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Protests and arts in our schools - the real public opinion
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Dear Friend,
The Pittsburgh Opera's decision to honor Gov. Tom Corbett with a Lifetime Achievement Award is attracting news coverage across the nation and protestors at the event tomorrow night. One reason is that Corbett has slashed funds from Pennsylvania's education budget, which has profound implications for arts education.
Classes in the arts are often on the short list of candidates to cut when school officials facing budget shortfalls consider ways of paring costs to make ends meet. But anyone who thinks of arts education as an expendable luxury of little importance is out of touch with the majority of Greater Pittsburgh residents, according to the largest regional quality of life survey to be conducted in decades.
More than 68 percent of residents consider arts education to be either a "very important" or "extremely important" part of a school's curriculum, the 2011 Pittsburgh Regional Quality of Life Survey reports. Fewer than 4 percent view arts education as "not important." Moreover, the views are consistent across all of the geographic areas surveyed. More than 2,200 people were interviewed for the survey conducted by PittsburghTODAY and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research. The interviews included residents of the City of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, the six other counties in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Areas and 25 counties surrounding it, including counties in Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland.
For more information about the survey, please read our 2012 annual report Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow.
Sincerely, Douglas Heuck Program Director PittsburghTODAY |
