Artistic Meaning and Aesthetic Education: A Formalist View.

The values attributed to art are so large and various that no one curriculum in aesthetic education can embrace them all and still retain enough coherence to remain intelligible to students. What is the paramount value of art, the value that justifies its inclusion in the school curriculum? Various answers to that question are possible. This paper will suggest a formalist answer which grows out of the writing of A. C. Bradley and Susanne K. Langer and then will draw out from this answer some implications for teaching the arts.