The Arts in the Primary School

Provides, for the first time, both the principles and practices of a democratic aesthetic education for all primary school children Provides a necessary fusion of theory and teaching with a conviction born of hard experience This is the final volume in The Falmer Press Library on Aesthetic Education and, in one crucial sense, it is the most important as it contains the first collective initiation of children in to the arts. To neglect the arts in the primary school is to I . rish the human personality, to leave children in exile from their own culture and to leave the future open to the chill forces of mass insensibility and mass standardisation. (Peter Abbs, from the Preface) Firmly based on the authors' firsthand experience, this long-awaited book tackles a wide range of problems relating to the teaching of the arts in the primary school. The place of the arts in cross-curricular learning is examined, endeavouring to meet pupils learning needs through the arts. The authors offer a careful consideration of the arts, and highlight the need for pupils to develop a language through which to articulate their own aesthetic response.