The national curriculum is to include the arts some time after 2011 when English, mathematics, the sciences and history have been established as its core. The arts will be added in the second stage along with geography and languages. If, as seems likely, the National Curriculum Board seeks some overarching conception that can embrace Music, Dance, Drama, and Visual Arts, that conception might prove to be a Procrustean bed for all. Visual Arts, for example, could not easily be accommodated under a schema that would suit a subject such as Music. More than this, however, I want to argue that…