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 "...the essential drama of American education today...is about the unqualified triumph—of a certain way of seeing, of reckoning value. It's about the victory of whatever can be quantified over everything that can't. It's about the quiet retooling of American education into an adjunct of business, an instrument of production."
This from writer Mark Slouka in his stinging indictment of the American education system:
Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school.*
It provided the seed for this Special Issue:
From the beginning, Art (the Arts) was relegated to the periphery of the "manifest destiny" American civilization, even in the face of the great merchandising of Art that has taken place in the past 50 years. The one spread of hope has been the commitment on the part of higher educators to teach the experience of the arts and the humanities in a fundamental and priceless effort—to develop individuals with a broad world perspective, with compassion, with empathy, with civility, with an understanding of what used to be called, "the human condition." This commitment has been under severe attack in the American education system for the past 25 years, and especially during the eight 'Bush' years of no-nothingness and anti-intellectualism. Bubba has ruled and Bubba-ism is now the 'educated' religion of half of the American population.
ars quo vadis?
—The Editors
*Mark Slouka's essay can be seen in the
September 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine
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