The Fine Art of Catholicism

The number one cause of Catholics lapsing is, from the evidence I’ve been able to assemble, the annual issuing of the CatNats LD topic. WTF has just broken the wind with it: “Resolved: That secondary education in America should value the fine arts over athletics.”

You can hear the heads being scratched all across this great country of ours. As always, one senses what the Cats might have been after, but one doubts if they will achieve it in the rounds. Anyhow, let’s take a look at it.

First of all, we have to define “the fine arts.” I went to an online dictionary aggregator and found three definitions; two contradicted (the decision of whether or not to include music, which seemed an odd exclusion to me). Wikipedia points to a distinction between Fine Arts and Performing Arts that may account for this. Then again, one can look to the MFA programs around the country and deduce what one is a master of from that, keeping in mind the requirement of performance versus mere appreciation or academic accrediting. All definitions would seem to include at least writing and the visual arts; getting too hung up on definitional specifics could be problematic, i.e., people arguing anything but the resolution (as if that ever happens). But we’ll assume a reasonable norm, for the sake of coachean and debaterean sanity. I mean, we do all intuitively know what is meant by fine arts, or close enough thereto. That’s a good enough starting point.

On the other hand, the definition of athletics is simple enough, but again I might look for a performance angle to meet the performance angle of fine arts. We wish for people to participate, not to appreciate. That is, we’re not talking about having a tiptop football team for everyone to cheer for on Friday night, and for everyone to understand every nuance of the game (which they can get from their Dave Madden games on the PS3), we’re looking for literal athletic participation for everyone. Just as we’re looking for some sort of arts participation by everyone.

We should be able to ignore that the consequences of both are either bad athletes or bad artists, because that’s just being facetious, although it is true. One must look to the inherent value of participation in either at the secondary school level, and compare the two. If I want to take a pretty unhealthy clump of Americans, i.e., your average teenager, and healthy them up, athletics at a personal participation level is probably a good idea. They will get no particular appreciation of the fine art of, say, pitching a baseball, but they will lose a few pounds and maybe contract a habit of exercise and live a little longer. On the other hand, participatory arts has a less direct effect on the brain than athletics does on the body, and one might be hard-pressed to explain that painting a crappy oil will somehow connect you to art in some sort of Aristotelian sense (and I’m happy to accept Aristotle on art, since he’s my Caveman touchstone, i.e., catharsis + improved understanding). Then again, everything I learned about seeing light in painting came to me from my own work with photography. But talk about tangential! That’s a tough row to hoe. One needs to find a value of aesthetics that is equal to the value of health. Intuitively I have no problem with this; evidentially, I might be a little stuck.

But let’s presume the consequences. Let’s presume that a secondary-level fine arts training will result in increased aesthetic/intellectual prowess, and a secondary-level athletics program will result in increased physical welfare. In that case, we simply argue which is more beneficial, and we decide on an approach to the resolution that makes sense. If we look at secondary education as important to the individuals involved, we take that path. If we look at secondary education as important to society as a whole, then we take that path. Both are perfectly acceptable approaches, although the dichotomy might be forced in most cases. Then again, sometimes the dichotomy is real, for instance, in special education situations. In any case, we’d be arguing rather an elevated discourse on mind versus body. Consider this the Grail of the topic, and imagine that absolutely no one will do it. Too clean. Too philosophical. Too 1990s. And, no doubt, what the poor Cats had in mind in the first place, or close thereto.

In the event, I would imagine people would look to something other than presumed consequences. Or more to the point, they will argue that the results on one side or another are unachievable. For instance, they will argue that prioritizing athletics leads to million-dollar facilities for the top athletes and nothing for the schlubs who need to lose thirty pounds and cut out the cheeseburgers. Or that even the best designed high school athletics program is a predetermined failure if the goal is healthy individuals/society. Ditto the arts side. No fungible benefits are achievable, and perhaps no intangible benefits on either an individual or societal level. Why would we prioritize arts in a nation that does not value arts in the first place? The discussions will veer into the economics of secondary education in the age of No Child’s Left Be-Hind and the like. Once again, we won’t argue what we should do, we will argue what we can do. Which, if I’m not mistaken is what Policy is supposed to do, but what do I know?

My guess is that the Cats think they’re holding the fort on some vision of pure philosophical LD in an age of heretics, but by providing material that begs to be responded to heretically, they simply keep the waters muddied. On the other hand, maybe they really do want to argue the economics of secondary education in an age when Catholic schools are shutting down faster than [insert semi-religious yet humorous metaphor here to capture the speed of something disappearing]. You never know with these wily Catholic coyotes!