Excerpt from Art Education: The Development of Public Policy

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF POLICY FORMATION: How art educators answer policy initiatives is critical. Answers should not be based simply on an uninformed choice or haphazard guess but rather on the premises that art educators choose to use in the process of determining the K-12 school art curriculum. The premises that support arguments on either side are basically philosophical ones and involve what beliefs we hold on how we come to know things in our world (epistemology), what the meaning of life is (metaphysics), and what has value (axiology). Unfortunately, too few art educators really think on such matters, and although they should know better they all too often avoid admitting or analyzing the premises that undergird their assumptions on how students learn, how they should be taught, and what they should be taught. The philosophical issues which should shape the content of the art curriculum begin with questions such as what is art, what is its purpose, how do we decide whether it is or is not art, and what mental processes are used in making art. Philosophically, the answers depend mostly on whether the person accepts an idealist or empirical philosophical process, or aesthetically whether they accept either a formalist or postmodernist view of art.