Just...Plain...Wrong. - This is your

Just...Plain...Wrong. - This is your tax dollars at work.

I've long held that the NEA, if it exists at all, should concentrate on teaching school kids about art. One of the current follies of the "back to basics" movement in schools is that art education is suffering at the hands of parsimonious school boards and short-sighted "conservative" parents.

I'm as conservative as they come. But different things unlock different kids' potential. For me, it was music and foreign language that finally kicked open the corner of my brain that handles reasoning. Not math, not science. That's true for lots of people - the "Three Rs" are no substitute for actual thinking. and schools that concentrate on them will reach the percentage of kids whose intellects get worked up over exactly that. For the rest of them, something else - languages, music, art, auto mechanics - is what does the trick, and opens up the love of learning for its own sake.

All of which means that people who love the act of thinking and reasoning for its own sake can confront "artists" like those in the article above with the vacuity of their respective muses.