Day 2 -Curriculum

Since my major was art history, Freedman’s “Finding Meaning in Aesthetics” is like a review to me to some extent, and let me think more about these aesthetic theories from art educational standpoint. I talked about the famous statement in China about aesthetic education last semester: “Aesthetic education on behalf of religion.” So I totally agree with Dewey’s idea that “students were to get an aesthetic education, not merely an art education” (Freedman, 40) I think art as inherently educational, is to be infused in curriculum so that all subjects areas are influenced by it such as imagination, emotion, moral and social issues. As a big fan of Kant, I found Freedman ignored some important points of Kant’s aesthetic theory. Kant thinks the aesthetic experience is similar with the moral experience. The idea that aesthetic judgment plays a role in grounding the possibility of morality for human beings is suggested at a very general level in the Introduction to the “Critique of Judgment”, where Kant describes the faculty of judgment as bridging “the great gulf” between the concept of nature and that of freedom (IX, 195). So I think Kant as a continental philosophy, his aesthetic theory also can be interpreted from an educational perspective, and it is still useful and practical at present. (Here, I just want to argue with the Freedman’s statement on page 41).  Whatever, I still agree with the main point of Freedman, “In an increasing body of contemporary theory, meaning is inherent to aesthetic experience, and in contemporary visual culture and aesthetic theory interested interpretation are not only expected, but promoted.” To create an art curriculum to help students study visual culture, I hope they can cross the boundaries and find meaning in different ways.

Eisner gives a good response to Freedman. “Teachers cannot merely transmit information or skills to another, if for no other reason than that student always mediates and hence modifies what is being conveyed.” When it comes to teach aesthetic theories, I think we also cannot just transmit the theories, we should “create an appetite to learn”. We should create the situations that contain tasks and materials that will engage students in meaningful learning, learning that they can apply and that connects with other aspects of the world. And Eisner also showed some skills and strategies to help me know more about how to be a good art teacher. I think the idea “we need to treat teaching as a form of personal research” will be kept in my mind from now on.

Barrett’s two articles are both about the principles of interpreting art in art education. Since the one written in 2000 is a supplement to the 1994, it could be sum up by using the last bold sentence in the first article: “The meaning of an artwork should not be limited to what was intended by the artist. Its meaning might be much broader than even the artist knows.” Through my VTS training, I always find it is a really good and wide entrance for students to talk about art and interpret art. Some images are really controversial, so they might have opposite opinions. But it is art, there’s no one accurate answer as math, if the interpretations are reasonable, convincing and informative, it will be a better interpretation. VTS is a excellent opportunity for every viewer to show their own world view and broaden others at the same time.