Anxiety and Uncertainty in Aesthetic Education

by George Geahigan


Like most efforts at educational reform, initial proposals for the teaching of art criticism represented a promising direction for practice rather than a fully developed educational plan. Educators during the 1950s and 1960s, who first proposed art criticism as an alternative to studio work, viewed it as a remedy for a number of problems with existing practice. They were troubled by a failure to meet the needs of older students whose interest in making art declined with the onset of adolescence; by the lack of intellectual substance in a curriculum that had degenerated into mere manipulation of art materials in the early grades and a narrow development of technical skills in the upper grades; by a perceived lack of balance between studio production and the teaching of art appreciation; and by the marginal status of art education within the overall school curriculum.ast century.