As Diane wrote, the world has undergone dramatic changes because of the pervasive spread of the Internet, the marriage of computers and telecommunications, and the shift to a global economy. We are up against the wall. What we do in the next few years to remake our civilization, our political, social and economic institutions, and importantly our schools will determine whether we succeed or survive or atrophy and die…with cities becoming ghost towns on the global information highway.

Now more than ever business and industry are dependent on an economic system, which favors creativity and innovation. Thus, at the heart of this effort is recognition of the vital role that art and culture play in enhancing economic development, and ultimately, defining a creative community: one that exploits the vital link between art, culture and commerce, and in the process consciously invests the human and financial resources necessary to prepare its citizens to meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving post-industrial, knowledge-based economy and society.

In order for the creative community to nurture the new workforce with the higher order thinking skills a creative and innovative workplace demands, it is important to reinvent our systems of education.

Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said it best, “If the U.S. is to compete effectively with the rest of the world in the new global marketplace, we need a (school) system that grounds all students in pleasure, beauty and wonder.”

After a decade of studying the human brain, according to the Dana Foundation, a neuroscience research center at John Hopkins University, we know the arts enhance math and science comprehension. We know that where art-infused education is used to redesign the curriculum, one that is truly integrated, collaborative and interactive, students’ attendance dramatically improves, as does performance.

Today we know so much more about the brain and how people learn. While neuroscientists do not usually characterize functions between one hemisphere and the other, it is a fact that the left or right hemispheres of the brain dominate certain functions.

The Presidents Art and Humanities Committee, after studying this issue for 18 months called for retraining all teachers in art integration techniques and putting arts integration-teaching through the arts-into the schools. This does not cost a lot of money and we do to new.