Courtesy of Lee Devin, who spotted this. He and I thought these  
comments might be of interest to the AACORN community...

Rob

Begin forwarded message:

>
>> Date: July 23, 2007 12:58:37 AM EDT
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: [Dramaturgy] The Impoverishment of American Culture
>>
>> IN THE FRAY:  The Impoverishment of American Culture
>> Remarks delivered by Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National  
>> Endowment for the
>> Arts
>> in his Stanford Commencement Address on July 17, 2007
>>
>> 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'Keeffe, 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 reccurring 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 spent 15 years in the food industry. I  
>> adore my
>> big-screen TV. The productivity and efficiency of the free market is
>> beyond dispute. It has created a society of unprecedented prosperity.
>>
>> But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing -- it
>> puts a price on everything. The role of culture, however, must go
>> beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on
>> their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond
>> price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture
>> should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass
>> accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.
>>
>> There is only one social force in America potentially large and  
>> strong
>> enough to counterbalance this commercialization of cultural  
>> values, our
>> educational system. Traditionally, education has been one thing that
>> our nation has agreed cannot be left entirely to the marketplace  
>> -- but
>> made mandatory and freely available to everyone.
>>
>> At 56, I am just old enough to remember a time when every public high
>> school in this country had a music program with choir and band,  
>> usually
>> a jazz band, too, sometimes even an orchestra. And every high school
>> offered a drama program, sometimes with dance instruction. And there
>> were writing opportunities in the school paper and literary magazine,
>> as well as studio art training.
>>
>> I am sorry to say that these programs are no longer widely available.
>> This once visionary and democratic system has been almost entirely
>> dismantled by well-meaning but myopic school boards, county
>> commissioners and state officials, with the federal government  
>> largely
>> indifferent to the issue. Art became an expendable luxury, and 50
>> million students have paid the price. Today a child's access to arts
>> education is largely a function of his or her parents' income.
>>
>> In a time of social progress and economic prosperity, why have we
>> experienced this colossal cultural decline? There are several  
>> reasons,
>> but I must risk offending many friends and colleagues by saying that
>> surely artists and intellectuals are partly to blame. Most American
>> artists, intellectuals and academics have lost their ability to
>> converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully  
>> expert in
>> talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and
>> inaudible in the general culture.
>>
>> This mutual estrangement has had enormous cultural, social and
>> political consequences. America needs its artists and intellectuals,
>> and they need to re-establish their rightful place in the general
>> culture. If we could reopen the conversation between our best  
>> minds and
>> the broader public, the results would not only transform society but
>> also artistic and intellectual life.
>>
>> There is no better place to start this rapprochement than in arts
>> education. How do we explain to the larger society the benefits of  
>> this
>> civic investment when they have been convinced that the purpose of  
>> arts
>> education is to produce more artists, which is hardly a compelling
>> argument to the average taxpayer?
>>
>> We need to create a new national consensus. The purpose of arts
>> education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct.
>> The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings
>> capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.
>>
>> This is not happening now in American schools. What are we to make  
>> of a
>> public education system whose highest goal seems to be producing
>> minimally competent entry-level workers? The situation is a cultural
>> and educational disaster, but it also has huge and alarming economic
>> consequences. If the U.S. is to compete effectively with the rest of
>> the world in the new global marketplace, it is not going to succeed
>> through cheap labor or cheap raw materials, nor even the free flow of
>> capital or a streamlined industrial base. To compete successfully,  
>> this
>> country needs creativity, ingenuity and innovation.
>>
>> It is hard to see those qualities thriving in a nation whose
>> educational system ranks at the bottom of the developed world and has
>> mostly eliminated the arts from the curriculum. Marcus Aurelius
>> believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade  
>> easy
>> pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a
>> culture that trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy
>> comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening  
>> -- not
>> just in the media, but in our schools and civic life.
>>
>> Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure -- humor, thrills,
>> emotional titillation or even the odd delight of being vicariously
>> terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than
>> challenging us with a vision of who we might become. A child who  
>> spends
>> a month mastering Halo or NBA Live on Xbox has not been awakened and
>> transformed the way that child would be spending the time  
>> rehearsing a
>> play or learning to draw.
>>
>> If you don't believe me, you should read the studies that are now
>> coming out about American civic participation. Our country is  
>> dividing
>> into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its  
>> free
>> time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic  
>> entertainment.
>> Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly
>> spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens.
>>
>> The other group also uses and enjoys the new technology, but these
>> individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go  
>> out
>> -- to exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about 
>> three times the level of the first group. By every measure they are
>> vastly more active and socially engaged than the first group.
>>
>> What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens?
>> Curiously, it isn't income, geography or even education. It  
>> depends on
>> whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts.
>> These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of
>> individual awareness and social responsibility.
>>
>> Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world
>> -- equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art 
>> addresses us in the fullness of our being -- simultaneously  
>> speaking to
>> our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory and physical
>> senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed  
>> only as
>> stories or songs or images.
>>
>> Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it
>> remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "It is a way of
>> remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art  
>> awakens,
>> enlarges, refines and restores our humanity.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all- 
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>

Robert D. Austin
Associate Professor
Harvard Business School