In Defence of the Arts · Coco Kemp-Welch

Is the education system falling out of love with the arts?

Is the education system falling out of love with the arts? As the popularity and availability of arts and humanities courses such as English Literature have diminished, and with the UK government releasing an article pushing artists towards ‘real’ jobs in cyber, it would appear so. However, while such examples are symptomatic of our educational system’s disillusionment with the arts, I aim to prove that they are just as integral to our society as science.

Having taken arts subjects at A-Level and as a current student of Spanish and Latin, I have spent a great deal of my time justifying my educational choices. The arts encourage self-reflection and aid lateral thinking, but their most important attribute is the ability to debate and come to a civil disagreement rather than a resolution. Prospective lawyers are often encouraged to study History to develop their ability to debate, understand different perspectives, and find support for tenuous arguments. While there is rarely one obvious way to answer an essay, scientific education follows a more direct approach in solving predominantly clear-cut solutions. Although this is not the case for all scientific subjects, there is nonetheless a fundamental distinction in the methods of teaching arts and sciences that is rooted in the substance they are trying to teach. The acknowledgement that we are not omniscient, that what we most strongly believe might not actually be true, and yet we can still live in harmony with those with whom we disagree: these are the intangible qualities that the arts and humanities teach us.

Even more abstract in the study of these subjects is how they link to progress. ‘Progress’ is defined as the move towards an ultimate destination, and as a concept is arguably meaningless unless the final destination is different to the starting point. I would argue that the main aim of science is to develop the world through discovery and improvement, hence the link to progress: however, progress cannot be the sole aim of the arts or their very essence would be corrupted. The beauty in studying the arts is not the ultimate goal you reach but rather the discovery that you must go through, which often entails a deeper understanding of yourself, society, and humanity as a whole. Ironically, art doesn’t really have an end point: it is arguably impossible to ‘analyse The Wasteland to completion’ because it is a subjective piece of work.

The basis of the products of science is their use. But if the nucleus of science is utility, the anchor of art is emotion, and I can only experience the depth of the desperation, futility, and sorrow felt by soldiers in the First World War from reading Dulce et Decorum Est for example. Indeed, not only can I tap into the emotions that Wilfred Owen must have felt as a soldier, witnessing the grim reality of warfare, but I can also align and link our highly distinct realities. Art and the arts capture the incredible constant in humanity: emotion. There is a connection that we find in the arts that crosses over boundaries of culture, geography, and time. Why is Shakespeare still so coveted? He lived five hundred years ago and yet he speaks of concepts and social situations that still happen today. Of course, any argument I make would be severely lacking if I did not recognise the necessity of science in our world. We would not have the efficient, comfortable life we have today without it. Yet, simultaneously, what would a life without the arts be like? Would we lack emotional intelligence, or entertainment (a capitalist heaven, perhaps, where there was nothing to do except work), or joy? Art connects us to each other, to the world, and to ourselves.

Sheffield Hallam University stopped offering English Literature courses because graduates “struggle[d] to get highly paid jobs” and it is sadly true that throughout history some of the greatest writers, artists, and dramatists have been born wildly wealthy and not needed to worry about financing their pursuits. I cannot claim to have come up with a solution to financially support the arts, but I hope I have justified their existence and their necessity to our society. For a strong society to function and flourish as healthily as possible it needs an interdisciplinary mix of arts and sciences without one being overshadowed by the other. As Keating said in Dead Poet’s Society, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Written by Coco Kemp-Welch Artwork by Ellena Kappos