for the bachelor of arts degree, and this question will be
solely kept in view. Since, however, graduates in science,
engineering, law, medicine, etc., are not exempt from the needs of
artistic culture, they too should have at least an effective minimum
of art instruction.

=Art a social activity=

Art is recognized as a social activity. It enters largely into such
practical and utilitarian problems of the community as town planning
and other forms of civic improvement. As workers in such activities,
college graduates are frequently called to serve on boards of
directors and committees which have such work in charge. To most of
such persons, education in art comes as a post-collegiate activity.
Surely the interests of the community would be promoted if the men and
women into whose hands these interests are committed had had some
formal instruction in art during their college years.

If by practical education we mean training which prepares the
individual for living, then the study of an activity that so pervades
human life should be included in the curriculum of even a so-called
practical college course. Art education has a more important function
than to promote the love of the beautiful, to purify and elevate
public taste, to awaken intellectual and spiritual desires, to create
a permanent means of investing leisure. Important as all these
purposes are, they are merely a part of a larger one--that of
revealing to the student the relationship of art to living.

=Flexibility of art expression determines flexibility of art instruction=

Art expression has the quality of utmost flexibility. This flexibility
appears also in art instruction, and it is for this reason that in no
two institutions of higher learning is the problem of art instruction
attacked in the same way. There is, consequently, a great diversity in
the types of art courses, even in the college.

The flexibility of art instruction is both advantageous and
embarrassing. It is an advantage in that it can be adapted to almost
any requirement. It can be applied to the occupations of the
kindergarten, or it can be made an intensive study suitable for the
graduate school. But this very breadth is also a source of weakness in
that it tends to divert the attention from that precision of purpose
which all formal instruction should have, however elementary or
advanced. It is apt to be too scattering in its aims. It is not easy
to determine exact values either