Rachel Maddow and Arts Education
August 25, 2009
Quote by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, speaking at Jacob’s Pillow
“Sometimes we choose to serve our country in uniform, in war. Sometimes in elected office. And those are the ways of serving our country that I think we are trained to easily call heroic. It’s also a service to your country, I think, to teach poetry in the prisons, to be an incredibly dedicated student of dance, to fight for funding music and arts education in the schools. A country without an expectation of minimal artistic literacy, without a basic structure by which the artists among us can be awakened and given the choice of following their talents and a way to get to be great at what they do, is a country that is not actually as great as it could be. And a country without the capacity to nurture artistic greatness is not being a great country. It is a service to our country, and it is heroic service to our country, to fight for the United States of America to have the capacity to nurture artistic greatness.”
If you want to read more of her interview at presentation please click here.
me arts ed 
The word heroic means something. I have several sons serving on active duty; 4 tours in combat zones between them. The have been in mortally dangerous situations and seen comrades injured and killed for our country but get up daily and do it again. They would not want to be called heroes but live the definition. As an arts teacher I take issue with the cheapening of the word hero by Rachel Maddow. Those that strive to maintain excellence in the arts know it is can be a personal and corporate struggle but it is not an issue of heroics comparable to the call our volunteer Soldiers, Sailors Airmen, and Marines must many times answer with true heroism.
Thank you for your comments Mike!