Thinking about a world without art would seem inconceivable because art permeates our personal as well as our professional lives, and is a primary transmitter of our multicultural heritage. The contributions that art can make to our intellectual development and to understanding the past and other cultures, while offering an alternative to a banal and pervasive pop culture, forms the bases for asserting that studying the fine arts should be a part of everyone's education. While these reasons are indeed substantial, the "super practical" among us may still contend that art is not essential since it has little to do with the economy and the workaday world. Art is viewed as something we reward ourselves with only after more fundamental needs have been met. Art is seen as the frosting on the cake, not basic "bread and butter stuff" like science and mathematics.