It bothers me that he devalued arts education to make the point about studying and funding job training programs. Both (and more) are needed in our society and should be encouraged, rather than posing them as a choice of one or another.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/31/obama-becomes-latest-politician-criticize-liberal-arts-discipline
Then there is the fact that arts programs in American higher education (admittedly not identical to art history) -- fearful of the stereotype that they provide job training for Starbucks jobs -- have worked to study employment outcomes of their graduates. Their findings: Graduates of arts programs, while not all employed in the arts, are generally employed and have high levels of job satisfaction, using their arts knowledge in a range of ways. And then there is the study released just last week by the Association of American Colleges and Universities about the long-term success of liberal arts graduates in the world of work.
Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, said via email that she found the president's rhetoric disappointing. "In recent years, we've sunk into a 'what's in it for me' approach to learning, making career earnings the litmus test both for college and for different majors," she said. "The president speaks well in principle about our responsibilities to one another in a democratic society.
"But he seems to have forgotten that college can build our desire and capacity to make a better world, not just better technologies. It was depressing to hear President Obama describe college mainly as vocational and/or technical training in the State of the Union address, and it's even worse to have him casually dismiss one of the liberal arts -- or even the whole idea of baccalaureate study -- because you can earn good enough money in a skilled trade. The fact of the matter is that human beings need bread and roses -- and people who help make things do it better, as Steve Jobs said and demonstrated repeatedly, when they study both the arts and technology."
Linda Downs, executive director of the College Art Association, posted a reaction on the group's blog, offering support for any federal effort to promote access for more people to higher education. However, the blog post went on to say: "When these measures are made by cutting back on, denigrating or eliminating humanities disciplines such as art history, then America’s future generations will be discouraged from taking advantage of the values, critical and decisive thinking and creative problem solving offered by the humanities. It is worth remembering that many of the nation’s most important innovators, in fields including high technology, business, and even military service, have degrees in the humanities."
As JFK said:
http://arts.gov/about/kennedy
If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope."
I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.
I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.
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