Inclusion of arts and humanities as a central part of any curriculum is defended by their ability to create critical awareness, to develop a sense of moral agency, and to foster conscious engagement with the world. (MJB)

Moralistic and utilitarian emphases have long made imaginative activity seem suspect in American schools. Students must be freed in order to become conscious of their various interpretive undertakings and to reflect upon the various ways that experiences may be ordered. (Author/GC)

A veteran teacher educator has guided future teachers on an open-ended adventure into past landscapes, using various literary works, paintings, historical volumes, and curriculum history. Enlightenment thinkers assumed every question had only one possible answer. Science is one of many symbol systems used to construct meaning. Metaphors deepen and…

Standards in art education contradict the nature of art: the unexpected, the imagined, the explorations and creative discoveries. What must be communicated is the importance of the arts and aesthetic education, the nurture of informed understanding of art, and meaningful standards that emerge intrinsically and are not imposed extrinsically (SK)

The existential contexts of education reach far beyond the conceptions of Goals 2000 or the appalling actualities of family breakdown, homelessness, violence, and other "savage inequalities." Classroom encounters with the arts can move the young to imagine, extend, and renew. If the arts' significance for growth, inventiveness, and…

Articulates two cornerstones of a vision of public education in the United States: (1) the need for community and for a coming together with something to pursue; and (2) the importance of the imaginative voice of the artists in human conversation. (CMK)

Includes "Texts and Margins" (Greene); "Arts as Epistemology: Enabling Children to Know What They Know" (Gallas); "To Arrive in Another World: Poetry, Language Development, and Culture" (Steinbergh); "The Uses of Folk Music and Songwriting in the Classroom" (Cockburn); and "And Practice Drives Me Mad;…