I wrote tense but meant inflection. I appreciate you bringing it to my attention so discreetly and not attempting to use it to hamhandedly wave away inconvenient facts.
I don’t think this is a good source in that it contradicts itself. The left-hand column uses it in the singular, but the right hand uses it in the plural:
“The fine arts are vastly important to technology and multimedia production, as evidenced in their use in books, magazines, advertisement, television commercials, music videos, video games, and blockbuster films such as Jurassic Park, Twister, Toy Story, Mission Impossible, Independence Day, Space Jam, Lost World, Men in Black and Titanic.”
At this point, I have told them that I think it is incorrect and have left it at that. If they want to use matters, that is their choice. I really do feel that considering all the other issues, this not a good fit. Judging by other members of the board, they feel the same (but in regards to other issues).
Yes, but in that case it’s using it along with the “the.” I would agree that “the fine arts” can only take “are” in agreement. “The fine arts is …” sounds unambiguously incorrect. But “fine arts” on its own sounds fine to me either way. Like “Politics is difficult subject” but “the politics are complicated.” (However, there is a slight difference in meaning there, you can argue.) I personally would have left the phrase in your OP alone.
I take it this meant to be sarcastic, and the word “stakeholder” somehow offends your political sensibilities. No doubt it will be a nonsensical concept in libertopia, where all social relations are economic and contractual. Here in the real world, though, it is sometimes a useful shorthand way of talking about a real and, in practice, recognized form of mutual obligation.
Now would you care to address the actual issue, and explain why you think a parent of a child in a school has no right or even duty to protest when they think what the school is teaching is wrong, or why a school would consider itself to have no duty to give due consideration to such arguments?
Please note that most schools are publicly run, and ultimately democratically accountable organizations, and even most private schools do not imagine that they live in libertarian world. In fact even the vast majority of private schools do consider the parents of their students to be stakeholders whose views deserve consideration.
I think it can be argued that “Fine Arts” is a metonym for an assortment of pursuits and as such can be treated as a collective noun since the metonymic shift is from a singular fine art pursuit to the collective set of all fine arts.
I am ok with either matters or matter, if that’s the basic question.
Sorry; long day and well past my bedtime.
I should have said the metonymic shift is from “fine arts” as a countable number of individual (single) pursuits to the collective set of all “fine arts,” i.e. the shift is from what we might treat as an ordinary plural, to a collective noun which we would treat as singular.
Heh–somehow I put “the” in front of the phrase without rereading the OP. I agree that without the article, “Fine Arts matters” is a bit less eyebrow-raising–but it does sound pretty bad to me. And my rule for writing for formal sources, especially for school sources, it to play it conservative unless there’s a good reason not to do so. In this case, the conservative approach is to use the phrase as a plural; to do otherwise will make some folks wonder whether grammar is being sacrificed in order to teach the fine arts.
True, if I had originally written the slogan, I probably would have chosen “Fine Arts matter” over “Fine Arts matters” to be safe. But the school wants to go with the singular treatment, and I’m fine with that, as a number of other subjects do that, too: politics, economics, physics, mathematics, mechanics, statistics, etc. I don’t see anything wrong with lopping “fine arts” in this category. For example, “Statistics/Economics/Physics/Mechanics is an interesting subject.” “Fine Arts is an interesting subject” sounds just as euphonious to me.
NM
Seeing it like that, I would assume that Fine Arts was a class, and that said class “matters.”
And what a crappy slogan, regardless.