Political Framing of the Arts in Education

It has become increasingly urgent for educators in the arts to be cognisant and critical of the political framing of their professional sites as discourses of education are determined through the globalised marketplace. This essay claims that there is a need to exercise a criticality towards questions of curriculum policy and practice in order to engage a workable politic of difference in art education. Political framing of the arts in educational sites is interrogated through three sets of conceptual categories - three Cs: concept, context, criticality; three Ms: modalities, marginalisation, markets; and three Es: excellence, efficiency, educators. In a postmodern and globalised world it becomes the ethical responsibility of arts' educators to formulate an accessible criticality towards normative and reductive solutions to curriculum design and philosophy. Critical attention must be paid to the conditions of discourse through which power is exercised if a politics of difference is to be adduced.