2024.09.10 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Laura D’Olimpio, The Necessity of Aesthetic Education: The Place of the Arts on the Curriculum, Bloomsbury Philosophy of Education, 2024, 184pp., $120.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781350120907.
Reviewed by Iris Vidmar Jovanović, University of Rijeka
The rationale of Laura D’Olimpio’s manifesto (as she calls it) for the compulsory aesthetic education for all school-aged students at all levels of education is simple and straightforward: “Aesthetic education is necessary due to its distinctive ability to offer, invite and invoke aesthetic experience. Such meaningful experiences, of flow, harmony, beauty, the sublime, shock, awe, wonder, etc., are integral to a flourishing life and, therefore, educators have a responsibility to teach students that they may participate in such experiences” (76).
In advocating for this view, D’Olimpio balances a theoretical approach to the topic of aesthetic education with statistical data (ranging from USA, UK, and Australia) regarding the actual educational practices and policies that underlie students’ engagements with the arts and schools’ organization of art-related programs….
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