Tuesday, 4/8/97
Government must support education
Private money throws special interests into arts, public
schools
Last month, Los Angeles residents received a curious enclosure
in their electric utility bills titled "A Small Request From Your
Los Angeles Public Library." It was not a summons to turn in
overdue books, nor an announcement for upcoming events at a local
branch; rather, the pamphlet was a plea for donations.
Beyond the flowery rhetoric expounding libraries as "the very
foundation upon which a community can build for the future" was the
underlying message that without private donations, our library
lacks the financial resources to maintain its service to the
public. In the midst of the much-touted Information Age, the
information branch of the second largest city in our country is
broke and reduced to begging for money through direct mail
solicitations. The only bit of levity was provided by the
admonishment on the enclosed envelope not to send your DWP bill to
them.
Unfortunately, the library is not the only public institution
that is suffering.
Today’s municipal election includes a bond measure to provide
$2.4 billion dollars for repairing the failing infrastructure of
Los Angeles’ schools. According to County Counsel Dewitt Clinton,
the bond will go to more than 800 schools in Los Angeles to repair
leaking roofs, decaying walls and obsolete wiring and plumbing, and
to address a myriad of concerns such as earthquake refits,
disability access and providing computer technology to students.
Even opponents of the bond do not dispute the desperate need for
these repairs. Nevertheless, this proposition missed passage by one
percentage point in November and, if last week’s Los Angeles Times
poll is correct, seems headed for the same fate this time
around.
Support for education is equally embattled at the national
level. I left the country in disgust two years ago in the wake of
the Gingrich revolution, fully expecting the worst from their
Contract with America. Still, it was a shock to return home in the
summer of 1995 and find that they were attempting to eliminate the
Department of Education. That effort, fortunately, was blocked; but
how stable can our system be if such a move was ever considered a
realistic option?
Public agencies charged with maintaining the cultural vitality
of our society in other ways are also struggling to survive. The
National Endowment for the Arts has weathered more than a decade of
Jesse Helm’s attacks and seen its funding slashed in recent years
by a hostile Congress. Nevertheless, even at its height, the NEA
commanded a budget that constituted only a fraction of one percent
of yearly federal expenditures. Despite the re-organization of
grant programs and the heroic efforts of NEA chair Jane Alexander
to ease these setbacks, the bottom line remains that there are
fewer dollars available for fewer artists, musicians, museums, and
community organizations.
How have we let the importance of education, of the arts, even
of public access to information slip so far? The stories of public
agencies under attack and in the red could fill this paper every
day. Decreasing financial aid for students, tuition increases at
public universities, rising admission prices at museums, the
precarious existence of organizations like the National Endowment
for the Arts all attest to a shrinking pool of public dollars for
truly public uses.
Some of the blame falls on us in the arts and in academia for
failing to promote humanistic education as vital and necessary.
While the majority of education dollars slowly shifted into the
sciences during the course of this century, we have not been
vigilant enough in asserting the importance of the humanities, of
art, even of critical thought, to mitigate the ethical and
political questions brought about by our technological revolutions.
We have allowed ourselves to be hamstrung by the ineffable nature
of art and knowledge in the face of an increasingly corporate and
scientific culture interested, ultimately, in the bottom line.
Even in purely economic terms, though, starving education and
the arts does not make sense for our future. Our schools and
libraries are an investment. Anemic education budgets deny adequate
facilities and opportunities to the majority of the population that
cannot afford to acquire them elsewhere. By skimping today, we rob
ourselves of a whole new generation of leaders, artists, musicians,
thinkers and, yes, even business people and scientists.
Furthermore, we entrench a two-tiered system of education and
opportunity that creates, in reality, fewer markets and consumers
and more resentment and distrust.
Funding for the arts, however, can also have an immediate
economic impact.
In 1993, California’s nonprofit arts agencies generated more
than $2 billion in economic activity, creating 115,000 jobs and
adding $77 million to state and local tax coffers. By contrast, the
California Arts Council gave only $10 million in grants for the
1996-97 fiscal year.
That is a significant return on investment, and does not take
into account the infinitely greater impact those projects,
exhibits, performances, art works, and classes had on their
communities.
In the effort to keep their doors open, schools, nonprofit
organizations and, now, even public libraries are turning elsewhere
for support when federal and state funds dry up. Many now rely on
volunteers to accomplish tasks once performed by paid staff.
Parents and community members pitch in at local schools, while one
study estimated that in 1993 over 173,000 people volunteered their
time in California alone to help struggling non-profit arts
organizations.
However, such volunteer efforts, though commendable, only
provide part of the equation to keep schools and foundations up and
running. Hard cash is more difficult to come by, and frequently
requires dancing with the devil. For some public schools, Whittle
Communication’s offer of needed equipment was sufficient payment to
sell the educational time and corporate loyalties of their
students.
While those in high school watch Snickers commercials, we at
public universities have witnessed the transformation of our
administrations from managing officials to fund raisers. Indeed,
here at UCLA, incoming Chancellor Albert Carnesale has banked his
tenure here on his ability to "privatize" the university. What
money comes in, from whom, and earmarked for what purposes we
rarely know. And that, ultimately, is the problem.
Corporate philanthropy has warmed over the years to the idea of
supporting education and the arts, as executives realized its
powerful public-relations potential. Indeed, "directed giving" has
become a euphemism for advertising, and we are inundated by
corporate logos at every kind of cultural event, from Princess
Cruises at the L.A. Philharmonic to Exxon nature specials on public
TV – all hoping that the image of benevolent patron will linger in
the minds of the audience.
Unfortunately, as public institutions turn to private sources
for funding, they are forced to pander to the interests of their
sponsors. Clearly, one is not likely to see a special report on the
need for universal health care put out by an insurance company. In
the arts, their influence is often more subtle, but equally
devastating. The distaste for controversy and the motive to affect
an audience with the most consumer clout directs corporate money
towards the staid and conventional. Again, one will not likely see
performance art on queer identity brought to you by a sponsor eager
to woo investors. Essentially, private funding of the arts and
education ensures a static and stagnant vision of our world in our
schools, theaters, and galleries, while wealthy philanthropists get
the chance to have their cake and eat it too.
Rather than depending on the fickle largess of wealthy patrons
and the agenda-laden contributions of corporations, we need a
stable and sizable commitment to education and the arts from local,
state and federal governments. Public funding is the only way to
ensure the academic and artistic freedom that is vital to the
cultural and intellectual health of our communities, and the
nation.
A popular poster among leftists in the dark years of the 1980s
proclaimed that it would be a fine day when the Air Force has to
hold a bake sale to buy a bomber and the schools have all of the
cash that they need.
Indeed.Ritter is an ethnomusicology graduate student.