ABSTRACT
Ethnographic researchers are usually open-minded people. Rarely do they seem to begin their fieldwork with a clear set of research intentions, a neat set of hypotheses they want to test, or even with a definite problem they want to clarify. Certainly they have their own vague ideas and preferences, but for the most part they display the optimism of nineteenth-century explorers, contentedly anticipating that something interesting and, with luck, important will simply turn up. Of course, their personal values and commitments may influence their later selection of specific problems and shape subsequent interpretation; but only in exceptional cases do passionate commitments seem to precede, or are overtly acknowledged to precede, the fieldwork itself. The present study is such an exception. In a book I wrote on the future of the comprehensive school, 1 I proposed that the creative and expressive arts ought to be part of a compulsory core curriculum. This proposal sprang from my firm conviction that all pupils are potentially capable of deriving great pleasure from the arts, both as producers and consumers, and if more status and time were accorded to the teaching and learning of the arts, then this potential in pupils could be realized.
