Trying to be at home in the world: New parameters for art education

In my short book Letting Art Teach, I try to respond to what I see as a double crisis in art education. One part of this crisis has to do with the disappearance of art from art education – something that is visible in the ongoing instrumentalisation of the arts in education. The other part of the crisis has to do with the disappearance of education from contemporary art education – something that is visible in what I refer to as “expressivist” approaches to art. In response to these developments I outline a “world-centred” approach. This approach is neither focused on what children should learn (knowledge or skills) nor on how they should develop and who they should become (the question of identity), but rather puts the question of human existence – the question of what it means to live one’s life, and to live it well – at the very heart of art education.