joanna wrote:
>
> Figuring that it costs 100,000/year for an
> art teacher, that means you can pay 21 teachers for ten years. Figuring
> 200 students/year, that would mean you could give 42,000 students art
> training. I bet you at the end of that you'd get a lot more than orange
> shower curtains messing up Central Park.)
It would improve _all_ education even if it didn't do a thing directly for students -- i.e., if it produced something even worse than a lot of orange shower curtains. We are in The Sandwichman's territory here. Independently of how good it is to have art teachers, music teachers, phys ed teachers, is that such teachers give the regular classroom teacher a break in his/her day. As special teachers (and classes) in these "auxiliary" subjects disappeared, the day of the classroom teacher both lengthened in minutes _and_ grew in intensity. The loss of quality in the classroom is incalcuable. The loss in quality of life for the workers (i.e., the classroom teachers) is even more disastrous.
Carrol