Art as the core of humanistic education

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to show why the debate about the worth of art as a core of humanistic education is today more important than ever. In the theoretical part it presents arguments about the intrinsic value of artistic experience and its most important structural elements for personal fulfilment (like imagination, narration, and metaphor), for personal self fulfilment and for basic post-modern ethical criteria. In the second part it presents some practical examples of educational work with preschool children and students of pedagogy that were developed during a Commenius project “European Multiple Choice Identity” and Slovene project “Cultural enrichment of children-The development of children’s identity in space and time through different artistic activities”.