The Arts as Confessional Touchstone for Artistic and Aesthetic Learning Experiences

• In Event: 43.009 - Curriculum, Life, Death: Theological Genuflection and Inflections

Abstract

The classroom teacher-confessor is strategically located to facilitate students’ spontaneous confessions through which students empower themselves, co-create artistic and aesthetic learning experiences, learn to live creatively, and create educated selves as ever-evolving works of art. After distinguishing among confession, disclosure, and testimony, I summarize Foucault’s examination of confession positioning it within his theory of subject formation, Greene’s (1984) contention that the arts spur self-empowerment, active participation in living, society, and one’s education, and Dewey’s aesthetics distinguishing between experience vs. an experience and an artistic vs. an aesthetic learning experience. Finally, using two urban classroom episodes around Shakespearean plays, I evidence classroom confessional boxes’ artistic and aesthetic potential.

Author

• Virginia Ann Worley, Oklahoma State University