Aesthetic Education

S. Botticelli, Venus' birth from the sea (detail), 1482

Aesthetic Education

1. Introduction

Beginning 1 September 1976 the Minister of National Education of Belgium added to the curriculum of state Dutch-language general secondary schools a new required three-year course of aesthetic education^*. The course for 16- to 18-years-of-age students amounts to one class hour per week and is a part of the courses offered in the humanities. It was made mandatory because the authorities felt that it would otherwise attract only students whose family background had already led them to take an interest in the arts.

The course has the following major aims as regards students: (1) to awaken their latent aesthetic capacity by making works in the domains of the arts accessible to them; (2) to aid to become engaged in the artistic culture of their own society in terms of an understanding and appreciation of the artistic cultures of other societies and (3) to enable them to grasp the authenticity of creative artistic expression that is not limited to historical antecedents, to widely accepted aesthetic rules and to contemporary stylistic practices.

The term art is understood to include the visual or plastic arts, design architecture, music, dance, photograpy and cinema.

^* cfr. Pergamon Press, LEONARDO, XIII-2. The mandatory course was abolished in 1979 and replaced by 'social education'.

2. Course content and treatment

A. General Comments

The provisonal outline of the course provided by the educational authorities leaves the detailed choice of subject matter to individual teachers, with the following provisos : (1) subject matter must be treated thematically and not in a historically chronological way. During the year, about eight different themes must be covered. A theme may consist of discussions preparatory to visiting a museum or to attending a concert or some other artistic event; (2) themes must be treated in an interdisciplinary manner as regards the various arts and (3) themes must be based principally on artworks of the 20th century during the third year of the course.

The course can be taught by teachers whose special discipline is one of the following : Latin, Greek, a Germanic or a Romance language, history and art history, studio visual art or music. It is evident that the special discipline of a teacher will influence the treatment of a theme and, if the course in a school is given by teachers of different disciplines, the course can be enriched by the presentation of different points of view.

B. Themes for the course

First year-General topic : Observation

(a) Observation influenced by examples of aesthetic experience of the environment

(b) Observation and reality

(c) Elements of observation and perception (form, color, composition)

(d) Viewing point during observation

(e) Observation influenced by knowledge

(f) Observation influenced by the monetary cost of an artwork

(g) Observation influenced by experiencing reproductions of artworks

Second year-General topic : Artists as individuals

(a) Artists who look for inspiration to Greek and Roman antiquities

(b) Artists as dreamers

(c) Artists as entertainers

(d) Artists as critics and moralists