Arts/Sports

The sports section of the newspaper is generally at least as large as the front section and the local section and any other specialty section. The sports section appears daily, the arts section, weekly. Television news is no different really. The regular reports of burglaries, fires, shootings, corruption are followed by maps and charts of weather along with weather quizzes and bar-b-ques which are followed by sports of all sorts. How can there be time for these aspects of the news, hour after hour, with additional chit-chat and still no serious time for the arts?

A dedicated sports columnist can range across sports, wax poetic, put sports in a larger cultural and ethical context on a daily basis. High school athletes are extolled and high school athletes and coaches of the year for all sports are duly noted with text and pictures.

This is all well and good, but is, in my estimation, way out of proportion to the attention given to serious artists,  performers and scholars. Imagine a world without professional sports. We could live with that. We might even get out and play more ourselves. But a world without the arts would be intolerably drab and sterile, a world we could not so easily remedy on our own.

We regularly read articles about the positive effects of the arts on learning and morale, but arts budgets are cut long before sports budgets. Excellent arts teachers are rarely acknowledged. Careers in sports are both desired and envied. Careers in the arts are suspect. Physical prowess is widely admired, intellectual and creative prowess must earn its share of attention.

Honest balance should be the goal.