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The Getting Of Taste: A Child’S Apprenticeship, Cathy Brooks

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Childhood art experience reflects an apprenticeship to the taste systems which a child's family and the public school subscribe to. This paper sketches my own taste experiences as a school child advancing from age six to eleven. Taste is used here to mean a person's ability to discern among alternatives. Taste judgments rely on not only aesthetic criteria but also status and economic criteria that are part of the social context in which one makes choices in objects and images. Understanding this childhood apprenticeship reveals some of the factors influencing participation in art activity and aesthetic choice. I will outline …