What's even more of a disgrace is what Nicky Morgan (education secretary) said on the subject:
“if you wanted to do something, or even if you didn’t know what you wanted to do, then the arts and humanities were what you chose because they were useful for all kinds of jobs”, but that “we know now that couldn’t be further from the truth – that the subjects that keep young people’s options open and unlock the door to all sorts of careers are the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths)”.
How wonderful to see that in 2015 our govt. are finally stepping away from the one-size-fits-all approach to education! Oh wait...
What's even more of a travesty is how woefully uneducated our 'education secretary' seems to be on the growth of the Arts Sector throughout the most recent recession, something you can find out through the direct.gov website, if you could be bothered to educate yourself...
Key findings include:
- GVA (gross value added) of the Creative Industries was £71.4 billion in 2012 and accounted for 5.2 per cent of the UK Economy.
- GVA of the Creative Industries has increased by 15.6 per cent since 2008, compared with an increase of 5.4 per cent for the UK Economy as a whole.
- GVA of the Creative Industries increased by 9.4 per cent between 2011 and 2012, higher than for any of the other main UK industry sectors.
- The Creative Industries accounted for 1.68 million jobs in 2012, 5.6 per cent of the total number of jobs in the UK.
- Employment in the Creative Industries increased by 8.6 per cent between 2011 and 2012 a much higher rate than for the UK Economy as a whole (0.7%).
- The value of services exported by the Creative Industries was £15.5 billion in 2011, 8.0 per cent of total UK service exports.
- Between 2009 and 2011 the value of service exports from the Creative Industries increased by 16.1 per cent. This compares with an increase of 11.5 per cent for total UK service exports.
Having just been involved in a Design Academy programme that drove forward the idea that 'design thinking' or 'creative thinking' or 'lateral thinking', whatever you want to call it, is possibly the most sought after commodity employers are now looking for in their potential employees industry-wide; I think it's a crying shame that our schooling system is not making room for the development of these skills. Especially as, during said programme, I was taught that my skills were not limited to aesthetic design, but actually that I could use them to target social issues (something I'm sure is not included as part of the 'Creative Industries' per se mentioned in the govt. stats above). I am in no way arguing that the Arts are more beneficial than the Sciences or Humanities, but rather that denying they have any worth at all in the working world is ignorant.
The biggest, most lucrative companies in the world such as Google and Apple have specialists and technicians yes, but they also hire whole departments of designers, because their companies are run on innovation and they have been smart enough to realise the worth of such people and skills. It's argued that the best ideas and innovations come from subject cross-divides. How can that ever happen if everyone is brought up learning the exact same skills?
If you want even more reasons why an arts-deficient education system is set to fail our youth then Philip Pullman has some wonderful things to say about educating human beings rather than robots in this article from The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/20/philip-pullman-barbarian-arts-education-english-baccalaureate
Basically I'd just like to say, "Fuck off Nicky Morgan, and go do your homework." Rant over.
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