Letting All Lives Speak: Inequality in Art Education and Baumgarten's Felix Aestheticus

Overview & Synopsis

The article takes as its starting point the 2012 National Center for Education Statistics report that showed a clear statistical equity divide in access to art education. The article offers a philosophical examination of Alexander Baumgarten's concept of the "felix aestheticus". Using the theories of Jacques Ranciére, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Johann von Goethe for support, it offers a theoretical frame to the aspect of the self that is lost when art education is removed as compulsory for all children. The article seeks to contribute to the theories that art educators and policy makers might draw on when making justifications for providing arts programming to low-income children. Finally, this article seeks to begin to offer the art educator practical insight into the kind of knowing that cultivating the "felix aestheticus" may yield for the child and makes recommendations for policy approaches.