The arts have always faced an uphill battle to get enough time and resources in schools, but in recent years the slope seems to have got even steeper.
In part, this is due to our obsession with international comparisons. Policy makers and school leaders are eager to see where school systems stand in relation to their global competitors, and standardized tests have become the de facto judge of how well an education system is doing.
The problem is that these tests have a very narrow focus, namely English, maths and science. Not only does this lead to a concentration on these areas to the exclusion of others, but it also gives other subjects a peripheral status.
This has been exacerbated by a widely-held view that the main purpose of education is to prepare students for employment in the STEM sector. The accepted wisdom is that in a world ruled by technology, the economies with the best qualified workforce will be the ones that succeed.
The consequences is that the arts have been relegated to the second division, starved of both resources and time and seen as no more than an optional add-on to their more important cousins.
In England, the government has introduced the English baccalaureate, or EBacc, as the key performance measure for secondary, or high, schools. To gain the EBacc, students need to take English, maths, a science, history or geography and a language.
This provides an incentive for schools to prioritize EBAcc subjects at the expense of all others, with the arts consigned to the bottom of the pile.
It is this casual approach to the arts that leads to the creation of a new drama qualification for 16-year-olds in England where students are not required to watch a live theatre performance.
And the result of creativity and the arts being squeezed out the schools, as a report found last year, is that we are witnessing a sharp decline in the number of students taking qualifications in the arts.
No-one would argue that maths and English are not the key subjects. Literacy and numeracy are the bedrock of all other subjects, and fundamental to success in any other sphere.
But they should not be taught to the virtual exclusion of other subjects.
The arts are an integral part of a rounded education. We may be preparing young people to become part of a technology-driven workforce, but not everyone is going to work in coding.
And the danger is that if we continue down this path we will be creating a workforce of drones.
Earlier this month I was lucky enough to watch Lang Lang give a concert to an audience mainly composed of young people at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Lang Lang has played a crucial role in inspiring young people to take up music, through his foundation, Young Scholars Program and Keys of Inspiration partnership with schools, while the Royal Albert Hall has an extensive education and outreach program to promote music playing and listening to young people.
And watching the reaction of the audience - around half of whom were under 10 - it was clear that there is an enormous appetite for music among young people.
It is events like this that remind us that there is much more to life than literacy and numeracy, important as they are, and there should be much more to education than preparing the next generation for the workforce.
