on. As Lowenfeld's and Brittain's (1987) art education textbook shows, many educators now view art as a vital part of a child's development. This is an example of a very practical response to the challenge of rationalizing a role for art in the curriculum. If it is shown to be an integral part of development then it cannot be argued that it is frivolous or indulgent to allow children to learn how to draw or how to look at drawings. But Lowenfeld and Brittain are concerned only with that part of art education that, according to Read, "should more properly be called visual or plastic education," while Read and Dewey develop general theories, respectively, of the fundamental role of the aesthetic in education and of the nature of the aesthetic experience (1958, p. 7).
Both Read and Dewey include types of art other than the visual. Musical, kinetic, and verbal art are essential parts of their theories as well. But the bulk of their arguments and examples are, nonetheless, derived from the visual arts. Since the teaching of the visual arts "appear
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