State of the Arts

According to James D. Wolfensohn, “the Arts must be at the heart of every child’s learning experience if...they are to have a chance to dream and to create, to have beliefs, to carry a sense of cultural identity.” 

Wolfensohn is a former chairman of the Kennedy Center as well as the former president of the World Bank. According to the Americans for the Arts blog eighty-eight percent of Americans have agreed with his opinion that art in schools forms a vital part of a child’s K-12 education. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have adopted standards for learning in the arts because of the federal Education and Secondary Education Act, which recognizes the arts as a core academic subject. Regardless of this, only nineteen out of fifty states include art as a key area of their state accountability system, only thirteen states have done statewide reports on arts education in the last five years, and the last national arts education report done by the U.S. Department of Education was over ten years ago (Tuttle, 2018). 

As recently as last year Missoula County Public Schools have seen a “$3 million deficit in the general fund and a $5 million loss due to the end of federal COVID-19 funds” (Rispens, 2024). These financial problems could cause nearly one-hundred jobs pertaining to the art department to be lost. This isn’t only a Missoula issue; across Montana, schools have been facing problems with budgeting for the arts.

Outside of Montana, art in schools is beginning to face hardships. Two-thirds of public school teachers in the U.S. believe that fine arts are being crowded out by focuses on classes such as math and English (Ford Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers, 2012). This could be extremely harmful because it is crucial for students to be able to find individual growth and development through art. It can even impact their health by reducing stress, improving cognitive benefits, and boosting the human immune system (Online Master of Arts in Education, 2025). Not only do art classes offer a place for students to let out their creativity, but according to the University of Florida they can help students achieve higher grades in math and English classes, improve social skills, and even boost civic engagement. It is vital that students have art classes not only as a way of expression but for an alternative career path. There are hundreds of job opportunities that the fine arts hold such as art therapists, animators, architects, and marketing executives. 

One of the underlying reasons that art classes have been seeing a decline is the stereotypes that students associate with art classes. Senior Chloe Anderson said that people sometimes think that “everyone in those [art classes] are weird,” but every student is required to take a fine art class at PHS to graduate. That could include joining choir, band, or just taking an entry level art class taught by Ms. Zeigler. 

Zeigler has been teaching art classes in the Polson School District for the past seven years. She acknowledges that art education can be “a different way of learning,” but it can be “an outlet for students to de-stress, which actually helps their other subjects.” Many students find art classes to be scary because they think they’re bad at art, while in reality “art is way broader than just painting and drawing,” said Zeigler. Students tend to forget that everyone has a different starting point. 

“I know lots of kids who hate art classes and don’t even want to try,” said Anderson. Even though a lot of students “dog on art” there are many teachers at PHS that support students artistic ambitions. When teachers acknowledge students’ artwork in the hallways, it shows “that there are people who care,” said Anderson. Even a small comment can be “a little bit of motivation,” they said.