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Resolved: Budget Cuts to Art classes are justified

I thank my opponent for posting his opening argument and hope that his time is not so scarce due to dire circumstances. However, I need to remind my opponent that this is not an open-format debate. Round 2 was to be used for opening arguments only, rebuttals were reserved for round 3, since now my opponent has one additional round of rebuttals over me. In all fairness, he should only post original arguments in the next round to make up for this. I also need to point out that quotations need to be marked as such. Reading this round was really taxing, due to the sudden transitions from my own text to his ideas. To make this easier on the reader, I will summarize these ideas by my opponent: a) budget cuts are unfortunate, and my opponent feels he does not need to justify them as a whole b) budget cuts to art classes, however, are claimed to be justified c) art classes suffer budget cuts in order to preserve the budget of “core classes” d) art classes enhance English, writing and math, so if we cut the budgets of the latter, art classes serve less purpose e) art related jobs are quite low-paying, while math and science jobs are among the highest paying f) art education can be taken outside of the classroom, so schools do not have to fund it Point a) is Con attempting to oversimplify the debate. He doesn’t question any of my definitions, only how broadly this debate applies them. However, this is false. If budget cuts are never justified, then budget cuts to art classes are also never justified. As shown in the previous round, since the art classes budget is a subset of the education budgets, it cannot gain justification out of the blue. Thus, as he has failed to respond to my arguments showing that budget cuts are never justified, extend those points. They’re enough to win me this debate. If all these budget cuts are admittedly unjustified, as Con has so far conceded, then so are the art classes budget cuts, negating b). My opponent does not build up an argument to prove that art classes budget cuts are “justified”, only that they are LESS UNJUSTIFIED than cuts to other budgets. It is of no consequence for this debate which budget cut is more or less unjustified. The burden of proof is on my opponent to show that the quality of “justification” is attached to the arts classes budget cuts. Point c) relies on my source, but as I stated in my previous round, this is a rumor, an uncorroborated suspicion [11]. There is no official reason given for the actual budget cuts to art classes anywhere. My opponent builds his claim on suspicion as if it were fact. And in fact, my opponent’s statement makes no sense at all. Arts classes cannot be cut in favor of “core classes”, since the arts themselves “are also defined in federal legislation as a core academic subject”. [9] How could it be reasoned to cut one core subject in favor of other core subjects? Unreasonable decisions, however, are unjustified by definition. [1] Not all budget cuts will result from weighing the importance of one subject against another. Sometimes schools might lose funding as a result of shifting money into other government programs. As none of those shifts in funding can be justified, as they’re essentially mortgaging the future of our children and nation, the resulting loss of funds from arts programs is even more unjust. Point d) accordingly rests on a false dichotomy. My opponent claims that either the art classes or one of the other core subjects has to be cut in budget, and calls the art classes cuts “fair” in some contrived way. That’s just plain wrong. If we do not arbitrarily (=unjustified, see above) cut the education budgets at all - after all, they are “unfortunate” according to my opponent - then NEITHER of the core subjects - be it English, math OR art - will serve less purpose. There are countless other ways to deal with the budget deficits apart from the arbitrary, unjust Sequester. For instance, it’s not as if ALL budgets were evenly cut. Interestingly, the NASA budget has been raised substantially, specifically “a $549 million increase to NASA above the President's request.” [13] The federal education funding, however, has been cut by $133 million [14], which means that increasing the NASA budget by a respectable $416 million ABOVE the budget the President asked for in the first place would have left enough money to keep education funding at its original level. Surely, this arbitrary raise of one budget above the request while cutting other budgets must be considered unjustified. Giving some people money they didn’t even ask for while denying necessary help to others, who also did an excellent job, cannot be fair. It is thus clearly NOT the art classes’ fault that the budgets of other core classes are in danger. Punishing art-loving students and putting their teachers out of a job is not a justifiable answer to this blatant misallocation of funds. I don’t even understand what point e) is trying to express. That we should abandon all careers that do not pay properly? That we should all - according to his list - strive to be “Oral and maxillofacial surgeons” [15]? And let our economy go to ruins for lack of nurses, aviation inspectors, power plant operators and postsecondary teachers, who all earn even LESS than a poet? [16] If we cut poetry, then we would by the wage argument have to cut 90% of all careers. This is beyond reason. Art classes - this much my opponent concedes - make students better in language and science skills, thus producing BETTER scientists and doctors. By cutting art classes, we decrease the quality of our best-paid specialists. This can only mean that from this point onward, they’d have to be considered overpaid, because less qualified people do not deserve higher wages! If anything, the lower income in art careers shows that in the US, artists are not properly qualified, so they have little chance of increasing their wages. We would by that very same argument have to increase our efforts to keep US artists competitive on the international market. The US media market is the largest in the world [17] in spending and revenue. The US can only benefit from keeping the resources to dominate that market and not give it into foreign hands by outsourcing. Point f) can be extended to any subject on any school level, and as such is non-unique. There’s no reason art is fundamentally easier to learn than math or English. Ultimately, any education can be acquired outside of school. Unless my opponent would like to build an argument for how all public schools should be replaced by a choice between homeschooling or no schooling, this argument should be disregarded. Basically, my opponent’s naive outlook on this complex topic misses the entire point. We should be mainly concerned with the impact of art classes on the international competitiveness of US schools, and as such analyze the tactics of the top performing countries. Finland has the highest international ranking in school performance.[18] Children here do not have to take standardized tests, but are exposed to art classes as early as first grade. In combination with the studies cited last round, this clearly indicates that the long-term effects of brain stimulation through art has far more positive effects than the United States’ fixation on standardized testing in the other core subjects. [13] http://www.planetary.org... [14] http://www.washingtonpost.com... [15] http://www.bls.gov... [16] http://www.myplan.com... [17] http://www.statista.com... [18] http://www.smithsonianmag.com...