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Behind, The Road Is Blocked: Art Education And Nostagia, Paul Duncum

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Proponents of high culture have trusted its power as an antidote to contemporary social ills. However, art educators should be aware that the history of such attempts is a history of failure. It is a history of gradual marginalization, both of the critique and the critics, and of increasingly conservative political reaction. The critique represents, today as it has always done, a nostalgia for an idealized past. But the failure of the critique suggests that there can be no going back. It is argued that the increasing failure of this critique to positively influence social and cultural life is a …