[TitaRusell]

It is interesting how everyone parrots that art is important when the vast majority of the population will never actually engage with it.

Opera? Ballet? Literature? Poetry? Classical music? Modern art?

Do the numbers it seems most people can do without them and still be functional.

[floren]

Fully functional economic units, the true aspiration of all thinking beings.

[threethirtytwo]

Avengers end game is also art. I engage with this type of art. I don’t consider opera the art of our modern culture. It is unfortunately a niche.

[lelanthran]

> Avengers end game is also art. I engage with this type of art. I don’t consider opera the art of our modern culture. It is unfortunately a niche.

That's the thing, though - in English literature class, there is nothing stopping the teacher from using popular media to introduce things like tone, ambiance, character motivations, arcs, etc, and then ask for parallels to the set works.

They don't do it though, the system is not set up to produce a bunch of critical thinkers from English Lit.

[bgbntty2]

Yes! Art that's taught in school and that is "required" to know if you want to appear intelligent or fancy is just what GP posted.

But art is also:

* electronic music (if you're not aware, it's not just repetitive dum-dum-dum for 8 minutes, although I enjoy that style, as well);

* rap (it's not just guns, drugs and mysoginy);

* all the other music genres, of course, but I gave electronic music and rap as examples because they're usually treated badly by people who're not familiar with them;

* games (I've been emotionally moved by many flash games, let alone new immersive games);

* movies, series - live action or western animation or anime.

Yet, in school we either learned about classical composers, or about regional composers. Only once, around 10th grade, we had a cool music teacher who played other genres for us - Fat Boy Slim, random metal groups, even a few pretty out-there experimental things. Much better than learning about some composer who lived 50 years ago just because he is from the same country as you.

Same for paintings and similar art. What good does it do a 7th grader to look at Picasso? The context matters, but for people who don't care about such art, it's useless. I won't feel better if I can "intelligently" discuss the art scene in $nation in $year. I have, later in life, read interesting articles that actually mix politics and life in general with the art that was "allowed" to flourish. Like art in Soviet Russia. But that context, if it was given at all, didn't mean anything to a 7th grader, especially if they didn't learn about Soviet Russia in history before the art class. In my experience my education was all over the place.

[threethirtytwo]

Agreed. Not to mention the techniques and technical knowhow to create this “lesser” art is far more advanced and requires far more effort then the snobbish art they teach in school.