Cut Backs

As the budget cuts are looming over the schools across the country like a dark winter cloud ready to open up with a big down poor, there is one thing you hear more than anything else when it comes to putting together a financial plan. Getting rid of the arts programs. I never understood this. You never hear anyone suggest, "Let's eliminate the football team." Why is that? When it comes to the penny pinching that our education systems will do, year after year, there is a side that is taken and I do not understand it.  What makes the sports programs more important?  It would give a person the idea it is better to be a jock than a brainiac.  Are fine arts vulnerable to budget cuts partly because children are not tested in music or art under the No Child Left Behind law?  Wouldn’t we rather raise children who are well rounded, cultured and happy.  I would like to see kids supported in whatever extracurricular activity they choose.  In the way art imitates life, pop culture shows this example with the show “Glee”.  We see kids who love the arts and that’s what they want to do.  They don’t fit in to and of the popular groups and are even picked on.  When members of the football or cheerleading squad cross over, they get harassed.  It is played as more glamorous and the drama is elevated for the affect on TV but the bottom line is the cuts are an underlying sub plot.  How do we as a society fix this so all interest groups are viewed and equally important and we don’t find a few particular throng always facing the fear they might not be around while the others would thrive?