Title: The Impoverishment of American Culture and the Need for Better Art Education
Abstract: [Editor's Note: In recent years, NATS has intensified efforts to strengthen communications, share commonalities, and implement collaborations with similar associations dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in singing, especially the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) and the National Opera Association (NOA). In the latter instance, for example, the NATS Winter Workshop and the NOA Convention were held jointly in Los Angeles, January 4-6, 2008. On that occasion, Dana Gioia, distinguished chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was the keynote speaker. His inspiring message was an adaptation of his June 17, 2007 commencement address at Stanford University, the text of which is reprinted here. I am grateful to NATS Executive Director Allen Henderson, who attended the event and met Mr. Gioia, for expediting the process of sharing the chairman's thoughts with Journal of Singing readers.] THERE IS AN EXPERIMENT I'D LOVE TO CONDUCT. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name. Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name. I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name. Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keefe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey. I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was. Even the mass media placed a greater emphasis on presenting a broad range of human achievement. I grew up mostly among immigrants, many of whom never learned to speak English. But at night watching TV variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, I saw-along with comedians, popular singers, and movie stars-classical musicians like Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, opera singers like Robert Merrill and Anna Moffo, and jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong captivate an audience of millions with their art. The same was true of literature. I first encountered Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, and James Baldwin on general-interest TV shows. All of these people were famous to the average American-because the culture considered them important. Today no working-class kid would encounter that range of arts and ideas in the popular culture. Almost everything in our national culture, even the news, has been reduced to entertainment, or altogether eliminated. The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace. I have a recurring nightmare. I am in Rome visiting the Sistine Chapel. I look up at Michelangelo's incomparable fresco of the Creation of Man. I see God stretching out his arm to touch the reclining Adam's finger. And then I notice in the other hand Adam is holding a Diet Pepsi. When was the last time you have seen a featured guest on David Letterman or Jay Leno who isn't trying to sell you something? A new movie, a new TV show, a new book, or a new vote? Don't get me wrong. I have a Stanford MBA and have spent fifteen years in the food industry. I adore my big-screen TV. The productivity and efficiency of the free market is beyond dispute. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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