I am old enough that there were no arts courses in my high school except one/semester. I was allowed to take it. My husband, who also went to school when there was only a single course available, was not allowed by his family to take it, as it was considered superfluous.
My parents told me they would not pay for an art education. I qualified in my sophmore year for the College of Art at the University of Illinois on portfolio review. My parents insisted I take art education courses, as well.
Finally, after taking time off to work, get married and have a child, I went back to school on my own. My advisor told me in 1966 that I would hate being buried in the education system, where art was not funded and that, based on my work and my history, I was one of the 5% of all art students who could make it as a career. He was right and today I make my living hand manufacturing a fiber item I developed and have been marketing for 22 years.
My husband dropped out of college and while working in a factory, learned to silver solder. In college, he had not been able to take professional art courses because it was not his declared major. Non-major courses had no real critique and did not take the students seriously. On his own, he became an accomplished silversmith and went on to pioneer techniques in reactive metals and to do some wonderful work in forged iron. He did this work successfully for 20 years.
The only reason he is not working as an artist/craftsman today is that the passage of the AMT killed the tax rule that allowed most galleries to exist. These were run by the wives of high earners who used the losses as a tax write-off. Prior to the entire rolling of Bush I by the donk Congress, we were making a nice middle class income off jewlery production and marketing. Combined with a fashion sea change when Clinton took office and an increase in the cost of marketing, much of the Second American Craft Movement disappeared in the early to mid 1990s.
We still enjoy galleries and craft fairs and the quality of most of the work is not as innovative as it was in the seventies through the nineties. Even with loads of art and craft education, including entire curricula devoted to production crafts as a business, most of the accomplished work seems to be by older people who did not have all this access and encouragement.
I strongly believe that art in innate. Technique can be taught, of course, but the sheer will to produce is in some of us from birth and will be expressed even if if it is forbidden. I am not convinced the opposite is true.
This is also an entreprenuerial professional business. While a few colleges have some business courses tacked on to the production crafts curriculum, it has little relationship to the realities of limited production hand manufacturing or the marketing system as it presently exists in galleries and trade shows. To be successful takes a combination of business and marketing savvy along with creativity, technical accomplishment and the ability to source materials, devise production systems and meet production deadlines consistently and profitably. An MBA once told me that someone with his degree could run any business, but that did not mean they could start one.
I do not see that the prevalence of art instruction has produced more work or better work. I wonder if even 5% still graduate to become working professionals. I think it is more like 2% today.
I do not see that the prevalence of art instruction has produced more work or better work.
Look around at products you see and/or buy everyday. Design has become a major value-added for a lot of products. That’s design in labeling, marketing, packaging and the product itself. That design is a product of folks who went to art school.
When children are taught to pursue simpleton courses in arts and crafts they miss the challenge of accomplishment of mastering a difficult effort they are not attuned to.
Artistic talent if latent does not need to be enhanced by education in school.
Let the budding musicians and artists drop out of education and pursue their dream elsewhere. Too many kids today can not even handle simple mathematics yet can play an instrument and do videos on you tube from their parents basement.