Creativity

I was discussing this on another blog yesterday after reading Paul Carney’s article.

https://paulcarneyartist.blog/2021/05/09/sequencing-learning-in-art-and-design-dont-ask-the-dfe/

We were discussing how the UK have failed, and continue to fail, their creative students. Art and music have been sidelined since the early 2010s and the situation is just getting worse. Our creative industries contributed nearly £150billion to the economy last year, according to UK government estimates, a figure that grew year on year by over 5% compared to the overall growth rate of the economy of less than 2%. Sport, which is prioritised in a way that the arts aren’t in school, contributed less than half of that, £63billion. Now, I am definitely not saying we should replace sport with art, but at Primary school level the children don’t need to be getting 5 maths and 5 English lessons every week, taking up their entire morning every day of the week (as Michael Gove the Gradgrindian Education Secretary decided and enforced). Get rid of two of each and suddenly art and sport have the room to breathe. You can have an art lesson every week like I used to, you can have a music lesson every week like I used to, you can have two extra P.E. lessons or you can combine the two and teach dance to boys as well as girls. That way, dance can once again be seen as something everyone can do and maybe, just maybe, boys who enjoy it won’t be subjected to the current level of mindless bullying by a society who refuse to see it as something only girls do. Actually, that’s never going to happen because men and boys are desperately afraid of creativity or self expression that might show another side to them.

By the way, everything I am suggesting here for state schools already happens at fee paying schools. That’s why the vast majority of our creatives and the majority of our high level sports people, apart from footballers, come from the highest strata of society. We have created a situation where a level playing field is impossible, particularly since the Thatcher government forced the sell off of the vast majority of them in the 1980s. A balanced education should not be the norm for the privileged few, it should be a right for everyone.