Let's talk about three issues of adolescent aesthetic education

■ Ye Xiaogang

On the issue of adolescent aesthetic education, I would like to say three of them that I think are more important.

First, what is aesthetic education

To understand this problem, it is necessary to understand it in two different cultures.

From the perspective of Western culture, aesthetics is a word created by the German philosopher Baumgarten, which uses Latin roots, and the original meaning is the sensibility relative to reason. The scope of perceptuality is very broad, such as emotions, emotions and other psychological reflections produced by the physical elements of external existence received by human senses (mainly auditory and visual senses). This beauty can bring people a happy emotional experience, but also can bring people an emotional experience of disgust, nausea, disgust, and pain. The word aesthetic education was further coined by the German literary scholar Schiller based on the aesthetics of Baumgarten. The scientific rational ideas of the Enlightenment, as well as the first industrial revolution, restructured people's social lives. A large number of social people represented by workers have become a tool on the industrial assembly line, making people become a recurring gray, uninteresting life that lives to earn money for work. In response to this social shortcoming, Schiller proposed aesthetic education, hoping to make people regain a humane and sensual life, so that people's lives will be more dignified and happy. Therefore, aesthetic education is proposed to make people reconnect with human nature. Simply put, it is to make people live as people, not tools. But that alone is not enough; in Schiller's view, beauty is the manifestation of freedom. People have three kinds of impulses: the emotional impulse, the rational impulse, and the game impulse. The game impulse connects the first two. This kind of game is aimed at the creation and experience of beauty, which can actually be narrowly understood as the creation and aesthetic practice of art. There is also a word in Spanish culture that is directly related to beauty or aesthetic education, this word is Beauty, which translates to Chinese is beauty. The connotation of beauty is mainly that the form of external things meets people's psychological expectations, and achieves the perfection of the form, so that people have a positive emotional reflection. For example, beautiful pictures, beautiful landscapes, beautiful campuses, etc. This kind of beauty cannot be taught, but can only be experienced. Of course, the judgment of beauty is based on evidence, but it is not the human consciousness, but the human unconscious. These include the collective unconscious of culture and the accumulation of human perceptual experiences. This kind of beauty has an important influence on the development of art, such as Winkelmann's evaluation of ancient Greek human sculpture as having "quiet greatness, sublime simplicity", because their cultural consciousness regards the healthy typical human body as a model of beauty. The human body in the sculpture not only conforms to the material nature of the person, but also reflects the ideal model, so the human body and limbs in the sculpture are in line with the ideal proportion of the golden ratio. Including the golden ratio, harmony and unity, and even symmetry, they are all the beauty of their culture. This kind of conflict theory and trinity proposed in Aristotle's theory of drama, such as the principle of representation and contrast in the structure of Western classical music, are actually the embodiment of the consciousness of potential beauty in this culture in art.

Let's look at it from the traditional Chinese culture, the American character is composed of two parts, the upper part is the sheep, and the lower part is the large, which is the meaning of the word. It can be seen that in the cognition of the Chinese ancestors, the feeling of being able to eat fat lamb is beauty. Therefore, Chinese talking about beauty is also accessible and sensual, but it is more in-depth, and even the sense of taste is included. In contrast, westerners say that beauty attaches importance to perception, and has nothing to do with the direct satisfaction of people's physical desires, they emphasize the beauty of form (such as beauty with beauty, and delicious with another word delicious); Chinese talk about beauty more broadly, including people's various sensations (unified five senses: hearing, seeing, skin, taste, smelling), there are wonderful, delicious, beautiful and other words, but the "beauty" feeling is consistent, is upward, positive, can bring people a positive emotional response. Of course, the Chinese nation also attaches great importance to form and external beauty, Chinese Hua, is the meaning of flowers, flowers represent beauty, so there are Chinese clothes, Chinese lamps, gorgeous and other words. Although there is no name for "aesthetic education" in traditional Chinese culture, it has the reality of aesthetic education and has deeply affected the character of the traditional Chinese nation. This is actually the poetry and book liturgical education in the pre-Qin period. These different titles of education belong to the traditional Chinese aesthetic education, its connotation is basically the same, such as music teaching, poetry and dance, etc. integrated, is a comprehensive art education: "more than three generations of books, there is no need to learn outside the music" (Yu Zhengxie), it is basically equivalent to the current advocacy of the comprehensive aesthetic education of disciplines or the integration of five education aesthetic education; "musicians, ethicists also" ("Li Ji Leji"), it is moral character education, personality education; in the "Shang Shu ShunDian", the emperor's life is a classic music, to teach the guanzi, it is still for the whole education, Aren't these consistent with the socialist aesthetic education goals and practical principles of our new era? It can be seen that the ancient Chinese people had "aesthetic education" and attached great importance to it, and it can even be said that it was once the most core way of cultivating talents, that is, "creating a soldier with music".

Through the above retrospective comparison of Chinese and Western aesthetic education, we can come to the following conclusion: 1. Aesthetic education is an education that connects sensibilities to human nature. 2. Aesthetic education through art is the main way of practice. 3. Aesthetic education is an education that is indiscriminately oriented to all people. At the same time, we can also find the difference between Chinese and Western aesthetic education, such as Western aesthetic education that pays attention to the education of form itself, and traditional Chinese aesthetic education is an education that pays attention to the content of art (especially pays attention to morality and ethics). This distinction just connects the aesthetic education of art and the humanistic education of art, and provides an important historical experience reference for the practice of aesthetic education in schools in the new era.

Second, the three principles of aesthetic education practice in schools in the new era

First, the principle of totality. That is to say, the implementation of aesthetic education should be oriented to the whole, and this whole is first of all the students, followed by the teachers. Because aesthetic education is an education of perceptual literacy, it complements people's rational qualities, and carries the progress, growth and value of people's lives for the two wings of birds and the two wheels of the car. Therefore, aesthetic education must also be oriented to the whole. Otherwise, the education of the school is an incomplete education, and the cultivation may be a one-sided or partial personality. As a model, the teacher's own every move may subtly affect the students, so the school aesthetic education should correct the lack of aesthetic education in the past, and the teacher should also make up for the aesthetic education and accept re-education.

Second, the principle of emotionality. That is, the focus of aesthetic education should be placed on stimulating emotions and emotional reflection. Because the essence of aesthetic education is perceptual education, perceptual occurrence or direct psychological reflection is emotion. Emotion is also the only channel for achieving the function of aesthetic education. Specifically, for man to be virtuous, he must first have moral feelings, which arise from compassion and empathy in the face of the difficulties of others, and it is precisely because of empathy that people will naturally extend their helping hands and do altruistic acts of kindness. Speaking of learning, "those who know are not as good as those who are good, and those who are good are not as good as those who are happy" (Analects of Yongye), we can hardly see those who are immersed in the joy of learning but cannot learn well

person. Therefore, aesthetic education should not be limited to art education, but should emphasize the intervention of aesthetic education in all disciplines. If this is achieved, it will be a great success for school education in the new era of China. For art education, I often hear the saying, "Students like music and don't like music classes; they like art, but they don't like art classes", which is a huge failure and great sadness of aesthetic education. Therefore, art education must stimulate students' emotions and let their hearts swim in art, which is the real meaning of aesthetic education. Of course, just doing this may not be able to achieve the purpose of aesthetic education in the new era, so it is also necessary to clarify the formal meaning in art through the reflection, comment and debate of aesthetic emotions, and finally realize the simultaneous improvement of aesthetic and humanistic qualities, and realize the simultaneous advancement of tree people and Lide.

Third, the principle of integration. That is, humanistic knowledge and moral concepts should be integrated into the teaching of art aesthetic education, or aesthetic education methods should be integrated into the teaching of non-art disciplines. In this regard, we have already elaborated that the reason why traditional Chinese aesthetic education can "create people with music" is that it uses rituals and music, that it integrates humanistic knowledge and ethics into art, and that its value orientation is "virtue is up, art is down", simply put, the art aesthetic education of people's culture in the new era is education with art education as a means rather than an end.

