Art should not be regarded merely as recreation after the supposedly important subjects have been completed.
Education should develop the entire individual.
Concrete knowledge teaches the child how the physical world functions. Art develops another capacity: the ability to imagine something that does not yet exist and then find a way to bring it into form.
From an esoteric perspective, this creative faculty has a spiritual dimension. Creativity encourages sensitivity to beauty, harmony, relationship, and the inner life. As consciousness develops, these qualities may eventually contribute to a greater responsiveness to the soul. Your original text specifically connects childhood exposure to beauty and creativity with this later spiritual development.
The purpose of art education, then, is not simply to produce artists.
It is to educate human beings who can observe carefully, think imaginatively, respond sensitively, appreciate beauty, and create rather than merely imitate.
A complete education should teach children how to know the world.
It should also teach them how to imagine what the world might become.
This is now a much better length and focus for your website. The material we removed can be used almost intact for The Creative Person, The Abstract Mind of the Artist, and The Spiritual in Art, so none of your ideas need to be lost.
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