ABSTRACT
Although aesthetic values (especially the beautiful) are dutifully listed among the higher goods to be achieved in life and education, they have a low priority in both. This estimate has to be qualified because of a certain ambivalence in the public's attitude toward the aesthetic. The low priority of the aesthetic in life refers to the fine arts or high art or serious art, or, if you like, art produced by people primarily concerned with aesthetic values. There is evidence that this is so despite alleged culture explosions. 1 In everyday life, by contrast, the aesthetic has a high priority indeed, as numerous phenomena ranging from the use of imagery in the making of a president to the selling of soap flakes by television can attest. This ambivalent attitude toward the aesthetic becomes socially significant if one considers the power of the mass media to utilize aesthetic means to influence thought and choice. And this fact raises in a crucial form the educational question: Is there merit in the argument that serious art, high art, etc., will order feeling 'better than' the popular, commercial, mass media arts? Should aesthetic education therefore cultivate a mass public for serious art? Or should aesthetic education adopt a different gambit?
