Public School Arts Argumentative Essay

America’s public schools are woefully underfunded. As state legislatures around the nation focus on reducing spendings, education spending is often the first to go. And when these public schools are confronted with a dramatically smaller budget, art programs get the axe. As the Chicago Sun-Times report in 2013, Chicago Public Schools laid off over 1,000 teachers when they made the decision to close over 50 schools. Nearly ten percent of these teachers taught in the arts or music. As ThinkProgress writes, this is a national phenomenon-- Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles are all cutting their public school arts funding in order to cope with budget shortfalls. In fact, the government is offering so little support for the arts that the private organizations are having to fill the gap. This low funding is a national catastrophe that has the potential to lead to the decline of American culture and education.

There has been a great debate whether or not the arts should be funded by the government. Opponents believe the money spent on art programs is being wasted. Many believe that the arts, whether it is a career or hobby, do not directly benefit the country. On the contrary, others conclude that a
The National Endowment for Arts” seems to be the lightning rod when congress wants to find an organization on whose budget to cut. According to The NEA or The National Endowment for the Arts, it is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation. The NEA works with more than 20 other federal agencies, state and local governments, state and regional arts agencies, and private nonprofits on projects that provide opportunities for thousands of Americans to experience quality arts programming throughout the