ABSTRACT
What should be the purposes of education in the arts? This is a big question. Fully to deal with it – and bearing in mind, the kinds of art activities most commonly found in educational institutions – would require asking why, if at all, students should make art (write poems, paint pictures, compose music), perform on musical instruments, engage in literary and other forms of art criticism. In this chapter, I shall not be exploring these questions, but limiting the investigation to what we might call sensuous engagement with works of art and why it should be held to be educationally desirable.
