Post-Artem Depression

Since fiscal year 1967, federal funding for arts education in public schools has steadily decreased by over 40%. What's more, the sole 55-years young federal body dispensing public funds for the arts has been threatened with total elimination by administrations and congressional bodies in 1981, 89, '90,95, '96, '97, 2009, and as recently as 2017. Defunding art and cultural services has been en vogue for over 35 years, and this trend doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon…

If you were a K-12 student enrolled in a U.S. Public School in the 80s or 90s, you most likely received a relatively rich education endowed with a multidisciplinary arts curriculum. And if you're a millennial professional artist or art educator -of any discipline and of any level-, your current vocational trek is statistically proven to have been likely inspired by the artistic engagements and exposures you received in your developmental years (in percentages that out-perform those of students with little to no art education)….in fact, if you work in Finance, Medicine, Law, Science, or hold an Executive, Directorial, or Managerial position in ANY field, statistics also trace your vocational ventures and successes back to developmental years likely enriched with artistic engagements and exposure from your Public Education. And additionally STILL, if you and your household were from a lower Socioeconomic community, but your education was inclusive of heightened exposure and engagement with the arts, your statistical probabilities are even higher in terms of career prospects and successes in or out of the arts. So again, how does a government get rid of such a demonstrably useful curricular subject? Well to best answer that, we need to step back a couple of centuries.

In 1837 with the launch of the Public School Movement by an educational reformist and Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Horace Mann argued:

He believed this could be accomplished by promoting a self-governing society of self-governing individuals taught under the pedagogical approach of something called "Mental Discipline"; the Arts are the only educational convention capable of simultaneously engaging all levels of one's faculty hierarchy: imagination, intuition, perception, memory, will, and reason.

In wake of the American Civil War, the 1868 Super Intendant of the St. Louis Schools and 1889 U.S. Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris stated that

He maintained that the arts revealed the grandeur of human potential and that the aesthetic principles of harmony, symmetry, and repetition mimicked the stages of an individual's induction into civilization. As Education Commissioner he reintroduced art, manual arts, music, and science into the national curriculum.

American Herbartians introduced the "Doctrine of Interest" into public schools, suggesting that lessons should be curated around students' prior knowledge, and they aimed for an integrated curriculum -inclusive of the arts- in which all lessons were linked; underscoring how everything was a part of an even larger whole. Well, this unpopular extreme -in a vastly conservative society- would prove to be too much for contemporary educational sensibilities, thus provoking a clap-back extreme against arts curriculum.

The technocratic Social Efficiency Educators. Their joint belief -rooted in educational eugenics- was that sociologists should ask and answer the endless questions proposed by curricular arts advocates, politicians should diligently execute the ideas of sociologists, and citizens should simply select efficient and honest politicians. In their minds, the arts in public schools were at best an aristocratic luxury that didn't contribute to the societal responsibility of vocational — or non-college-bound- citizens selecting their members of government.

This back and forth would continue for decades. Booker T. Washington believed art was only imperative if directly related to vocational training of low-status workers, to which W.E.B du Bois fervently objected, but in the end, ultimately lost his argument to Washington's policy. After the World Wars and in the midst of the Great Depression, Social Reconstructionists both used and taught art to cooperatively reform society; not just therapeutically or aesthetically, but even professionally in ways that are still industry standards to this very day. But in 1957 when the USSR launched sputnik into Earth's Orbit and propelled the U.S and Soviet Russia into the Space Race, funding and focus on curricular arts took a huge hit, as the government funneled massive educational resources in sciences and math to nurture more STEM soldiers to defeat the Soviet foes.

The long and short of it all is the federal government does not hold a high valuation on the formative, curricular, or cultural benefits of arts education; despite the study after study after study qualifying their multi-layered vital importance in and beyond academia. Now, as sad as all of this may be, I believe the reason for this devaluation is because curricular arts are subjective and therefore vulnerable to reductions in funding and a historically unperceived relevance as a public good. Artistic and Intercultural literacy, however, is academically measurable, indisputable, nationally miscalculated, and undeniably tackles so much more than titular arts education ever has.

Now, the extent and quality of literacy aptitude assessments I'm suggesting are currently unprecedented and would fundamentally challenge the very nature of how the general public integrates with the arts moving forward. But I believe the imperative necessitates the novelty; that which has been or currently is being done hasn't or isn't working. So for over 6 years now, I have been tirelessly building and refining the infrastructures of a corporation created to

1. Deploy/nurture/support millions of creatives and cultural ambassadors in an incomparably comprehensive fashion

2. Institute a Civil Art residency program that provides public services to any and all public school districts and municipalities wanting to enhance their community's artistic literacy

Now that the country has switched from the NCLB Act to the ESSA, federal resources have an easier pathway of being attributed to the Arts in public schools, but like any other public programming, the government will not create the necessary services; they will, however, support registered organizations who will, in turn, provide those public services on and at the government's dime and behest. When it comes to the Arts, what's in the public's interest, currently does NOT exist, so I created it. Since August of 2019, I've been a client with the joint institutions of the Washu EIP Law Clinic in St. Louis and the Transactional Law Clinics of Harvard, who have magnificently assisted me in trademark, copyright, and patent applications with the USPTO, the recent completion of the Articles of Incorporation which are en route to the Secretary of State's desk for conferment, and brokering 5 outside investment proposals totaling over $1M in seed capital.

As stewards of the arts, we all took a solemn vow to use our talents to investigate the vast complexities of the human experience and return to the masses a truth all but forgotten. I'm positive that the HoneyB Corps is the most comprehensive way of doing just that…and I think I can convince you of that, too.