A decade ago, a national report on U.S. education titled A Nation at Risk concluded that, "A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society... Citizens must be able to reach common understandings of complex issues, often on short notice and on the basis of conflicting or incomplete evidence."

Education helps create such common understanding and at the same time gives individuals, regardless of race, gender, or class, the tools to develop their intellectual powers. Like education, the arts and cultural institutions play a special role in free societies, for artists possess a unique capacity to express individual visions, illuminate social concerns, and promote intercultural understanding.

The challenges posed by A Nation at Risk are still with us. Especially critical is the need for better education for disadvantaged and at-risk students, who constitute an increasing proportion of the school-age population in the United States and in the developing world.

The Education and Culture program supports projects in elementary, secondary, and higher education and in the performing arts and selected cultural institutions. The program concentrates on five thematic areas:

• broadening educational opportunities for the disadvantaged, expanding opportunities for outstanding minority artists, and strengthening minority arts organizations;

• fostering intellectual and cultural diversity in teaching and scholarship, promoting diversity among artists and arts institutions, and stimulating innovation in the arts;

• improving and diversifying the teaching profession in schools, colleges, and universities;

• strengthening the social sciences and international studies, and encouraging community service by students to better prepare them for the responsibilities of citizenship;

• preserving and interpreting cultural traditions.

The program's strategies include developing school- and campus-based curriculum models, establishing national fellowship competitions, assisting regional consortia and citywide educational collaborations, assisting programs that commission new works in the arts, and strengthening such specialized cultural institutions as African-American and Hispanic art museums.

In 1992 grants in the Education and Culture program totaled $52.5 million. Examples of the program's activities are noted below.