Art As Education.

I enjoyed reading Maxine Greene’s The Artistic-Aesthetic Curriculum. I have always thought that “the arts” play a significant role education. Art in itself is educational. Art can teach us about the universality of emotion or about the likeness of humanity regardless of culture. Through art we may find some common ground. This is important in education because in a way it seems this causes us to be more empathetic or understanding of other people. What we understand, we are less likely to fear. So in a way art can teach us about our likes and our differences. If we can learn that we are alike in certain ways we have a basis for understanding, while if we are able to understand some of our differences, we are more likely to be accepting of them. This may lead us to further understand the intrinsic value of a person.
Art can teach us about ourselves by causing us to consider how we might feel if we were in the shoes of the character we are reading about. Perhaps it may cause us to think about something in a different way or to cause us to think about the things we truly value in life. Just the fact that art causes us to think at whatever level contributes to the betterment of our person.