Art In Schools

Just came across this advert of Americans for the Arts over at the ArtInterview online magazine and decided to post it here. Not that I am being paid for it but it hit me that in Malta we have the same situation. Do we have enough Art in our schools? Do we give too much importance to schooling but not enough to personal development through Arts? Does anybody know of any national program to encourage the use of artistic expression in our kids?

We have a tendency to look at art, in all its forms, as a past time; Artists are hobbyists. But it shouldn't be so. Art could also be a profession and/or a vehicle to learn other things. Why not use paints to learn chemistry and chemical reactions? Why not use film and theatre to learn languages? Why not use installations to learn about technology? The list could go on.

I know that there are schools or maybe teachers that do these things, but this is not enough. What we lack is a national drive to put artistic expression at the forefront of our educational system. Children would surely gain from such a drive.