Aesthetic Distance and the Spiritual Journey: Educating for spiritually and morally significant experiences across the art and literature curriculum

A central thesis of this paper is that the aesthetic travelled by learners, when they respond aesthetically to literary and visual works of art, can be the territory across which spiritual journeys are made. Examples are, therefore, given of literary and visual works of art that can provide such spiritually significant distance. The potential for children's everyday experiences, in literature and art lessons, to be of spiritual and moral worth is examined with reference to the role of the teacher, teaching methods, language and subject ideology. The complexity of the relation between the spiritual and the aesthetic is itself explored.