An art school in Detroit, College for Creative Studies,  has released one of the most clever and entertaining ad campaigns I have seen in some time. A parody of the anti-drug PSAs from the ’80s, the campaign succeeds in being both humorous and incisive.

You’ve likely heard about all the studies regarding how students who are involved in art and music programs in school are more engaged in their studies overall and less likely to drop out. And, yet, funding for art and music education in schools continues to disappear as we try to cut our way to prosperity.

Culturally, we don’t view artists as working professionals in the way that we do people in business or law or medicine, so art education is seen as a haven for slackers and misfits rather than as the first step along a legitimate career path. I’m sure many a parent has responded with a heavy sigh at a child’s first declaration of, “I want to be an artist.”

And the perception of art education as a dead-end is not helped by the proliferation of for-profit art schools who are more concerned with increasing the bottom line than graduation rates and helping grads find jobs. While there are good schools and career paths out there, it’s just that society has decided that it will make you work harder to attain a career in the arts than as an investment banker. By taking our culture’s attitude towards artists to the logical extreme, CCS’s ad campaign transcends its role as a marketing tool for a particular school by forcing us to examine our own thoughts on why our society doesn’t value the creative spirit and the art it yields.