Journal of Dance Education

ISSN: 1529-0824 (Print) 2158-074X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujod20

Arts Education and Citizenship

A Pedagogical Framework

Ilana Morgan

To cite this article: Ilana Morgan (2018) Arts Education and Citizenship, Journal of Dance
Education, 18:3, 95-102, DOI: 10.1080/15290824.2018.1481964

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Published online: 10 Sep 2018.

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Journal of Dance Education, 18: 95–102, 2018
Copyright © National Dance Education Organization
ISSN: 1529-0824 print / 2158-074X online
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2018.1481964
Ilana Morgan, PhD
Department of Dance, Texas
Woman’s University, Denton, TX
Address correspondence to Ilana
Morgan, BFA, MA, PhD, Department of
Dance, Texas Woman’s University, 808
Liveoak St., Denton, TX 76209. E-mail:
imorgan@twu.edu
Feature Articles
Arts Education and
Citizenship
A Pedagogical Framework
ABSTRACT This article presents a guiding framework for K-12 arts education. The
framework lists four goals for arts education and outlines six areas of teaching practices
to support these goals. This framework is presented adjacent to specific political
moments, executive orders, and movements from the 2017-2018 political landscape
in the United States, which the author describes as challenging to arts education and
the development of citizenship. A political landscape serves as a backdrop to the
research presented and the framework components. The framework is supported by
analysis that outlines aesthetic inquiry as cognition, and aesthetic education as sup-
porting development of empathy and social justice oriented citizenship. The author
considers aesthetic and arts education paramount to the development of social justice
oriented citizenship, livable and productive lives, and a democratic society. This article
provides a guiding framework for educators moving toward these goals.
Providing dance education for K–12 students in the United States has involved growth
and setbacks in funding and supportive ideology at the national, state, and community
levels. The U.S. educational climate often views arts education as frivolous, requiring a
continued conversation about the value of aesthetic arts education and its funding
requirements. For example, when asked about his recent proposal to eliminate the $4
million annual state subsidy to the Oklahoma Arts Council, State Representative Josh
Cockroft replied, “The time has come to set priorities and to exercise spending disci-
pline” (Knight 2013). In these types of arguments, the arts are cast as an extra, undisci-
plined endeavor that takes away from a prioritized and solid skills-based education
focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the 1997 report “Ten Good Reasons to
Eliminate Funding for the National Endowment for the Arts,” The Heritage Foundation
(1997)—a U.S. conservative public policy think tank—outlined the ways in which it is
believed that artist funding promotes pornography and cultural elitism while lowering
the quality of U.S. art. Although it has been more than twenty years since this report was
released, many of the Foundation’s core arguments can still be found in cultural and
political debates surrounding arts funding, arts education, public school budgets, and
the value of arts at large in U.S. society. For instance, in March 2018, the Winona School
District in Minnesota proposed $1.7 million in budget cuts; this included a plan to
eliminate the fourth-grade orchestra, music lessons, and two or three music teacher
positions and to reduce the number of high school theater productions (Farris 2018).
The superintendent was quoted in the local paper as saying, “Balancing a budget is a
95
difficult task. There will have to be difficult decisions” (Farris
2018). In response, students shared their pleas for keeping
their arts programs during these difficult times. One stated,
“Music impacts people’s lives extremely. If you take the core
pieces away . . . it will collapse like Jenga” (Collins 2018).
Another said that “music gives me a moment to relax and
have fun,” and “I only made friends through music” (Collins
2018). Still another student shared that music is what made
him feel human (Collins 2018).
How do we describe the goals and values of arts education
during continuing disputes that involve budgetary and politi-
cal perceptions? How do we connect the value of the arts to—as
the students just explained—the ways in which we inform our
senses of identity and humanity and build our lives? When the
arts are easily disregarded as a vital educative component, I
argue that we are simultaneously questioning the value of
people’s lives, individual identities, and rights. Arts education
serves as an important means by which we can support the
development of empathetic and civically engaged citizens.
