The ability to recognize opportunities and move in new - and sometimes unexpected - directions will benefit you no matter your interests or aspirations. A liberal arts education is designed to equip students for just such flexibility and imagination.
My work in the theater began to shift more towards young audience type of work and education programs for children, arts education programs.
My background is in arts education and we know, absolutely for a fact, that there is no better way for kids to learn critical thinking skills, communication skills, things like empathy and tolerance. This is true across every boundary, across cultural boundaries, across socioeconomic, it's a great leveler in terms of unifying our world.
I see the difficulty of kids in going to university, the difficulty of kids in schools getting arts education, so that the arts and drama and the creative arts are extracurricular. They aren't: they are at the centre, and they are the equipment we so desperately need in the world.
I wouldn't be where I am today without the amazing public arts education that I had.
I grew up in New York, and I grew up with a mother who was an arts lover herself, and I went to these New York City public schools with these great arts education programs, so it was something that I was lucky enough to be able to be exposed to very early.
I think the problem is when people hear 'arts education,' they think, 'I don't want my son to be some painter that's going to be hanging in some museum after he dies. I don't want my daughter to be a struggling artist making no money.' People don't realize it's more than that. It's beautiful. It brings beauty to our lives.
My parents had an old-fashioned ideal of college, that four years at a liberal arts college should be a liberal arts education.
I think a liberal arts education isn't necessarily about doing something with your degree; it's about becoming a critical thinker. And I think that critical thinking is so integral to being an actor.
With my ministry of light, part of what I do is work on the California Alliance For Arts Education.
We say arts education is good for general education, but that's not the point. The arts are what great nations are remembered for. They are a mirror.
There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests.
I do regret that when I went to college, I didn't have a liberal arts education. I got a BFA in musical theater, so it was a very directed toward what I was doing. I wish that I had expanded my horizons a little bit.
Scientific research and other studies have demonstrated that arts education can enhance American students' math and language skills and improve test scores which in turn increase chances of higher education and good jobs in the future.
I believe strongly in the power of arts education to engage and empower young people.
Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
My family moved to Aspen, Colorado, where we had 'Avalanche Danger' days that kept us from going to school, climbed 14,000-foot peaks as part of my education, and I learned to snowboard.
Our higher education system is one of the things that makes America exceptional. There's no place else that has the assets we do when it comes to higher education. People from all over the world aspire to come here and study here. And that is a good thing.
I fully support U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his Global Education First Initiative and the work of U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown and the respectful president of the U.N. General Assembly Vuk Jeremic. I thank them for the leadership they continue to give.
The whole reason why we have this kind of assembly line model of education that we inherited from the Prussians, is they were the first people - it's a very egalitarian motive - to say how do we educate everyone.
