For some reason, creative engagement in the creative arts seems to change the brain architecture more thoroughly and rapidly than any other activity, except for falling in love.

True -- given that the brain changes more thoroughly when we fall in love than any other time of life since infancy, we could advocate that the hippies got it right, and that "All We Need Is Love."  But, unfortunately, the love impulse does not create neural pathways indicative of higher cognitive functions, as we sadly know too well.  Otherwise, we could take all the money we throw at intramural athletics, and focus the funds on marathon Love-Ins.

I agree: given the blossoming population of the human species, the diminishing of natural resources, mightn't it serve the agenda of the Pursuit of Happiness to include in our school curriculum skills that teach cooperation, creative thinking, synthesis, and how to create happiness for ourselves by our own efforts?