With this in mind, I offer in this article a pedagogical
framework of goals and teaching strategies to create connec-
tions among arts education, civic and citizenship develop-
ment, cultural understanding, and the development of
empathy (as seen in Figure 1). I present this framework along-
side key moments from our recent U.S. political and social
landscape in the hopes that the framework will offer ways to
associate and connect arts learning and teaching to prospects
of social change, social justice, and civic engagement (as seen
in Figure 2). I also outline the methodology used to create
this framework and provide a definition of social justice and
aesthetic education used in this paper. I then conclude with a
short analysis of the philosophical areas which support the
development of this framework: aesthetic inquiry as cogni-
tion, aesthetic education and empathy, and aesthetic educa-
tion and social justice oriented citizenship.
I share this pedagogical framework to practically assist
those who teach arts in the classroom and those who advo-
cate for arts education inclusion in a democratic public
education system. In my experience as a K–12 dance educa-
tor and assistant professor of dance, anti-arts-education dis-
course can be burdensome for arts educators; it requires arts
teachers to be both advocates and educators, interchange-
ably and at all times. My goal is to provide a succinct
explanation and overarching umbrella from which to articu-
late the value and goals of arts education in relationship to
citizenship development for K–12 students.
This framework consists of four goals for arts education and
six possible areas in which one might put these goals into action.
It was developed from specific theoretical and philosophical
methodologies as well as from my own teaching perspectives
and experiences. Although conservative think tanks such as the
Heritage Foundation and other groups that propose the elimina-
tion of arts funding might not consider arts education to be
important to the development of productive U.S. citizens, it is
my proposal that arts education and a commitment to creative
collaboration contribute to the development of children into
compassionate and democratic citizens who can create a more
96
livable world, and become creative and innovative contributors
to our country.
A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR ARTS
EDUCATION
The framework has four distinct goals for arts education in
the development of social justice oriented citizenship.
Further, it addresses why arts education is important beyond
immediate arts-based learning outcomes and objectives. This
framework is intended to assist educators when thinking
about the purpose and meaningfulness of arts learning as
they advocate for its inclusion in school settings.
Arts Education Goals
1. Heighten awareness of multiple truths and perspectives;
2. Build skills of negotiating and disagreement;
3. Develop ability to see and articulate difference with
respect;
4. Strengthen aesthetic awareness of diverse people, arts
knowledge, and artistic perspectives.
Examples of Classroom Practice
In this section, I give examples of curriculum and lesson
ideas and verbal prompts for teachers as strategies that pro-
vide practice-oriented context for the framework goals listed
in the previous section. These practices can be used in the
areas of dance, theater, media arts, music, and visual arts;
they could also be implemented in non-arts-based class-
rooms. This section is intended to provide the reader some
classroom strategies and is not to meant to be an exhaustive
list, as there are many ways one might put the framework
goals into practice.
See and Be Seen
1. Find and take time to silently watch complete works of
theater and dance with performers who differ from your
students in terms of race, class, nationality, gender, and
culture.
2. Rather than explaining what students should see in a dance
or painting, explain and ask, “Let’s hold our thoughts
about what we think, or what you think it means, and
focus instead on what you see. What and who do you see?”
Listen to Others
1. Provide written and audio/visual artist interviews and
artist statements to learn about how, why, and what
propelled the artist to create this way.
2. Ask questions and listen deeply to understand the process
and artistic inquiry of classmates. “If the artist describes
this trio as an investigation of a sunset, what can we ask
to find out more about her process?”
I. Morgan

FIGURE 1. Arts Education Framework.
Honor Spaces and Bodies
1. Practice “blind casting” by casting according to ability
rather than look, height, race, or gender of an actor, and if
applicable provide students information about how choices
were made.
Arts Education and Citizenship
FIGURE 2. US Political/Social Moments and Movements.
2. Define safe practices and support the development of
personal agency. “She is telling us she does not want to
be lifted during this part of the dance. It is her body, and
she will decide if she wants to be lifted.”
Connect Arts Creations to a Larger World
1. Work to weave issues, contexts, cultures, concerns, and
celebrations into the arts classroom.
