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BookReviews
BookReviews
115
would fulfill only the initial needs of the nonspecialist who might wish to
apply Hornbrook's ideas.
Other chapters include a brief discussion of the history of dramatic education in England and an incomplete look at dramatic and aesthetic theory
as applicable to his argument. His brief discursion into "what art is and is
not" (pp. 20-21) contributes little to his argument as a whole and tends to
sidetrack the main issue. His astute observation that arts education should
concern itself with the "social or political context of artmaking" (p. 19) is
never fully developed, and allusion to it is made only by inference in subsequent chapters. The profundity of his observation would seem to demand
further discussion.
Written for educators in Great Britain, the non-British reader will find
this work beneficial if he or she is willing to sift through, or ignore, the use
of numerous acronyms-like HM1, HMSO, TGAT, GCSE, and CSE-which
are meaningful only to educators in the United Kingdom. What a shame
that this book's editor has not accommodated the international reader as
well.
Donald L. Cleary,Jr.
Ohio University-Zanesville
THE SYMBOLIC ORDER: A CONTEMPORARY READER ON THE ARTS
DEBATE, edited by Peter Abbs. London: The Falmer Press, 1989, 300
pp., paper.
THE CLAIMS OF FEELING: READINGS ON AESTHETIC EDUCATION,
edited by Malcolm Ross. London: The Falmer Press, 1989, 355 pp., paper.
These two anthologies represent almost the last flourish of educational debate that managed to persist in the eighties. Sadly, at this remove, they are
beginning to look outdated and very nearly irrelevant. This doleful statement is made in recognition of the hard reality that direct government intervention in English education, in the form of the legislated, mandatory
National Curriculum and in all forms of assessment and examination,
seems to be rapidly approaching totalitarian levels. Since the 1988 Education Act that made the National Curriculum obligatory in schools, we have
had three, or is it four, Secretaries of State; each has introduced modifications or yet more reviews of the content or teaching of this or that subject. It
is not surprising that the views of teachers throughout every sphere of education have become jaundiced and many simply "go through the motions"
of meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum, for there is every
likelihood that some aspect-the content, the assessment, the composition
of the National Curriculum Council, or its Chair-will be changed; all these
things have happened several times already.
Over the past decade or so it has become inevitable that papers by
English educators have been peppered with references to reports, directives, and populist criticisms arising from government pressure in one form
or another. Increasing centralization has been such that even a range of