Sir Ken Robinson speaks at the TED conference. This is a humorous and provocative talk.  Check it out: Link to Site

Every eduation system has the same hierarchy.  Everywhere, no matter where you go, at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts.  And within the arts, art and music are normally given the higher status than drama and dance.  No one teaches dance every day to children the way we teach mathematics…  [The way we teach suggests we think] our bodies are only a form of transport for our heads.

All public education systems around the world came into being to meet the needs of industrialization.  So you are steered benignly away as a child from subjects on the grounds you would never get a job doing that…  Now profoundly mistaken…  Many brilliant, creative people think they are not, because the thing they were good at wasn’t valued or was stigmatized.  We can’t go on that way.