Why are creative degrees less respected?

I don't understand why people can't just let other people have their own opinion. I have mine, others have theirs. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong because at the end of the day, everybody is different and everybody thinks differently.


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I don't understand why people can't just let other people have their own opinion. I have mine, others have theirs. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong because at the end of the day, everybody is different and everybody thinks differently.


Posted from TSR Mobile

Following on from a thread I saw from a couple of month ago I wondered why we have this divide where subjects like art, music and creative writing are seen to be less respected.

I enjoy delving in these areas in my spare time and I am more impressed with somebody's ability to create a striking piece of art or compose an evocative piece or music or write something that makes me laugh than their knowledge of the 16th century.

I understand that this respect is probably more related to academic rigor than how 'impressive' the things you can do after studying a subject are but in the only example of a degree that is both creative and respected that I can think of - Architecture - I don't see what makes it different to the other arts? Is it merely the fact that it's a professional degree? Are there any other degrees that you consider to be academic yet creative?

Can't help but imagine all these anti-arts students throwing down a book after reading it or storming out of the cinema while complaining about what a worthless contribution to society that was.

Also, the majority of you will end up in pretty much the same faceless class of graduate schemes that arts students will and contribute the same level of meaninglessness to society before you get a pension and die. Few people end up working in the field they studied at uni. You're an undergraduate learning a textbook version of science/business/engineering/law/whatever for three-ish years before being handed a piece of paper - you're not Newton. You don't get contribution-by-association. Go and make something of yourself before you start looking down on people because they were hungover in a different kind of lecture to you.

I don't know who that was aimed at, but in my case I don't look down on art subjects at all. I was just pointing out that saying one discipline requires innate talent and another does not is false.

No, you seem cool. It was more for people making comments like "Well, arts don't contribute much to human progression" on the first page.

I do agree with what people are saying here, that Maths and Science is more important than Art, however those people who don't do very well academically at exams are usually better at Art, it's an outlet and it's great we have that, Art evolves and grows with time just like science does, therefore Art is beneficial even if it's not contributing in a way like maths and science does, to me anyway it's more important than maths and science because of personal reasons and who knows I might even become a teacher and teach future Andreas Gurskys and future David Hockneys?
There's always a purpose for it, the individual measures how important it is to them, but overall maths and science are now needed for survival in this world making it more important than sculpting or painting.

During the war Churchill was encouraged to slash the culture budget, his response; "then what are we fighting for?".

Without art and music what is the point of science and maths.

But if it wasn't taught at uni's then it wouldn't be taught in schools. English teachers have degrees in literature, music teachers have degrees in music, art teachers in art. Isn't it important to have these subjects on offer in schools? If they weren't then many students would never know they had a talent in one of these areas.


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How is it a waste of money? The majority of musicians and artists earn FAR more than physicists or such like. They're earning millions and physicists are on what, £30k a year? Who picked the better degree? Yes there's an element of luck in there, as there's no guarantee they'll become a successful artist. But if they want to try and devote their life to their hobby, why shouldn't they pursue a degree in it?



Yes but you need someone to teach you to ride a bike or drive a car, just like you'd need someone to teach you to play an instrument. And you don't necessarily need taught the complex content in science subjects - textbooks explain it the same way the teacher does.



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It is true that many artists ( painters, writers etc.) didn't study their art formally at a college or university before creating their masterpieces. ( Though Picasso did go to Art College.) That doesn't mean that they didn't study their subject in depth by reading about it and studying other painters' techniques etc. over years and years.)

As for thinking that the Arts don't contribute to society!

The Arts engage their audience by appealing not only to their intellect, reason as a factual treatise would, but also by getting an emotional response. This is a very powerful thing.

Writers who have known how to do this have arguably had a huge effect on how people think about the world around them and more importantly how they act in the future.

When Dickens did his readings in America he invoked such an immediate emotional response that one factory owner went and gave his employees a holiday for the first time. Until that moment he hadn't realised that they were human beings like him.

After people had read Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the case for slavery was dead in the water. Reasoning with people, arguing with people was one thing: bringing people up against the reality of slavery by describing it in a novel in all its horror made people understand it as they had not understood it before.

Have you ever heard of a concept of "paint by numbers"? In the same sense, musicians can easily play a beethoven or a mozart piece or learn to paint a masterpiece, by learning the techniques. I'm astonished so many people are so ignorant of how much creativity is required to do mathematics and physics at a high level. Anyone can do anything they wish, but to be great at it, innate will always be required. Any thing that one person "creates" or "discovers" can always be taught to others, but that initial spark of genius comes to few people.