The Arts as Practices of Care in a Socially Just Curriculum

Abstract

If schools are part of our caring infrastructure, then a diminished arts curriculum is an assault on the possibilities for justice and affective equality for students and teachers. Tracing the intimate relationship between the arts and care, I argue that an art-less school environment is indicative of a care-less society. The arts engage both rationalities of, and ‘aesthetics of difference’, enabling an ethics of care. While it retains and critically examines traditional artistic canons, this contemporary notion of aesthetics is non-hierarchical and broader than Kantian variants (the beautiful and the ugly). Transcending paltry modes of moral reasoning around curriculum, it interrogates the “culture of neglect” surrounding the liberal individual imposed by 40 years of miserable neoliberal governmentality, and, through recognising and celebrating the signifying power of the arts, advocates for a rich, inclusive resistance which is vital when our judgment is deeply challenged by virtual and simulated worlds.