2. Employ a wide variety of arts traditions, philosophies,
ideas, and experiences, not only Western perspectives.
3. Ask students what concerns them most. Teach them ways
to find out what is happening in the world, and encou-
rage them to use artistic expression to understand, react
to, or explore.
97
4. Encourage analysis of personal context through art mak-
ing by promoting use of familial stories; political ideas;
and personal, family, and cultural histories.
Center the Work and Decenter the Student
1. Practice activities that bring attention and focus through
the use of eyes, skin, performance, line, texture, shape,
color, relationships, timing, character, space, qualities,
and so on.
2. Ask what the artwork or artistic process needs or is asking
us to do. “What does this landscape need next in this
watercolor, and why? What is present in this work so far,
and what artistic choices are becoming revealed as I
progress?”
Recognize Stories, Ideas, and People
1. Highlight artworks and artists that are not traditionally
represented. Consider artists on YouTube, child artists,
elderly artists, artists with differently abled bodies, and
those from differing cultural contexts.
2. Find stories of perseverance, heartache, joy, and everyday
life from cultures that are both different and similar to
students’ communities. Look for common ground as well
as stark differences.
METHODOLOGY
This research uses a relational and reflective philosophical
methodology grounded in a qualitative postpositivist
approach. This approach acknowledges that an objective frame-
work for arts education for all situations and learners is not
possible; rather, a practical framework that will guide teaching
and learning in the arts requires multiple observations, deep
reflection, and specific consideration and acknowledgment of
differing cultural experiences, worldviews, and, in this case,
political and social landscapes. A methodology that will fit
these varying needs dictates an approach that could be asso-
ciated with craft: messy assemblage, experimentation, reflec-
tion, and revision as contexts, needs, values, and societal
pressures change. This nonlinear relational approach incorpo-
rates philosophical analysis of current theories in the area of
education, affect theory, and arts education. This analysis,
coupled with my own teaching experience, creates the base
on which the framework was built.
Norman K. Denzin and Yvonne S. Lincoln (2005), who
wrote about qualitative research, drew attention to pragmatic
and context-dependent values as being integral to under-
standing knowledge as “collective knowing” and a “socially
constructed and socially distributed phenomenon” (50).
This approach requires attention be paid to the experiences
and bias of the researcher, especially with regard to a com-
mitment to the socially constructed nature of knowledge.
While developing this framework, I reflected on my own
98
personal teaching experiences and values as a dance educator
in U.S. public schools, and I sought to continually practice
intentionality and awareness of my biases as the research
unfolded. I paid particular attention to my social and poli-
tical leanings, the value that I place on social justice work,
and my strong ethical belief that arts are central to a pro-
ductive life and society. These biases remain present and also
propel this work. I offer this acknowledgment of bias and
reflexivity to my readers as they engage with this framework.
To further an incorporation of relational constructionism,
I wanted this methodology to involve the pointed consid-
eration of moments within the current political landscape in
the U.S. Arguments can be made that the political and social
points presented are not important and that the educational
framework stands on its own without this contextual offer-
ing. However, to fully bring into view specific visions and
goals of arts education, the political and social landscape—
which affects arts education via funding, ethics, goals, and a
federally mandated curriculum—must be considered. This
idea is supported by Andrew Gunn’s (2015) chapter in the
book Theory and Method in Higher Education, which identifies
ways that political and policy analysis can be included in
education research:
The first category of research we can identify is where policy
documents and political events are used as a backdrop to a
range of studies. Policy documents and political events provide
context to the research questions where they set the scene,
although the actual research is not into the political or policy
per se. . . . [P]olitical context is of value as it identifies drivers of
change and the wider landscape beyond the area of immediate
investigation. (30)
The political moments and movements are meant to serve as
a backdrop to the framework, and the reader is invited to
consider ideas about teaching and learning in the midst of
this landscape. I also encourage readers to consider new
political and social issues or moments that they feel support
or shadow their own teaching goals and practices.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND AESTHETIC
EDUCATION
I found the political to be personal in new ways in 2017, and
I viewed certain political visions, presidential choices, and
continued social inequities as challenges to arts education in
the U.S. Furthermore, I found that President Trump’s choice
making as led by the inclusion—or, rather, the exclusion—of
others with the phrase “America First!” posed potential risks
to an arts pedagogy that seeks to help students celebrate
difference while treating others with respect and empathy.
