Commentary: Carson City needs to embrace the arts

My wife Susan and I have been residents of Carson City for 24 years. We love this community and find the people we interact with to be extraordinary.

Susan and I have lived in villages in the Middle East, large cities in the U.S. " New York and Los Angeles " we lived in suburban East Lansing, Mich., for 14 years.

We've had many positive experiences in the cities and towns where we've lived, but Carson City is special.

"Quality of life" indicators tell us about our community. One important indicator reflects the diversity of the people with whom we interact " family, friends, neighbors, our church community, and the people with whom we work and play.

In Carson City those men and women represent a wide diversity of racial, ethnic, linguistic and age characteristics. Most are well-educated and well-schooled.

Well-educated can mean self taught, but well-read and with unique experiential habits of mind that allow them to approach problem solving creatively. Well-schooled means a degree of formal education, which suggests intellectual discipline, coherent and thoughtful analytical abilities. It also means the ability to express oneself intelligently. Carson City has an abundance of such people and hopefully will attract more in future years.

A second indicator concerns our city's art and historical institutions. Libraries, museums, music and other performing arts, theater and dance are all essential for a community to support a meaningful life. Local, state and federal governments play an important role in supporting these institutions. The community itself makes an important contribution, both in its financial support and in its participation.

Carson City, a small city, strives to make this quality indicator an enriching factor in our daily lives. But it is sometimes impeded by those few in our midst who devalue government support of these institutions and who don't understand the critical value of arts to our daily lives. Those who seek to dismiss the arts need to know there is little meaning to life without the arts.

A critically important indicator is a community's educational institutions. A community must have strong public schools, excellent private schools, charter schools and access to a vibrant university and post-secondary system. Diversity again is key. Carson City educational leaders have worked hard to improve the city's public schools, making certain all students graduate with high standards and marketable skills.

This, however, is a work in progress and during bad economic times the school community backslides because of inadequate resources.

We must join together in our community to raise the intellectual bar " including the arts " to improve the quality of our civil discourse and to enhance the quality of all of our lives.

- Dr. Eugene T. Paslov, former Nevada superintendent of schools, is a board member for Silver State Charter High School in Carson City.