This article explores the challenges to art education in the twenty-first century as art curricula around the world begin to change so as to meet the new emergent technological realities. It is argued that within a "control" society like ours, where the economic system of capitalism dictates the direction of education along with its accompanying neoliberalist philosophy of the self, art educators are faced deciding how to cope and incorporate the new media technologies into their art programmes. I try to argue that this direction should recognise the "affective turn" within media and grasp the different orientations when it comes to collaboration. In the final part of the article I provide a number of artistic exemplars that illustrate the direction art education should follow, given the dire state of the world in an era that will be called the Anthropocene.