The preceding arts framework is civically purposeful in that
it lays out possible guidelines for resistance to misogyny and
to racial and religious prejudice while fulfilling the impor-
tant educational goals of teaching problem-solving and
empathy through arts and aesthetics. Arts education can be
a radical means of fighting injustice and promoting social
I. Morgan
justice when we weave information about various commu-
nities, ideas, and people into students’ educational experi-
ences. With this in mind, it is important to define aesthetic
education and social justice as they are used in this article.
For the purposes of this research, I define aesthetic educa-
tion as a pedagogical approach and perspective that engages
students with works of art and art making through project-
based learning, critical thinking, hands-on inquiry, and cri-
tical reflection in an effort to come to know and understand
the qualitative differences and aesthetics of art. Most impor-
tant to this definition of aesthetic education is that such
education guides students toward the development of new
ways of seeing, problem solving, and relating to a changing
world through the study of artistic qualities, differences, and
creative processes.
Social justice can be broadly defined as fair and just rela-
tions between society and the individual. If we think of
society as a system in which individual experiences interrelate
and are affected by structures of politics and government,
race, power, and economics, the work of social justice can
be a kind of unfolding, unpacking, and revealing of imbal-
ances and privileges within that system. I identify social
justice work as two parts: identifying inequities and then
proposing actions required to move toward more just rela-
tions, common good, and the equal distribution of resources,
rights, and opportunities. I also consider social justice work to
be a never-ending practice that encompasses varied actions of
both individuals and groups and includes the development of
educational strategies, governmental policy and proposals,
and individual relationships and coalitions.
In this article, I consider the framework of goals and peda-
gogical practices as embodying this second part of the social
justice definition; a proposition of actions toward more just
relations. In this definition the proposal of the framework, and
the framework itself, is a kind of social justice work.
Envisioning and employing a pedagogical practice that seeks
to encourage development of civic and citizenship develop-
ment, cultural understanding, and the development of empa-
thy is an active social justice endeavor. I do not consider this
proposed framework as social justice education because I
define social justice education as teaching students how to
analyze oppression, about tools they might use for social
change and action, and how to critique systems of power and
societal inequalities. Although teachers might employ an
aspect of the framework in this way, they also might choose
not to. For example, teachers might engage with a section of
the framework that encourages classroom practices to help
students see others more deeply. They might do this by asking
students to reflect in writing about the movement and choreo-
graphic structure they see in a classmate’s choreography (not
social justice education). Or, they might create a lesson in
which students look into funding data of large U.S. dance
companies and analyze what and who gets funded with parti-
cular attention to gender and race, and then write an analysis
about who is being seen and who is not being seen when it
comes to large funded companies in the U.S. (social justice
education). Either example supports a teaching practice to help
Arts Education and Citizenship
students see others, but I would not categorize both as social
justice education.
Next, I offer three foundational areas that support the idea
of aesthetic education as a social justice endeavor, and from
which my proposed framework was developed. Of particular
import are philosophical ideas in the area of arts education that
identify aesthetic education as cognition, and as influential in
the development of empathy and justice-oriented citizenship.
Aesthetic Education as Cognition
Before considering arts and aesthetic education as a way to
develop empathy and kind citizenship, it is important to
consider the ways in which creating in the arts is actually
thinking and cognition. Learning via an unfolding creative
process can be viewed as a complex and engaged cognition
in which new knowledge and connection to the world
unveil new meanings and consciousness for students. In
this way, cognition, movement and action, subjectivity,
and environment bloom together, and it is why an aes-
thetic arts education experience has the ability to affect a
person’s awareness of multiple truths and perspectives, and
their development of articulating difference with respect.
Understanding arts learning as thinking moves us away
from arts education only as a task or activity, and moves
us toward understanding arts education as a kind of world
making and shaper of identity.
