ABSTRACT
The classroom is an everyday place. We work in time compartments in system-generated groupings. Much of our work will be routine and pedestrian. Let us be honest. But in these pages we speak of something else; of deeply serious moments of revelation and illumination. These are grand concepts (and easy to write) but is life-stopping aesthetic experience possible within our daily routines? The purpose of this book has been to raise the conceptual stakes in our thinking around drama and to draw attention to the possibilities of daily classroom experience. At the very least, every day we should be capable of engaging enquiring minds and offering stand-out experiences that lift students' sensibilities, enjoyment and intellectual perspicacity. That leaves them at least slightly more alive. But we should also be ready to recognise moments of our own strand of aesthetic experience; a strand appropriate to our peculiar form of youthful, participatory art. We should look out for the following, which can be seen as emblems of our aesthetic experience:
