This article draws on chapter 8 of "Art for Life: Authentic Instruction in Art," by Tom Anderson and Melody Milbrandt (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005) [c] McGraw-Hill. Reprinted by permission.Why do people make art? And why should we teach students to make it? At the root of it, we make art to make sense of things, to give meaning to our existence.…

If art reflects, transmits, and extends human culture, studio art should be taught in a socially conscious manner. A theoretical foundation and practical suggestions for implementing a socially-defined studio curriculum in art are presented. (RM)

Guidelines for talking about art with elementary students are presented. A critical factor in developing children's art talk experiences is an organized, well rounded, and well developed plan that recognizes the differences between talk about student art and more general talk about professional art. (RM)

Develops method for incorporating the intuitive and affective with intellectual and analytic components for understanding works of art. States that the premises for such a systematization include both Arnheim's claim that two basic interdependent procedures of intelligent cognition are intuition and intellect (1986); and Harry Broudy's (1972)…