Social and affect theorists Erin Manning and Brian
Massumi (2014) proposed the idea of potential “in the
making” in their book Thought in the Act: Passages in the
Ecology of Experience: “Every practice is a mode of thought,
already in the act. To dance: a thinking in movement. To
paint: a thinking through color. To perceive in the everyday:
a thinking of the world’s varied ways of affording itself” (1).
This assertion—that to engage in aesthetic difference and
qualitative reasoning with the world is cognition rather
than an arts activity with defined starting and ending
points—helps to position arts education as involving the
active and perceptive making of meaning.
The ways in which art making can position human per-
ception and thought demand that attention be paid to an
idea of potential and processual becoming via creative pro-
cesses. Valerie Triggs (2015), theorist and professor of art
education, defined these ideas through the perspective of
affect theory. She highlighted the intricate repositioning,
reflection, and embodied inquiry that are essential to art
making and engagement, and she posited that these aesthetic
judgments and their associated reasoning position arts edu-
cation as “practicing to feel the potential directly adjacent to
each new encounter with the world” (Triggs 2015, 160). I
consider Triggs’s words as helping to explain that, when
students engage in art making, they are learning to find
potential and weigh choices as they create their own worlds,
either in their artworks or through the choices that they
make in their lives.
Manning and Massumi (2014) also wrote about an
encounter with the world as an encounter with texture:
99
 To experience the texture of the world “without discrimination”
is not indifference. Texture is patterned, full of contrast and
movement, gradients and transitions. It is complex and differ-
entiated. To attend to everything “the same way” is not an
inattention to life. It is to pay equal attention to the full range
of life’s texturing complexity, with an entranced and unhierarch-
ized commitment to the way in which the organic and the
inorganic, color, sound, smell, and rhythm, perception and
emotion, intensely interweave into the “aroundness” of a tex-
tured world, alive with difference. (74–75)
If aesthetic education propels students to think with and
through textured environments and they come to see the
world as being alive with difference and complexity, then
the potential to create their own worlds as inclusive of
difference and variation becomes possible. Without options
or “portals” to seeing “our world experienced differently”
(Triggs 2015, 161), such potential ceases to exist. It is these
encounters with change and difference that Triggs articulated
as “something we make of ourselves” (Triggs 2015, 160). In
this kind of making, creative potential can become the
means through which the student, artistic expression, and
perception bloom together, in what Triggs (2015) suggested
“may contribute to making lives more livable and the world
feel more inhabitable for now and for the future” (162).
Aesthetic Education and Empathy
Philosopher and arts educator Maxine Greene (2007) considered
her philosophy of education and practice to encompass the
following: “I ‘do’ philosophy of education, and what we call
aesthetic education in contexts of metropolitanism and the
marvelous diversity that characterizes it. I ponder these, keep
exploring them, and try to teach . . . grounded in understanding
of experiences from an existential perspective, focused on acts of
consciousness” (1). She explained the connection between aes-
thetic engagement and the artistic process as it relates to the act
of seeing and becoming “wide-awake;” however, she argued that
what is paramount is how this aesthetic experience becomes a
conscious experience and one in which meaning is “richer and
more complex . . . . The effort is to move beyond mere ‘looking
at’ or to turn attention away from imposing a story that makes
invisible the aesthetic qualities of a work” (Greene 2007, 4).
Greene went on to connect this aesthetic awareness to the ability
to empathize with and care for others. She noted that to become
“wide-awake” is to allow oneself to be seen, to deeply see others,
to see possibility in collaboration, and to be fully present:
To be enabled to activate the imagination is to discover not
only possibility, but to find the gaps, the empty spaces that
require filling as we move from the is to the might be, to the
should be. To release the imagination too is to release the power
of empathy, to become more present to those around, perhaps
to care (Greene 2007, 4).
Doug Risner and Susan W. Stinson (2010) warned of a
shallow multiculturalism when teaching to support the
100
development of cultural awareness and empathy in students.
