When I was growing up, Sundays meant opera. After church, buckled into the back seat, feet barely touching the floor, running errands with my parents around town, often getting a slurpee from 7-Eleven as a treat — and always opera playing from “Live from the Met,” a livestream from New York City’s Metropolitan Opera each Sunday, aired on our local NPR station.

Growing up, listening to opera was normal, routine, and often interspersed with my dad’s commentary about what was playing, which arias were his favorite, and how one could achieve such high, glass-shattering notes.

When I got to college and I saw an opera history course was offered during my sophomore year, I had to take it. From opera’s roots in Italy to American interpretation of the genre, we studied how opera developed and how different composers furthered the sense of what opera was and what it could do. My friend and I often say that course was the most useful one we took in college. Once you begin studying it, the more you realize its prevalence and relevance in modern culture, from arias in advertising and television to opera plotlines being used in modern movies, from its influence on the American broadway tradition to how modern stagings spin new interpretations on the classics.

Without all those Sundays in my parents’ back seat, I probably never would have taken that course or developed a lifetime love and appreciation of opera.

Without my parents introduction to the arts at a young age — listening to different genres of music at the house, enrolling me in dance classes, encouraging me to practice piano every day between lessons, taking me to live theater performances — I doubt the arts would play such a vital role in my day-to-day life. I never would have thought about pursuing arts education in college, going to plays and performances, supporting the arts organizations in our community, or engaging with the arts in all of their various forms — literary, dance, visual, music — whenever I get the chance.

What about students who never have that introduction at a young age or the encouragement to pursue them as studies, careers, passions?

There is an enormous amount of research that shows that arts education leads to higher graduation rates, test scores, socio-emotional development, and overall student success. Most will agree they are essential to a well-rounded education and student experience. Yet over 95% of elementary schools nationwide don’t offer any dance or theater and 40% of public schools across the country don’t even have an art room.

From elementary school to the university level, when something needs to be cut, arts programs are often the first to go, whether it be choir classes or band programs, art history or graphic design. Very few schools offer the study of art in its critical capacity — art history, literary criticism, music history, film studies — and hardly any view those disciplines as equally important to core curriculum.

Many students, like myself, will never become a professional artist. But arts education is more than teaching students how to practice each art form. It teaches students an appreciation for the arts, which often comes from early exposure to them, and a filter to understand them, in all of their forms, which are so crucial to our culture and history.

How did the form of the novel change over time? What makes Virginia Woolf’s writing different from Charles Dickens? How did novelists interpret impressionism versus visual artists?

There are numerous individuals and organizations working tirelessly to increase access to the arts in our community. Dance teachers teaching students how to pirouette across the floor, piano players teaching scales and arpeggios, painters color theory, actors and actresses foundation of drama and character, organizations scheduling and preparing performances, concerts, workshops, and plays.

Those lessons, workshops, and performances, for many — like me — create a lifelong appreciation for what the arts can do: They inspire us, they connect us, they transform us.

What if those studies and pursuits were treated as equally important as other core curriculum requirements, treated a crucial part for students to study and understand the world, our culture, and ourselves?

Anne Gentry graduated from Brown University with a degree in comparative literature and has studied in Italy and South Australia. She is currently executive director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority.