National Art Education Association

Guest Editorial: Aesthetic EducationAuthor(s): Ralph A. SmithSource: Art Education, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Mar., 1967), pp. 9-10Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3190959 .

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GUEST EDITORIAIL: AESTHETIC

EDUCATION BY RALPH A. SMITH. The character of this special issue of Art Education derives from certain assumptions about the relation of the discipline known as aesthetics to the problems of teaching and learning in the arts. Knowing whether a given discipline is relevant to a domain of instruction de- pends, of course, on an interpretation of a domain's distinctive purpose structure; and in this respect I think many readers will find Professor D. W. Gotshalk's inter- pretation of the purpose structure of aes- thetic education - the development of sensitivity to aesthetic values - at once pertinent, noncontroversial, and relatively simple. Hence it is a good place to start. [ But perhaps it is not quite so simple as

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it sounds, for what are "aesthetic values?" This question, it turns out, is not easy to answer. As Professor Monroe C. Beardsley points out in his article, what is aesthe- tically relevant depends on theories of aesthetic relevance, and by now there are many such theories. Moreover, there is the related question, raised by both Sir Cyril Burt and Professor Virgil C. Aldrich, of whether aesthetic values are "objective" features of things or merely a percipient's private and personal impressions. Still further, Professor Aldrich asks, in the full light of controversy, whether there is after all such a thing as aesthetic experience and, if there is, if it can be taught. Both Aldrich and Burt believe that it makes sense to speak of aesthetic experience and hold, in addition, that reports of aesthetic perception do not necessarily record a per- cipient's subjective impressions. Rather such reports may contain objective impres- sions of the characteristics of aesthetic objects, which is to say that aesthetic qualities can be intelligently discriminated, talked about, and pointed out to others. Thus, it is held, there are at least two ways of getting into fundamental rapport with the same thing, the physical, observational way, and the aesthetic way. E] But even if we are willing to grant the objectivity of aesthetic experience, there still remains the question of how many persons have the capacity for it and whether it is sub- ject to refinement through training and education. A life time of study prompts Burt to affirm that all persons have some capacity to experience things aesthetically, and in support of this claim he presents what he takes to be the relevant psycho- logical findings as well as their educational corollaries. But we cannot stop here, for there is still the problem of aesthetic judg- ment and evaluation. How do we know when we are confronting significant de- grees of aesthetic value? In short, what are basic criteria for assessing objects in the aesthetic domain? It may come somewhat as a surprise, again because it perhaps sounds too simple, to hear Professor Beardsley hypothesizing that all evaluative statements about an object's aesthetic value can be reduced to statements about (1) its degree of unity or disunity, (2) its degree of complexity or simplicity, or (3) its degree of regional intensity. O We thus arrive at a point where, it seems, we can speak intelligently of the development of sensitivity to aesthetic values, of aesthetic experience, of intelligible standards of aes- thetic judgment, and of the possibility of refining aesthetic sensitivity through sys- tematic instruction. But what does all of this suggest for the professional prepara- tion of aesthetic educators? There will be divergent views about this, but anyone alert to current developments in the arts and the humanities will observe, as Professor Harry S. Broudy does, that new proposals for arts instruction often resemble the kind of humanities course offered in a number

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of college curricula. There is, in addition, a strong trend to institute programs in which a team of art specialists attempt to carry on some kind of interdisciplinary study. Generally, this trend is to be wel- comed. But Professor Broudy is skeptical about the prospects of successfully coor- dinating teams of monospecialists-a task, he says, which would "give pause to a sea- soned impressario, let alone a high school principal" - unless certain measures are taken. Professor Broudy's prescription for the type of person who might successfully organize and supervise interdisciplinary programs in the arts is the monospecialist with a generalizing disposition. Central to the education of such specialists would be instruction in how the language of aesthetics can be used to facilitate com- munication between different kinds of spe- cialists. The hypothesis is that expensive in- terdisciplinary symposia and new schemes in the interrelated arts or humanities are likely to fail if the problem of communica- tion is not solved. L_ Aesthetics, then, is relevant to arts instruction at almost every turn. But, more specifically, what is the meaning of aesthetics? In his historical study, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (New York: MacMillan, 1966), Professor Beardsley states that one of the important achievements of twentieth cen- tury thinking about the arts has been to clarify a distinction between two types of aesthetic problems - an achievement that, in effect, has resulted in two different ways of looking at aesthetics. 0 First is what Beardsley calls scientific aesthetics; and in the words of its most forceful exponent in this century, Thomas Munro, this type of aesthetics "should be broadly experimental and empirical, but not limited to quantita- tive measurement, utilizing the insights of art criticism and philosophy as hypotheses, but deriving objective data from the main sources - the analysis and history of form in the arts, and psychological studies of the production, appreciation, and teaching of the arts." In this issue, Sir Cyril Burt's article has the flavor of psychological, empirical, or scientific aesthetics. 1: Then there is analytical aesthetics. Beardsley himself is one of the most articulate ex- ponents of this type, and he explains its task as "the critical examination of basic concepts and basic assumptions involved in all our [aesthetic] beliefs. The aim is to increase the rationality of those beliefs by clarifying the concepts and testing the reasoning." In this issue the articles by Aldrich and Beardsley exhibit the spirit of analytical aesthetics. (That the efforts of these writers are also fraught with educa- tional corollaries should, I think, be evi- dent.) [ To these two types of aesthetics I would like to add a third, although per-

haps it is not common to do so, and that is what may be called value-oriented aesthe- tics. This type of aesthetics generally begins by taking account of scientific and analytical insights and then goes on to

create a synthesis, the central import of which is a persuasive statement of the ways in which the arts function in the good life. There are many works in this category, but none illustrates better what I mean than Professor Gotshalk's own Art and the Social Order, although other works that come immediately to mind are John Dewey's Art as Experience and Iredell Jen- kin's Art and the Human Enterprise. Ol Finally, there is aesthetic education, which, I think, properly conceived, draws on the content and operations of each of these types of aesthetics - scientific, analytical, value - for assistance in instructing and guiding students into contexts of aesthetic awareness. If there is anything like a body of underlying "theory" or "insights" in aes- thetic education, it derives in part from the disciplines of aesthetics; and insofar as the aesthetic educator thinks and acts like a professional educator, he will have recourse to these insights to solve prob- lems in concrete cases. The person espe- cially qualified to clarify problems of "relevance" to educational practice is, of course, the experienced philosopher of ed- ucation, and in this issue Professor Broudy's article illustrates the educational philoso- pher's concern. E] Here, then, are some good reasons for featuring the term "aesthetic," and for urging something of a new language of teaching and learning in the arts. The expression "aesthetic educa- tion" suggests at once a commitment to a way, the aesthetic way, and the key dis- cipline(s) helpful in promoting aesthetic competence and sensitivity. Aesthetics is not the only discipline relevant to arts instruction, but I hope that the articles in this issue persuade the reader that it is central and should not be ignored. Yet how many programs of teacher education in the arts require general or professional study in aesthetics? No doubt there are some. But if it were a common occurrence, there would be no need for a special issue on the subject.

Ralph A. Smith, who compiled the articles that follow in his capacity as guest editor for this issue, is assistant professor of art and education at the University of Illinois. He is editor of The Journal of Aesthetic Education, and of a book of readings entitled Aesthetics and Criticism in Art Education: Problems in Defining, Explaining, and Evaluating Art (Rand Mc- Nally, 1966). This issue of Art Education was financed in part through funds made available by the Illinois Arts Council and their supporting foundations.

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