They wrote regarding the limitations of dance education
with a
focus only on learning “about” the exotic other, rather than
learning “from and with” those unlike us, or those whose dan-
cing is different from ours . . . . More simply, a multicultural
“tourist” conception . . . leaves out real learning from and with
non-western cultural forms as well as all the complex identities
and experiences in our own dominant white population. (9)
To become “wide-awake” and to learn from varied textures
of experience becomes difficult if boundaries are drawn
around categories of people. Without a nuanced approach
to consider variation within cultural groups and to act “from
empathetic perspectives within all cultural contexts and
social differences” (Risner and Stinson 2010, 10), a well-
intentioned search for empathy can fall short.
Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies
Patricia Hill Collins (2005) wrote about the complexity of
difference and intersectionality in relationship to the devel-
opment of empathy: “Once we realize that there are few
pure victims or oppressors, and that each one of us derives
varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple
systems of oppression that frame our lives, then we will be in
a position to see the needs for new ways for thought and
action” (36). One step she identified to get at and disrupt the
ways in which “socially-sanctioned ideologies” (Collins
2005, 39) justify oppression is to find new ways to build
relationships with others and to see them and come to know
them deeply. She cited this relational step as helping people
to move beyond the objectification and stereotyping of
others. She stated, “These judgements by category must be
replaced with fully human relationships that transcend the
legitimate difference created by race, class, and gender as
categories of analysis. We require new categories of connec-
tion, new visions of what our relationships with one another
can be” (Collins 2005, 36). Like Greene, Risner, and Stinson,
Collins called for a wide-awakeness that involves empathe-
tically seeing the reality of individuals’ experiences, which
makes it difficult to deny their authenticity and to dehuma-
nize them as people (Collins 2005, 40).
Aesthetic Education and Citizenship
I teach and research pedagogy at the college level, and in my
own teaching I have seen the ways in which arts education
contributes to an individual’s ability to become a kind
citizen. I have watched students of all ages see a person, a
situation, or a problem with a new perspective after engaging
with inquiry-based artistic creation and expression that
involved working with people or communities different
from themselves. Being able to work with and understand
others’ perspectives is at the core of thoughtful citizenship,
and it is required in a nation as diverse as the U.S.
Expanding students’ ability to be aware of diverse people
and knowledges, seeing and respecting others different than
I. Morgan
oneself, and becoming aware of multiple truths and perspec-
tives provides support in developing skills of negotiating and
disagreement, an essential skill in productive democratic
participation.
The definition of citizenship as it relates to education and
curriculum varies widely. Joseph Westheimer and Joseph
Kahne (2004) categorized the philosophical approaches to
this subject. They outlined three types of citizens: (1) the
participatory citizen; (2) the personally responsible citizen;
and (3) the justice-oriented citizen, who works to “analyze
and understand the interplay of social, economic, and poli-
tical forces” (240). Teaching from a justice-oriented perspec-
tive “seeks to prepare students to improve society by critically
analyzing and addressing social issues and injustices”
(Westheimer and Kahne 2004, 240). Aesthetic education is
considered supportive to the development of justice-oriented
citizenship, especially by philosophers who contemplate the
aims of curriculum and the functions of schooling from a
constructivist perspective. Cara Rautins and Awad Ibrahim
(2011), who wrote about the pedagogy of imagination, stated
that “a democratic pedagogy which seeks to harmonize the
tension between freedom and authority is necessary to foster
wide-awakeness and move students toward creative possibili-
ties for a promising future” (24).
Many from the progressive movement, including John
Dewey ([1934]2005), philosopher and education reformer,
harnessed a constructivist approach to education; they viewed
education as the process of a student developing his or her
own understanding on the basis of perceptions, experiences,
personal subjectivity, and reflection. With this approach, the
teacher or the curriculum is not the keeper of knowledge
imparted to the student. Aesthetic education is similarly
aligned; in addition to viewing learning as students develop-
ing their own understandings, this type of education views
artistic engagement as not happening in solitude but rather as
occurring within the public sphere. This active and public
engagement has the potential to increase a student’s critical
consciousness. Rautins and Ibrahim (2011) described it as the
“ability to be mindful of oneself and others, opening up space
for conscious deliberation of how the world is constructed in
terms of knowledge, power, and inequality” (26).
