Looking for beauty: A call to educators to address the need for aesthetic education in our classrooms

Looking For Beauty: A Call for Educators to Address the Need for Aesthetic Education in our Classrooms In recent decades, beauty has been set aside by the art world and schools have decreased funding and classroom time for the arts. Beauty, however, remains vitally important to us as individuals and as a society. My intention is to clarify what we mean by beauty and aesthetics and why they are important to us through an examination of Kant, Croce and modern writers on aesthetics, and to build a case for increased aesthetic education in our school system. The purpose of this document is also to serve as a guide to implementing aesthetic education cross-curricularly. Various strategies will be provided that will assist teachers from disparate disciplines to integrate aesthetic ideas into their classroom teaching in order to increase the efficacy of their practice, and to enhance their students aesthetic intelligence.