Thoughts for the weekend.

From New Trends in Cultural Policy for the Twenty-First Century, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Social Text, No. 59 (Summer, 1999) pp. 5-15.

In truth, the assault on public support of the arts, draped as it was in the cloak of moral piety and family values, was part of a larger, unrelenting movement away from government support of a public sphere. The assault on the arts is part of what many have identified as privatization. For the purpose of this essay, I am defining privatization as the abandonment of public responsibility, an abandonment of the idea that there are places in society where, as the late Christopher Lasch notes, we all meet as equals, where excellence is available to the general population, where merit rather than money or primogeniture gains access. In the arts, privatization has meant being cautious about the new, the risky, the experimental, since they tend not to do well in the marketplace. Privatization assumes that the creative process as opposed to the cultural product can thrive in the marketplace without any special support. As such, privatization sharply deviates from some fundamental national ideals.

In defining an ideal sense of public good, Horace Mann, in his advocacy for mandatory universal public school education, wrote the following in 1846: "all have derived benefits from their ancestors." And, "all are bound, as by an oath, to transmit those benefits, even in an improved condition, to posterity."