| This study has its roots in my teaching experience in Britain and the United States. I have wondered why, in Britain, the content of art education programs in schools took a definite shift away from concerns of personal self-expression toward a curriculum which was unabashedly part of a larger agenda, intended to give "relevancy" in terms more easily understood by the politician than by the art educator. I have wondered why, in the United States, the currently most visible agents of change within the field of art education are promoting an approach to the teaching of art which is clearly based on an elitist fine art aesthetic. In both countries, there are of course dissenters who passionately challenge these new directions. But I wondered whether such apparently "new directions" were not merely latent issues resurfacing to be grappled with by a new set of "authorities." I have wondered why an object, because it has practical value, is so easily dismissed from any serious consideration as appropriate study for art education. I suspected that the questions of today may well have their origins in the assumptions of yesterday. It was an objective of this study to subject my quandaries to the scrutiny of historical and philosophical analysis.;The questions posed by my speculation are multi-dimensional, so while the study has been grounded specifically in historical and philosophical contexts, I have not considered these to be mutually exclusive modes of inquiry. They are but two possible lenses through which I might search for some resolution to my ponderings and are the platform upon which I have constructed this study.;A purpose of the historical component of this research was, to identify any common threads, as they related to art education in Britain and America between the 1830's and the 1930's, in four specific areas: (1) The relationship between government, art, manufacture, and art education, (2) International Exhibitions as barometers of a nation's commitment to art education, (3) Shifts in the artworld to accept the utilitarian object as art, and (4) Curriculum initiatives developed for schools, directed at making connections between art and everyday life. I believe these areas to be interrelated, and while their investigation is undertaken within the realm of historical inquiry, a number of issues have inherent philosophical ramifications to one who is anxious to expand the scope of art education curricula. |
