Art has been an inseparable and a distinguishing part of any culture for centuries, if not millennia, until recently, when people started prioritizing science, technology, and business. In my opinion, this phenomenon can be largely attributed to the immediate benefits highlighted with art becoming more abstract than ever before. Therefore, I believe, it is necessary to reform educational system to make people close to art from early ages.
There is no doubt that young people are usually required to have good knowledge of STEM subjects. To be more specific, subjects like science, technologies, engineering, and math are believed to be highly necessary for lucrative professions, enabling their owners to see the result, often times in monetary forms sooner. This is highly valued, while arts, almost of all forms, are considered to be rather a form of joy, than a means of making living. One more factor that only drives people away from art is the concept of it. To be more specific, while in the past, general public could enjoy and appreciate a masterpiece resembling a certain scene, nowadays, a limited circle of people is likely to truly understand the intention of an artist. In other words, art of any form, especially, painting and theatre have become extremely abstract for most people, consequently less appealing unless they have certain understanding about their principles. The combination of these two, practical benefits of STEM subjects and increasing sophistication of art for general public, have already made and still making people value the former more than the latter, I think.
In order to reverse this, however, in my opinion, there should be a more holistic approach. In details, it would be insufficient to start persuading people to pursue art at random point of their life. Instead, it is necessary to introduce reforms, aimed at introducing art related disciplines starting from the early ages. For example, while most of the contemporary school curriculum include significantly fewer art sessions, be it drawing or drama classes, their numbers should be increased. Such an approach is highly likely to result in the future generation starting appreciating art more, because of the constant interaction of various forms of art. While it is a quite time-consuming process, results of which can come out only in the next generations, the approach itself is likely to be more than effective as it can be introduced in other levels of education, ultimately leading to art becoming a more prevalent discipline. Notably, such widespread presence of art among people of various ages and nationalities would mean that there would be less difficulties in interpreting the piece of art. In other words, were people dealing with art more frequently, the concept of abstractionism would probably be worn off, at least from the majority. In long term perspective, art would be seen as something that can be understood and appreciated only by a limited circle of people.
To conclude, people are shifting their values towards STEM subjects, paying less attention to art, which in the past, used to be an essential part of any society. In my opinion, this is happening because of people’s focusing on practicality more, which is accelerating along with the increasing sophistication of the concept of art. Nevertheless, I think, people should be made close with arts from early ages, which, can be achieved by changes introduced to in the field of education.