The arts, rather than being just a "frill," are essential to a public school curriculum, because music, painting, poetry, dance, drama, architecture, and the other arts are media of human communication, conceptualization, and innovation. This argument is developed through affirmative responses to five questions: (1) Should education provide the opportunity for students to develop their artistic and creative potential? (2) Should education provide an opportunity for students to study and interpret the literature, drama, music, dance, and visual arts of today's and of previous civilizations? (3) Should education provide the opportunity for all students to learn varied means of expression and communication in order to reinterpret the human condition for future generations? (4) Does education have the responsibility for developing all of an individual's mental resources so that he or she may be a fully functioning human being? (5) Does education have the responsibility for developing literacy in all of the arts and providing intense preparation in at least one of the arts? It is concluded that the arts have a central role to play in the development of educated human beings. (TE)