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Why Art Education Lacks Social Relevance: A Contextual Analysis, Robert Bersson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Contemporary art education is individual - focused (i.e. self-centered) to the almost complete exclusion of larger social concerns. This is true whether the art education is child-centered, discipline-centered, Rockfeller (Coming to Our Senses) - centered, or competency-based. The primary concern, notwithstanding differences, is on individual artistic productivity and, to a lesser degree, on personal aesthetic response. The enormous untapped potential of art education - and ninety-nine percent of us will be viewers and consumers, not artists - is in the social dimension. Critical understanding of the dominant visual culture - often dehumanizing in its effect, multicultural understanding through art, and …