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How about you step back for just one second and realise that the step from Shakespeare to hip-hop is probably a more worthy challenge? But yet, 'elite' art gets the giants share of public subsidy for no good reason other than the political elite are culturally blinkered and living in the 17th (if generous 18th) Century.

Enough already with this high and low art nonsense. I personally hate opera with a vengance - and ballet come to mention it - but find hip-hop and all its diverse offspring utterly compelling.

Its not the kids who are the problem here. its those who think they gain social status by 'liking' culture we all know they really cannot stand.

The problem is that low art is just that: low, unchallenging, appealing to the hard of thinking. It may stimulate base emotions but does not challenge the higher faculties. It encourages the lazy and gives unnecessary prestige to the mediochre by labelling it 'art'.

Those who really compare modern children's music to the great classics are the same simpletons that encourage consideration of Eastenders with Shakespeare in classrooms, that accept the low grade hackery of the newspapers with the real wordsmithing of the likes of Dickens and that equate the doggerel witticisms of modern perfomers with the poetry of the Masters.

It all springs from their own insecurity. A sneaking worry that they're not as smart as they'd like to be and so they refuse to demand effort and involvement to appreciate real culture from children.

Make it simple.
Make it accessible
Keep it stupid.

Then everyone can feel like they're "doing art but not, like, the posh stuff". They label it elite when in fact they should be labelling themselves as idle.

Perhaps we should bring back bear-baiting and witch-burning. We could label them as art and then everyone is happy.

What qualifies art as either high or low? Is it perhaps the cost of listening/watching/partaking in one? Or the perceived cost of the invisible gold threads used on the Emperor's new robe?

So-called high art only became so because only those with means could afford to commission art in the days when the creative had to be patronised by the rich in other to survive.

So-called low art is so because it is accessible to the masses rich and poor, illiterate and learned.

It isn't about simplicity. It is about creativity. And arguing about Eastenders as against Shakespeare is choosing to forget that Shakespeare played at the Globe ( a publicly accessible venue) and not the Royal Palaces. One could argue that Eastenders today is what Shakespeare plays was in its day. It was for the masses as Eastenders is for the masses today.

What's wrong with offering kids hip-hop and film-making? Only two things.

First, no matter how deprived their backgrounds or how limited their cultural horizons, most children will, at least, dimly realise that popular music and film exist. Can the same be said for Bach's cantatas, the tragedies of John Webster or the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch? But of course this art 'belongs' to these children - it's part of their heritage as human beings - as much as it does to any other children. Why teach children what they already know, rather than what they don't? Isn't that 'stifling' in itself?

Secondly, and rather more grimly, it's almost certainly true that not all children are going to be offered enhanced involvement with hip-hop as a centrepiece of their cultural education. Some children will, by reasons of background or, worse still, ethnicity, be assumed to find hip-hop naturally 'relevant'. Meanwhile, others - for instance, those in private education - will be assumed to be ready for Schubert, Marlowe and the Van Eyck brothers. Children aren't generally stupid, whatever their backgrounds, and low expectations, ethnic or social stereotyping and outright racism will carry their own message about who does, and doesn't, deserve an 'access all areas' pass to the riches of our shared civilisation.

A refreshing view from Boris. Art is as much about enabling an individual to express themselves, so whether they do it in the medium of oil painting, mime or rap is not really the issue. I would argue that to divide art in to "high" and "low" is an old-fashioned view best consigned to the past. We are privileged to be free to consider instead what we do and don't like, and part of an education in the arts should be to enable people to express what they like and why, and to discover the form of art that speaks to them.

Boris is biggest joke to British politic.

Boris is absolutely right to promote art as an end in itself. For too long, every art gallery and museum in the UK has been increasingly subject to dreary requirements to pack itself with cafes and tacky shops, and to conduct 'outreach programmes' to da yoof.