The work of Greene (1978) is again relevant to connecting
the arts and citizenship when she described student engage-
ment with a work of art as a means of “posing questions”
and “sense making in a confusing world” (165). Her ideas
push an acknowledgment of aesthetic education as an ave-
nue for developing skills of seeing, creating, and critically
assessing and to then consider the implications of these
activities for a democratic society. According to Greene
(1978), “There are works of art . . . that were deliberately
created to move people to critical awareness, to a sense of
moral agency, and to a conscious engagement with the
world” (163). She further connected this awareness to
democracy: “The good society is deeply rooted in a tradition
of democratic community. . . . Democratic community is
deeply rooted in an existential notion of wide awakeness”
(Greene, quoted in Kisaka and Osman 2013, 343).
Arts Education and Citizenship
Dewey ([1934]2005) also associated citizenship with con-
scious and critical thinking arising from aesthetic arts
education:
Instruction in the arts of life is something other than conveying
information about them. It is a matter of communication and
participation in values of life by means of the imagination and
works of art are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding
individuals to share in the art of living. Civilization is uncivil
because human beings are divided into non-communicating
sects, races, nations, classes and cliques. (350)
Some dispositions of justice-oriented citizenship involve
a strong civic identity, with the individual working to ensure
the good of others, practicing thoughtful collaboration,
performing educated problem solving, and acknowledging
difference with respect. Arts education imagines the ways in
which civility, mindfulness, and empathy can support jus-
tice-oriented citizenship and positions this type of education
as ancillary to this goal.
CONCLUSION
On February 14, 2018, seventeen people were killed and
seventeen more were wounded in a school shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida. I have been in awe as a group of surviving students
from this high school mobilized to create a grassroots move-
ment calling for stricter gun laws and to organize protests
across the nation declaring “Never Again” and “Enough Is
Enough” when it comes to gun-related deaths. It was no
surprise for me to learn that the leaders of this group were all
part of the theater program at their high school. The skills
these students developed through theater productions—orga-
nizing, negotiating, creating together, working with others
who hold different opinions and perspectives, and being
articulate and succinct when speaking to large groups of
people—all supported their ability to lead a national move-
ment. These ideas resonated with me as I worked on the
final draft of this article and again demonstrated the vital
contributions of arts education to effective citizenship.
We have work to do when it comes to securing the
future of arts education through funding and a supportive
ideology; we must also ensure that the arts are viewed as
essential to a well-rounded education. The current political
landscape and the tenor of the country require strict and
strong pedagogical actions. Educators must speak loudly
about teaching and learning needs and teach students
how to raise their voices while teaching them how to see,
hear, and empathize with those around them while nego-
tiating difference. As arts educators, we are uniquely posi-
tioned to effect change. According to Greene (1978), “[i]f
the uniqueness of aesthetic education can be reaffirmed, if
we can consider futuring as we combat immersion, old
either/ors may disappear. We may make possible a plural-
ism of visions, a multiplicity of realities. We may enable
those we teach to rebel” (182).
101
 It is my hope that these goals and this list of teaching practices
provides new ideas regarding teaching strategies and classroom
activities to those who teach in the arts. These practices are
intended to help educators understand connections between
aesthetic seeing, listening, and learning with others as a path
toward the development of engaged, thinking citizens. The four
goals of arts education can be printed out, placed in classrooms,
and sent to administrators and parents; they should serve as a
reminder that—sitting above school, curriculum, and state and
national standards—there are larger goals for arts teaching and
learning. When arts educators are asked to prove the worth of
arts education, we must articulate how arts learning is an essen-
tial component of the development of students’ senses of who
they are, both in the world and in their relationships with others.
Arts education is not in service to state testing goals, nor is the
presence of arts education in K–12 schools only intended to
make students better at math, science, and reading. When stu-
dents create from nothing a work of art that is meaningful, they
are practicing the making of smart and meaningful choices,
which sets the stage for the creation of a future for themselves,
their communities, and their country.
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