Arts , not crafts

[s836apg]

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.

I can't imagine the figures are much different in the UK.

What is that makes kids wanna do meeja studies and dance classes?
You can do that stuff in your spare time for god's sake.

Nobody want to build stuff anymore?


R

[FlibbleFamily]

Looking back at my friends who took media for a level, I think it was seen as a cop-out class. one where you could go along and just mess about for the lesson. they were sorely mistaken which I found hilarious at the time. Same for General Studies which annoyed me as I worked hard for my grades in that class, then no fricking university would recognise it as an actual subject!

[Ali Admin]

Surely you can still build and invent things in your spare time, even while studying for an arts degree.

My son was always building stuff in his spare time (almost exclusively computers from the age of 8 onwards) and went on to take a specialist IT degree.

My daughter was always drawing and creating things in her spare time (every waking moment really ) and went on to do an arts degree.

They are like chalk and cheese, just like chips off the old blocks.

[s836apg]

Surely you can still build and invent things in your spare time, even while studying for an arts degree.

Sure, but how many meeeja studies students are doing the hard stuff that is in science degrees?

[Earthtracer]

I think it is a calumny to mock media studies students, simply because they don't want to be engineers. I know, for an example, a very bright girl who is now a BBC producer after a lot of post-degree years working very hard.

Science may not be difficult, for those with a bent for it. But is biology a 'soft' science against, say, physics? I don't think so.

Some architects, who after all 'build', have inflicted some ghastly visual horrors upon us (some of course have not and you will no doubt argue beauty is in the eye of the beholder!).

I do agree that absurd subjects have crept in as degree courses but usually from doubtful universities and they are not the norm.

Oh and by the way, the US cannot have graduated any students. On the other hand 89,140 students did, I am sure, graduate. Sloppy grammar is one of the reasons we still need arts graduates, in English, certainly!

[s836apg]

I think it is a calumny to mock media studies students, simply because they don't want to be engineers. I know, for an example, a very bright girl who is now a BBC producer after a lot of post-degree years working very hard.

Take us back to the old issue of "What professions are valued?".

In some societies the engineer who was building something would automatically be valued more highly than the producer of visual ephemera
That is a cultural difference.
And I realise that it is one on shaky ground, if no one wants ships then you are better off making documentaries...
Nevertheless I think that we have lost focus in this country.
Bluntly it wasn't Wordsworth or Keats who paid for the sewers and the railway bridges that we still use today.


BR
R

[KellyI]

My husband is a design engineer who uses physics every single day and I am an artist.

He views chemistry as cooking and biology and playing with bits of meat, but only to wind up his colleagues

On the other hand, he very much believes that in order to be a good engineer you have to be creative, and places a great deal of value on the children learning about art, the design process and history as well as great deal of science. Should add that we're autonomous as well.

As the world shrinks and technology allows us all to connect/ invade each others privacy (depending on your point of view!) understanding media and learning how to use it will also increase in importance. Think about it. Thirty years ago media studies would have included newspapers, tv and radio. Now we have the internet, mobile phones, Facebook, blogging, twitter and others. Even TV is changing with the whole on demand idea, so advertising is having to adapt.

Personally, I dont mind what my children do career wise, as long as it makes them happy and satisfied.

[s836apg]

Yahoo thought the future was in content creation.
Google realised it was in engineering solutions.
Bluntly there are too many meeja studies students.

R

[Earthtracer]

So YOU say.
And you are sneering again...!

[Polly]

Regarding Arts students being of less value than science students, there is also a problem with education in that if you want to study Science you cannot also study Art - drawing, painting etc.

And yet Scientific Illustration is still needed, despite the advances in photography and digital media. Competent Artists are still needed to make medical illustrations for medical texts, and they are also still needed for scientific botanical illustration, where identification of the features of different plants is crucial - especially where the plants have medical uses. Photographic media may have improved vastly, but in these cases they are still not on a par with an expertly drawn or painted scientific illustration.