The abilities associated with the humanities and the arts are vital, both to the health of individual nations and to the creation of a decent world culture. These include the ability to think critically, to transcend local loyalties, and to approach international problems as a “citizen of the world”. In addition, perhaps most important, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person.

One of the best ways to cultivate sympathy is through instruction in literature, music, theatre, fine arts and dance. When people put on a play or a dance piece together, they learn to cooperate – and find they must go beyond tradition and authority if they are going to express themselves well. The sort of community created by the arts is non-hierarchical – a model of the responsiveness and interactivity that a good democracy will also foster in its political processes. In addition, not the least, the arts can be a great source of joy.

Participation in plays, songs, and dances fills children with happiness that can carry over into the rest of their education. We need to favor an education that cultivates the critical capacities, that fosters a complex understanding of the world and its peoples and that educates and refines the capacity for sympathy. In short, an education that cultivates human beings rather than producing useful machines. If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away. They do not make money; but they do something far more precious; they make the world worth living in.

--Rosemary Rogers