Our Approach to the Arts

My twin sister Emma took two art classes prep year—a painting class in the winter and an acting class in the spring—and she is planning on finishing her art requirements by the end of this year. Since preschool she was "the one who could draw well." She drew neatly when I was haphazard. She would take time to draw a human girl while I drew rainbows or trees. Looking back, we both drew in very childish ways, but Emma continued to draw out of preschool when art stopped being schoolwork. In third grade she began to attend a small arts charter school, which I followed her to a year later. It was a place where the arts were considered a valuable part of learning, but more importantly, we had art teachers who taught us real art—we learned the different types of shading, art history, what colors meant, and we had academic teachers who valued art as an academic practice. We used art in math, social studies and English to help us learn critical and creative thinking in every possible realm.At that school Emma worked hard in art class, and visual art became not just something she was good at, but something that helped her express herself. When we began attending Exeter my dad convinced her to take a painting course to continue learning art, even though it meant pushing back the requirements students tend to get out of the way first.Exeter students, on average, take three or four sciences rather than the required two and rarely stop taking math courses after finishing the required level. Exeter recruits football, hockey and lacrosse players, and many students who were not recruited join sports teams, aiming to make varsity or to become team captains. It is not a secret that Exeter is an academics and athletics based institution.A three-year upper named Ruby once told me this: "There are some opportunities for students to explore the arts, but I feel like it is something you need to have a previous passion for in order to find it on campus, because so much more is focused on athletics and science and academics, which is great in and of itself, but I feel like in order for a student to explore the arts more they need to push it on themselves." Ruby came to Exeter after attending an art school to explore her options. She wanted to get out of her comfort zone and try things other than just painting and theater. At Exeter she was a coxswain of crew for two terms and she dove for one. She is now a co-head of Dramat and the lead in the Fall mainstage play."In the end, I think I realized theater is still what I want to do and is still my main passion," she said.Students who want to explore the arts or focus on art must do so through extracurriculars. The three terms of art classes are enough to get an idea of the kind of arts you enjoy, but if you want to learn more about arts, you have to either focus on clubs or figure out a way to squeeze another theater or painting class into your four year requirements, which might mean not taking a third year of science or a fourth year of math. My sister, for example, will have finished all her art requirements by the end of this year, which means she cannot take another until senior spring, if at all.At Exeter we value ourselves (maybe not so modestly) as the best and the brightest; some of our uppers tutor college students in math, some of our science students help make discoveries in genetics, and we have athletes who have attended the Junior Olympics. However, we also have students that practice the piano or cello for hours during the week, on top of all their other homework to perform concerts. We have students who dance for hours each day, as a sport or as a club, and those who spend their term working on the play. And we have editors and writers at The Exonian, a commitment which is said to be like taking an extra class, whose board members are tireless. You can see the students’ talents just by walking through the Agora and seeing the frescos or by attending senior meditations in the spring. Yet these students do this almost entirely after school and are not acknowledged like math, science or sports students.For many at Exeter, art is the requirement you leave for senior year so that senior spring could be more fun or relaxing, but that doesn’t leave much time for students to explore the arts or realize they love it. Art isn’t just about the people who have a passion for it; more and more people realize that creativity is a necessary skill for all inventors, scientists and mathematicians. People are starting to call Bill Gates a creative genius, and it is well known that Einstein played the violin.So why, at a school of the best and the brightest, do we not encourage more creativity on campus? Of course, Exeter is not an art school and never will be (nor necessarily should it be), but students, while taught around the Harkness table that they must be intuitive, critical thinkers, are not given some of the most valuable tools to become so. Art teaches us skill, beauty and creative thinking in ways that math and science cannot. 