by John M. Eger
The city could be doing more, much more , but The San Diego Unified School District deserves credit. Arts education is recognized in district policy as a core component of a well-rounded education.
Strategic plans, Visual and Performing Arts pathways, and partnerships with cultural institutions demonstrate real commitment.
California’s Proposition 28—approved by voters in 2022—goes further, guaranteeing roughly one percent of the state’s K-12 education budget annually for arts and music education.
For San Diego schools, this represents a historic infusion of stable, ongoing funding. But it’s never enough.
Across the globe, some of the most successful societies have reached a clearer conclusion: arts education is not a luxury or an extra. It is a core part of what young people need to grow, learn, and thrive.
In Finland, music, visual arts, and design are core subjects, guaranteed to every child as part of the national curriculum.
In France, artistic and cultural education is embedded in law, co-governed by the Ministries of Education and Culture, and woven into a child’s civic identity.
In South Korea and Japan, mandates for arts instruction nationwide recognizes creativity as central to economic competitiveness and social cohesion.
And in Germany and Canada, embed arts as required subjects across states and provinces, backed by trained educators and consistent public funding.
By comparison, San Diego—and the United States more broadly say the arts matter, but it is still an afterthought. Some cities fund the arts more generously than most cities. But we stop short of treating them as truly essential.
That gap matters.
Unlike Finland or France, San Diego does not guarantee every student a minimum amount of weekly arts instruction. Access varies by school, staffing availability, and local priorities.
Arts are funded as a protected category—but still functionally treated as a supplement rather than a foundation. When schedules tighten, testing pressures rise, or leadership changes, the arts are too often the first to be compressed.
This is the key difference between San Diego and global leaders: intent versus design.
California’s model earmarks funding for the arts, while countries like Finland and France embed arts within baseline education budgets and curriculum requirements. Their systems do not ask whether schools can “fit in” the arts; the arts are assumed, planned, staffed, and assessed as part of core learning.
In other words, those countries fund what they require. California requires access, but not uniform participation.
That distinction explains why international systems achieve equity while American districts struggle with uneven delivery. Without mandated instructional time, arts education becomes dependent on local capacity rather than public guarantee.
This is not a debate about aesthetics. It is about democracy, innovation, and resilience.
The same nations that insist on arts education also score high on civic trust, social cohesion, and creative economic output. They understand what research consistently confirms: arts education strengthens critical thinking, collaboration, empathy, and problem-solving—the very capacities democratic societies need to function.
San Diego, a city built on creativity, culture, and cross-border exchange, should be leading this conversation nationally but it falls short; we hesitate to fully align our education system with the values that drive those sectors.
San Diego does not need to copy Finland or France wholesale, but can learn from them. That means:
- Guaranteeing minimum arts instruction time at every grade level
- Treating arts educators as essential staff, not optional hires
- Integrating arts learning into civic, environmental, and technological education
- Aligning city cultural policy with school-based arts education
- Measuring arts access with the same seriousness as literacy or math
Proposition 28 gives San Diego the financial foundation. What remains for all of California is to decide whether the arts really matter, and are “Essential.”
