In a commercialized culture, exposure to the arts helps people become complete human beings who can successfully navigate a complex society, said the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts during a Dec. 4 visit to his alma mater, Junípero Serra High School in Gardena.

American poet and critic Dana Gioia, 57, who has held the top job at the NEA since Jan. 29, 2004, started his talk to the 600 co-ed student "Cavaliers" in the packed gym with a little levity. "I have an obligation as an older person to give you advice, and you have an obligation as a younger person to ignore it," joked Gioia, who pronounces his surname "JOY-uh."

Acknowledging to the audience that he had no idea what direction his life would take when he was a member of Serra's class of 1969, he said he prayed this was the same for current Serra students at "the threshold" of their adult lives.

"You never really know where your life is headed," said Gioia, a former editor of Serra's newspaper. "But, you should not use the fact you don't know what you want to do for the rest of your life to be an excuse not to be interested in things. If you get passionately interested in something --- be it sports, the school paper, a school subject, music, art --- you're going to start to discover who you are as a person."

He warned the students that realizing their potential is not exactly nurtured in today's commercialized culture. "You're in a society that will be happy if you're simply a good customer and make enough money to buy stuff and be a consumer," said Gioia.

He said students need to explore the possibilities of who they might become, noting "there's no better [place to do this] than a Catholic school" since it recognizes students' spirituality. "You're not going to be able to realize [your potential] unless you recognize your spirit, your soul, the invisible forces within you that you need to recognize and direct to find your own [life's work]….

"What I'm hoping is that you'll try to figure out in your life what is your personal task, your self-assigned task --- that job, that vocation, that thing that's going to give you joy," said Gioia, who retired early in 1992 from his job as a vice president of marketing for General Foods Corporation to pursue writing full time.

When asked if he liked his present job running the NEA, Gioia said it was initially a tough assignment. "When I came to Washington six years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts was in jeopardy" due to perceptions that the NEA, because of past grants to controversial artists, were "purveyors of smut and blasphemy."

He took the job, he said, because in every place he visited on writing lecture tours around the country, people complained that arts were being eliminated in the schools. "I realized," he noted, "there was a whole generation of American teenagers who, unless they were from wealthy families, weren't going to get music, art, theatre, writing --- these things that you need to discover yourself."

Part of the problem, said Gioia, is that artists themselves have done a terrible job explaining why the arts matter. Contrary to the perception held by many that the purpose of arts education is to produce more artists, the purpose of arts education "is to produce complete human beings who can lead successful lives in a complicated society," he declared.

Since becoming NEA's head, Gioia has concentrated on building a national consensus about the importance of arts and arts education in the U.S. which has resulted in an increased budget and new programs such as Shakespeare in American Communities, NEA Jazz Masters promoting jazz music and the "Big Read" program encouraging Americans to read serious literature.

"We've done this by believing both in the power of art and the power of democracy," explained Gioia. "We've made a bipartisan coalition, we've got support from both parties, the White House, the press and the arts community, and we've launched the largest program in our history [with] tremendously positive results."

Appalled at the dumbing down and narrowing of the culture, where "the electronic media now has only one objective: to sell you things," Gioia said a priority for public institutions like the NEA is to say "stop, enough of this….[We've] got to make a space in our public culture where other things happen --- the best of arts and ideas, not in a pretentious way, but, in a way which actually pertains to people's lives."

Kevin Nash, senior, said the talk made an impact on the students. "It opened our eyes a little bit more about what's really out there and how to get in touch with yourself and [not] get caught up with the media and things they're trying to pull on us," said Nash.

Student body president Ivana Reyes, senior, found Gioia's talk inspiring, especially since she doesn't know what she wants to do in the future. "I thought it was very helpful when he said you have to listen to yourself and go to a quiet place," said Reyes.