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> I've always fantasized about having $10M discretionary money (haven't done the math, really, just a random figure) and opening a "Arts and Sciences Academy", which would be a high school where Arts trivium (music, literature, sculpture) would be studied on equal footing and intertwined with Sciences trivium (math, physics, biology) - I know an eclectic mix.

I don't think that is eclectic at all. It ought to be that way. I attended the Louisiana School for Math, Science and Arts [0] during high school and it left an indelible mark upon me. I was kicked out of my abusive childhood home at 15 after refusing to confirm the Catholic faith, and so I applied for LSMSA and got in after a few rounds of interviews with the administration.

The school is publicly funded and does not charge a tuition, and so I felt extremely blessed to be able to continue my education despite my circumstances. Most of the teaching faculty had PhDs except for the math department, who mostly had masters degrees (plenty good enough for high school mathematics).

It was very self-directed study. The courses I took included C programming, poetry, world history, chemistry, digital design, trigonometry, Russian, etc. My days were highly varied and stimulating and I loved most of the classes. The high school is a boarding school embedded within a college campus, so there was plenty access to the arts infrastructure and collegiate arts projects. Being surrounded 24/7 by interesting people was the icing on the cake. A lot of people decried the prevalent drug use and sexual promiscuity among the student body, but it's fucking high school man. I hear it was a wild time there in the 80's and 90's. I was introduced to psychedelic drugs there, which only aided in my understanding of the world and increased my love for learning. We need more institutions like this.

[0] https://www.lsmsa.edu/

Craig Kaplan has also done a lot of really nice work on Islamic tilings: https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/publications/

A work cant be justified as art solely by the technique employed in its creation, otherwise it would just be a craft representing the technical skill of the creator.

FWIW the prevalent “I’m bad at math” vibe has a lot to do with how math is taught vs like English or science

Which in turn reflects prevailing conceptions (or misconceptions) about the nature of mathematical objects. The educator must be educated and all that.

100%

Imagine if your maths class was getting you to draw curves and make art from tilings with a view to making art as opposed to the same 6 recycled examples about how fast a car is going or how to tile a floor.

Mathematics funnelling students into engineering has to be one of the biggest trapping in local maxima strategies in all of education.