Education is extremely important, but as with everything, you will always find gaps in what you’ve been taught. Life after high school or even after a college degree is often very different from what we imagined. I remember when I chose my first major, everyone was impressed when I said that I wanted to be a bilingual psychologist, but when that changed and I decided to be an artist, people gave my parents pitiful looks, as if to say, “poor you”. As children of immigrants, we often feel a responsibility to make sure that our parents' efforts and sacrifices are validated through our success. Many of us grew up with the expectation of choosing careers such as engineers, lawyers, and doctors. Although the arts are the cornerstone of culture, declaring oneself an artist often becomes synonymous with the phrase, “the starving artist.”
People are always intrigued to know if the sales of your artworks are sustaining you financially. Following your dreams in the arts becomes a challenge to the fibers that sustain society. Although not out of malice, our ego feels challenged, and there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that those who risked leaving the status quo have not found success. Because otherwise, it would make us question ourselves and what we have chosen as a profession. Art, beyond being considered a viable career, is seen as a hobby, something that is done after work or on weekends.
Art classes in the public education system have always been viewed as electives. When the school district finds itself in trouble with budget cuts, the first things to go are subjects like art, music, theater, and dance. I am not proposing that everyone should choose art as their career, much less that everyone should develop the talent to create masterpieces. But I do think that the value of these subjects and those who want to dedicate themselves to them must change. Art is not just for the artist. Throughout different subjects that are considered more important such as mathematics, science, and literature to name a few, art compliments all of them.
Some time ago, I heard a speech called, Do schools kill creativity? by Sir Ken Robinson via TedTalk. In his speech, Robinson talks about the diversity of intelligence. During the industrial revolution, priority was given to subjects that would result in jobs that would benefit the industry. Today, we are in trouble because our intelligence is limited. There are students who are brilliant but have been made to feel as though they are not because they have failed academically. Similarly, for those students who excel in subjects like math, their ability to be innovative is limited because they have not nurtured their creativity. If we are to have a future with culture and solutions to big problems, we need to be able to think critically and creatively by combining all subjects and giving them the same value.
Until recently, I was still considering finishing my psychology degree to see if it would make me feel successful and make my parents proud. I only had to question my motivations to realize that I myself believed the stigma of the scarcity of being an artist. Currently, there is academic inflation. It is no longer enough to have a bachelor's degree, now, you need a postgraduate degree or even a doctorate. I have seen artists, incredibly talented people, give up and feel obligated to choose a different career for fear of failing. That fear has been taught in our schools. Robinson says, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never find anything original." Original ideas are the product of creativity and are as important to an artist as they are to a scientist. Those ideas are what we need in a world that is constantly evolving technologically and that is facing environmental problems. A college degree doesn't guarantee a job like it did in the past. Now we have to be entrepreneurs with innovative ideas regardless of the career we have chosen. The world and our society need people who are empowered to think and create collectively by sharing their strengths with each other.