The whispers of anticipation began to surface in the arts and humanities community as the calls for educational reform came in from one blue ribbon task force after anther. There was a flurry of activity and media attention on education following the commotion over the Presidential Commission report A Nation at Risk (1983). There is no need to recall here the sternness of the Commission’s findings or the uproar that ensued. Education experts of all sorts were given a public forum. In the arts and humanities community there were hopeful signs that these authoritative critiques of the American public education enterprise might call attention to deficiencies beyond the expected concerns over declining math, science, and literacy scores. After all, in the case of the traditional 3 Rs, it was a matter of finding unsatisfactory results despite a massive, concerted national effort: whereas, arts and humanities instruction, by all accounts, had been increasingly neglected(Fowler, 1988).