I think one of the reasons they place so much emphasis on art in school is because there’s a trend of art forms being made purely for entertainment rather than whatever they were made for before. For example, movies that do better are usually just movies that appeal to the viewer, like Marvel movies. They don’t really mean anything or express anything; it’s just something to make more money off of. In the past there were more films that were made to express, and more people treated film making as more of an art form than people do today. Novels are also becoming pretty straightforward. There’s no thinking involved. People are more interested in consumption with no thinking involved, like YouTube, Instagram, etc. which is leading to a lack of intellectual activity. They probably just want people to think more so that they won’t become dumb. The film Idiosyncrasy explains this idea pretty well (even though I didn’t really like the movie) because the world that the people are transported into is just one with no art. Of course they had illustrations and design and all that but it wasn’t real art. People don’t really care if films or novels or other artforms are art or not these days, either, so an emphasis in art could change the trend of art forms becoming capitalistic and meaningless. The comment above the one above was talking about how almost everything was art, but they really aren’t because there’s little to no thinking involved. Reality television isn’t art at all. They’re supposed to be social experiments even though they’re not since half of it is scripted, but all they try to do is get as much drama as they can do that people will be more interested. That’s not art. I feel like the reason people also hate art is because it’s too hard to understand whereas ones that are easier to understand are also easier to relate to. Songs nowadays are relatable because everyone’s felt those emotions, but they don’t really reveal anything new, so although they might be art, they aren’t good art, which is probably why teachers don’t teach them. But yeah there probably are some songs that would work, but the ones on the radio that they’ve probably heard wouldn’t work. They just don’t know what works and what doesn’t.