Critical Approaches Towards (A New) Arts Education

Abstract

Arts education still strives to claim its specificity and equal relevance comparing to other kinds of knowledge. There remains an idea that arts are powerful transformative agents, but neoliberalism tends to put economic utility and usage as principles that capture art under the great jargons of creativity, cultural industries, or flexibility. Today, it is necessary to question the very concept and status that arts, but also education, built from European perspectives, aligned with colonial practices, the building of nations, identity constructions and a culture of taste, under a universalist idea of civilization and progress. Thus, in this JSTA special issue we aim to question how to critically build a place and status for arts education which does not assume for itself, from the outset, a privileged or exceptional place, which does not reproduce the hegemonic power relations it seeks to criticize, and which stimulates change instead of accommodation and homogenization.