Philip Kennicott writes in the Washington Post:
"The surprise here is not that Safire, the self-proclaimed right-winger, has a mainstream view; rather it’s that large policy organizations, like Americans for the Arts, have gravitated so far away from the ‘left’ position…
"The problem? An instrumental view of art places art on the same plane, say, as video games. If art is good for cognition, and video games are good for cognition (there’s research looking into that, too), then why steer little Jimmy away from Doom and toward Beethoven? Unless you believe in intrinsic values for art, or in instrumental values that are higher than simply building cognitive ability, then video games and art are essentially the same…"
Continue reading at washingtonpost.com
Via ArtsJournal