Arts education - Optional or not at all is not enough

THIS is a great day for arts education in Ireland.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin will this afternoon officially open the new CIT Cork School of Music, a project that began in 1999 when the then education minister Micheál Martin announced a €13 million extension to the college.

This proposal was quickly dismissed as not being ambitious enough and plans for a new €60m facility were immediately announced. The vision represented by that brave decision has been made real today and those responsible deserve our gratitude. That gratitude can be best expressed by exploiting the opportunities offered at the school and encouraging those who would build others like it. It is a benchmark, one the whole country can be proud of. It is a tremendous statement of ambition but it is unfortunate that we cannot say the same about all of arts education in Ireland.

It too often languishes somewhere between optional and not available. Given that we are speaking about learning to understand the vocabulary of our inner- most selves this seems at least inadequate. Given that we are speaking about a way to analyse, comment on and possibly even change the world, it is, in language modified because of today’s celebrations, unsatisfactory.

There is a very real connection between the depressing nihilism expressed through that new scourge of aggressive binge drinking, a huge increase in the use of other “recreational” drugs, an increase in casual and often fatal violence and an indifference to understanding, expressing or even acknowledging the promptings of the soul. The voices of our consciences express themselves most clearly through works of art and unless we prepare to articulate and satisfy that conscience we will have turned a blind eye to one of humanity’s redeeming features.

That process does start with Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and that is why arts education is much more than learning an impressive party piece for granny’s 70th.

Of the 171,313 pupils who sat the Junior Cert in 2004/05, only 44% participated in the art programme and only 23% took music. At Leaving Cert level the figures are even more disheartening. A mere 20% took art and only 4% studied music.

Whether this is a reflection of poor provision or poor interest is academic because it is obvious that we need to do more.

Inevitably, there have been formal statements of government policy that have emphasised a central role for the arts in the education system. Inevitably, we await the implementation of that policy. Hopes were raised last October when the arts and education ministers established a committee on the arts and education. That committee reported in May and public comment is awaited. The recommendations could, if implemented, lead to a new era for the arts in Irish education. Let us hope it is being considered with even the mildest sense of urgency.

However, today is about celebrating a fine achievement, one that will sustain the great tradition of musical education enjoyed in the south since the school became the first municipal school of music to be established in these islands in 1878. It is a fine architectural achievement, one that reinforces the belief that public projects are making by far the greater contribution to enhancing our built environment.

It would be wonderful if today’s celebrations were the catalyst to re-energise arts education in Ireland, allowing us to harness the great imaginations and powerful emotions all around us.