Culture and the Arts in Education: A Review Essay
Janet R. Barrett
Northwestern University
Smith, Ralph A. (2006). Culture and the Arts in Education: Critical
Essays on Shaping Human Experience. New York: Teachers
College Press and the National Art Education Association.
ISBN 978-0-8077-4654-7
Citation: Barrett, Janet R. (2006). Culture and the arts in education: A
review essay. International Journal of Education &
the Arts, 7(Review 5). Retrieved [date] from http://www.ijea.org/v7r5/.
Abstract
Culture and the Arts in Education: Critical Essays on Shaping Human
Experience is a collection of essays written by Ralph Smith selected
from his nearly three decades of work in aesthetic education. In this
anthology, Smith presents his case for viewing the arts as humanities
through their emphases on creation, communication, continuity, and
criticism. This view is embodied in an excellence curriculum built
around the study of masterworks and the cultivation of percipience,
or “the ability of persons to experience works of art for the sake of
their constitutive and revelatory values, by which I mean the ways in
which the experience of good and great art holds potential for
shaping the self in positive ways while simultaneously yielding insight
into human existence and natural phenomena” (p. 14). In addition to
obvious implications for art education, Smith also explores how
music education might be construed and taught as one of the
humanities.
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