Excerpted from The Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren’s April 10 remarks about his 10-year, $20 million gift to the Irvine Unified School District for the Excellence in Education Enrichment Fund, for fine arts, music and science programs in grades four through six.
Education is critical,not just to our children’s individual successes, but for continued economic health of our community and our state.
It is also important to create well-rounded students who grow into well-rounded adults with an appreciation of the world around them. I call that true enrichment.
So, it has dismayed me to watch as so many enrichment programs have taken a back seat in our classrooms over the years.
They have been dropped or curtailed by far too many schools. And too often, enrichment courses and programs are being taught superficially by generalists and not by specialists.
Even though there is growing evidence of correlation between arts, music and science teaching, and improved overall academic performance.
During my own K-12 education, I was blessed with the opportunity to take a number of elective courses, including music, music appreciation,both the classics and contemporary,and the composition of music, and art appreciation, and architectural history and drawing.
I continued to pursue these elective classes at the university level, for my own enjoyment, and realized, over time, what I had learned to appreciate had become a permanent part of my life, both personally and professionally.
Now, I enjoy living and working with many of these disciplines on a daily basis.
Through my exposure to the arts, music and science, I learned how the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations combined the disciplines of art, architecture, science and music into the creation of world famous cities and monuments.
Later in history, during the 16th century, an Italian architect by the name of Andrea Palladio created his world-famous architecture influenced by his knowledge of Greek mathematics and the timing of classical music, along with many of the scientific discoveries of his time.
Today, 500 years later, abstraction is becoming reality here at The Irvine Company.
We are using Palladio’s four written volumes of architecture as the design premise for the Italianate Pelican Hill Hotel and Resort currently under construction on the Newport Coast, where we are combining the knowledge of art, architecture, science and music.
And so, it’s time to give enrichment programs the priority they have long deserved. The time has come to provide the assurance that these vital programs will remain available for years to come.
We owe it to our children and to our community.
