Environmental Aesthetics and the Dilemma of Aesthetic Education

The clean up the environment movement is, of course, that movement which urges us to clean up our natural environment in regard to the junk, litter, and debris which presently clutter it. It is clearly an important movement with far-reaching consequences. In recent years it has expressed itself in numerous ways in our society; for example, in extensive anti-litter campaigns in the media, in the call for recycling of common litter articles such as cans, bottles, and paper, and in social pressure and legislation concerning billboards, junk yards, and strip mines. However, perhaps the best publicized and most successful development of the general movement has been the call to beautify our roads and highways.' For this reason in discussing this movement I utilize the campaign to clean up our roadways as my main example. It should be kept in mind that the issues under discussion are equally relevant to many of the other directions which this environmental movement has taken.