WE LOVED Dushko Petrovich’s March 14 Ideas piece “How to start an art revolution.’’ We are high school students majoring in visual arts at the Boston Arts Academy, the only public arts high school in Massachusetts. It bothers us that there are no other secondary schools specializing in the arts and that arts in schools continue to be subject to cuts. Petrovich talked about getting colleges in Boston on board with the arts, but if students have not been exposed to art in high school, few will go on to study it in college.
In addition, many myths about artists get thrown around, such as that artists can’t make money and will be unsuccessful. These don’t encourage exploration. If students were in good art classes from the beginning, they could form positive ideas about art instead of negative ones. Then more students would enroll in art colleges and take advantage of all the opportunities Petrovich wrote about.
The more people in the arts, the more of an art mecca Boston would be.
Jasmine Lee
Charlestown
José Rosado
Mission Hill
Simona Clausnitzer
West Roxbury 
