PLEASE SEE ATTACHED DOCUMENT FOR TOPIC AND SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS Essay

PLEASE SEE ATTACHED DOCUMENT FOR TOPIC AND SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS - Essay Example Despite the fact that the New York State Department of Education has embodied the belief that art education held the potential to be invaluable in the lives of children and adolescents, it has systematically been the first area targeted in times of budgetary need. The fight for and over arts education has been one that has effectively and efficiently led to a longstanding advocacy for its inclusion in the daily curriculum. Ultimately, the arts in the schools became something to fight for and over the next ten years, arts activists associated with New York City's vast array of cultural organizations and arts institutions emerged to do so. They began using artists to fill in the breach. They used the financial support of arts funders to develop existing arts outreach programs and to create new institutions whose mission was to educate public school children. Over time, more than one hundred of the city's arts organizations, from the major institutions down to the tiniest fragile dance ensembles, developed a roster of "teaching-artists" in a wide range of art forms — collage, African drumming, Chinese calligraphy, modem dance, opera, flamenco, and puppetry, to name a few — who would visit public school classrooms. In the early years, they would visit each classroom several times and present performances. As time went on, the teaching rather than the performance took precedence and teacher engagements got longer until they involved typically ten to sixteen visits (Horowitz & Ingram, 2005).