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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Art Education as a Trap

subject

description

Art education is often talked about as a general good that will solve problems of every description and meet the most varied current problems. In Finland, for example, art education tends to be seen as something that fosters human growth, teaches aesthetic and ethical values, promotes self‐expression and social skills, and meets the challenges of the media age. Any problems that might emerge stem simply from insufficient resources. Instead of continuing what is, probably, a generally known and shared discussion, we want to ask ourselves and others what are the traps art education might conceal, possibly in part under precisely such rhetoric. Our phenomenological perspective emphasises presence, the importance of the sensory, and an opportunity to seize contemporary art and fleeting moments. Given this, however, we must also ask what is feasible at school in the first place when its activities and everyday practices are considered from the perspective of hierarchical and symbolic exercise of power and in t...