The Necessity of Aesthetic Education - (Bloomsbury Philosophy of Education) by Laura D'Olimpio (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book defends the necessity of arts education for all school-aged students, from pre-primary to high school, on the basis of its distinctive value.

Book Synopsis

The Necessity of Aesthetic Education is a manifesto. That which is experienced through engagement with art, through the many various and diverse art forms and media, is uniquely and essentially valuable to the lives of human beings. In order to fully appreciate and gain the most out of the arts, which offer a variety of aesthetic experience, there are concepts, skills and techniques integral to such understanding. In this book, Laura D'Olimpio argues that aesthetic education ought to be a compulsory part of education for all school-aged students, from pre-primary to high school, on the basis of its distinctive value. Such an argument is timely, given the so-called crisis in the arts and humanities, with declining student numbers in subjects that do not have a direct vocational correlative, and increased focus on science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) subjects. As funding cuts increasingly slash the support for the arts, there is a need to argue for why the arts and arts education is valuable, for their own sake, as well as for the positive contributions they can and do make to society. Through critical engagement with a range of thinkers including Maxine Greene, John Dewey and Elliot Eisner, D'Olimpio offers a unique and important contribution to aesthetic education, and to research within philosophy of education.

Review Quotes

Advocates of arts education tend to speak in platitudes. This book moves firmly beyond the platitudes by providing a rigorous defence of the necessity of aesthetic education in terms of both its intrinsic value and extrinsic benefits. Written with gusto and persuasion, this work serves both as a formidable philosophical treatise and an inspired manifesto. I particularly recommend Chapter 7 on the complex relationship between aesthetics and ethics. A delightful read.

D'Olimpio offers a deep investigation into the role and value of aesthetic education introducing the reader to multiple defenses for its value in the K-12 curriculum including those made by Elliot Eisner and Maxine Greene. She successfully argues that the intrinsic value of the aesthetic experience is fundamental to the well-being and overall education of students and that including aesthetic education into the curriculum does not require any further extrinsic reasons.

About the Author

Laura D'Olimpio is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and author of Media and Moral Education: a philosophy of critical engagement (2018). She is co-editor of Educating Character Through the Arts (2023) and co-editor of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools.