The author suggests that justifying arts education, or aesthetic education, through unsound, simplistic principles is detrimental to the arts education movement. She evaluates five myths which should be given up, or at least tempered and investigated. (KC)

The author examines the view of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Morris Weitz that an object is "art" if it shares characteristics with other objects already called "art." Asserting that such a definition provides the art teacher no standards for judging student work, he proposes the use of teacher-constructed, honorific definitions. (SJL)

The author briefly examines three 18th century texts in order to indicate a method of speculating not only about the field of art education, but also about its literature. (Author/SJL)

Contends that everyone must learn to read images because our culture is increasingly represented and perceived in visual terms. (Author/RK)

The author argues for a concept of artist-audience communication that is similar to what Tolstoy had in mind, yet avoids the problems that Tolstoy runs into while reclaiming the insights in his view. The author begins by suggesting briefly that recognizing a quasi-Tolstoyan concept of artist-audience communication may have important implications…

In the words of Ralph A. Smith, "We can now discern the outlines of the problem: how to acquaint students with the aesthetic form of life in a manner that is not only ethically acceptable but also theoretically justifiable and pedagogically promising." This essay interrogates conventional assumptions about applications of art history in…

In the present humanities educational scene, whole areas have become little more than the celebration of simulacra. According to this author, it is obvious that, despite all of the references to texts and linguistics made by its practitioners, what deconstructionism really does is formalize criticism as criticism. In its final analysis,…

Laboratory-based curriculum planning often takes too long to be of use to teachers. The author suggests, however, that the New Zealand International Society for Education through Art (INSEA) has created a balance between curriculum development as seen from the classroom teacher's view and that of the educational researcher. (RK)

Concludes that Plato's success in arguing that philosophy relieves poetry of the task of education makes it possible for us to see that art should not be judged in terms of its success in imparting morals or that morality should be forsaken for art, but that the two can coexist in the same world without the need for censorship. (JDH)

Reports on a symposium about John Dewey's philosophy of art. John Fisher, Richard Shusterman, and Joe R. Burnett state their views on Dewey's contributions to art theory and aesthetics citing Dewey's work, "Art As Experience." The consensus was that although Dewey's opinions are dated, his pragmatist's views offer the opportunity for…

One of the most interesting curricular developments in the field of studio art is the PhD in studio art. If it catches on in the U.S. as it has in the U.K., it may become the de facto terminal degree for artists who wish to teach, just as the MFA (the current terminal degree) became a practical necessity in the 1960s. The new degrees combine…

Learning, which is understood as a change in behavior, is a process of becoming. This monograph introduces the neologism egosystem as an amalgam of the individual, the self and its attendant ego, and socio-environmental schemata swirling around the individual. In an uncertain and probabilistic universe, the role of chaos theory in recognizing…

Thomas Munro was one of the foremost enthusiasts of twentieth-century American philosophy for a new way of looking at how we study the arts and for defining the role of aesthetics in American education. He wrote prolifically on how aesthetics should be taught, the role of scientific aesthetics, and the interrelations of individual arts and how…

At first glance, the title seems to be a bit contradictory. Isn't art "supposed" to be nonrational? Isn't that the point? These questions are what this essay aims to reconsider. It is a wide topic indeed, and widely covered as well. Here, the author will offer a few thoughts about rationality in general, and point out a possibly fruitful direction…

Author concerned himself with Herbert Read's definition of art and with the light that it casts upon the involved and complex subject of art in education. (Author/RK)