Third, three suggestions for the practice of aesthetic education for adolescents

First, select classics to carry out artistic aesthetic education. The improvement of students' artistic aesthetic ability is inseparable from the accumulation of artistic aesthetic experience and the accumulation of artistic aesthetic emotions. In the history of the development of human art, only classic works of art have become masterpieces in the annals of history because they embody the spirit of the times, embody the universal values of cross-culture and cross-era, and embody the perfection and typicality of artistic creation. The ability to experience and understand the classics can establish aesthetic standards that people are high. Especially in the current era of information explosion, network and social chaos in literature and art, if you cannot establish high artistic aesthetic standards and noble artistic aesthetic tastes, it is easy to make people confused, lose aesthetic judgment and discernment, and become followers of low-level tastes. At present, there are some unhealthy and excessively entertaining literary and artistic phenomena in society, and this phenomenon should be highly valued. When I asked for responsibility, I think it is difficult to blame for the lack of basic aesthetic education for adolescents and children. Now we are in the postmodern consumer society, network society, big data computing can accurately grasp the audience's aesthetic consumption trends, if you can not put the good school basic aesthetic education this pass, with classic art to establish a healthy aesthetic orientation of adolescents, which will seriously affect the development of Chinese literature and art and even the future of Chinese civilization.

Second, carry out artistic aesthetic education in close proximity to reality. In traditional Chinese culture, music is the medicine of the soul, we look at the "medicine" written by the ancient Chinese, is a music under the grass word, grass represents our traditional Chinese medicine materials from grass and trees, and music is general and happy, its intention and understanding are self-evident. We know that people can't take medicine casually, otherwise it will be harmful to health. The same is true for carrying out school art aesthetic education work, therefore, I believe that our primary and secondary school aesthetic education teaching materials and syllabus can only be a basic teaching follow-up, in terms of specific teaching content, teaching methods, etc., to be targeted and close to reality. In fact, according to the different levels of psychological growth of adolescents and children, according to the problems existing in the general and typical character education of real students, we should select some classic works of art to carry out aesthetic education in a targeted manner. Roughly speaking, young children, weak aesthetic judgment, strong aesthetic receptivity, to give full play to the advantages to avoid disadvantages, widely carry out a variety of human classical art aesthetic education, edify children's aesthetic psychology, enhance their aesthetic receptivity. For older children or adolescents, it is necessary to gradually rise from perceptual aesthetics to the synthesis of rational aesthetics, that is, to carry out artistic aesthetic reflection education, so that they can not only feel emotions from art, but also feel interest, feel moral ethics, values, humanistic history, and so on. There is no middle school in ancient Chinese education, but there are primary schools and universities, respectively, there is a distinction between "Xi Xiaoyi" and "Xi Dayi", although its education is not as systematic and complete as aesthetic education in contemporary society, but it is obvious that it has achieved an object-specific distinction in aesthetic education, which is worth learning from our aesthetic education work in the new era.

Third, creatively carry out artistic aesthetic education. At present, school aesthetic education in the new era belongs to the stage of reform and development, the existing aesthetic education outline, aesthetic education teaching materials, aesthetic education evaluation and other systems need to be improved, the new system needs to be built on the basis of a large number of effective experience accumulation and research and statistical analysis, at this time, the youth aesthetic education work can no longer engage in dogmatism, originalism, need to have a sense of innovation, should be creative work. In addition, earlier we discussed that the Chinese and Western aesthetic education traditions all pay attention to art education, but there is a big difference, Western art education pays attention to sensibility and art form education, so their artistic creation is especially relatively developed in terms of stylized innovation and development, while ancient Chinese art education pays attention to function and pays attention to the connotation education behind the form, so it can connect human nature to reach humanities and character education, and aesthetic education in the new era combines the strengths of both, so it is proposed to enhance students' artistic and humanistic qualities. Specifically in the work of aesthetic education, how to practice, this needs to be creatively carried out. For example, since the founding of New China, traditional art education has been borrowed from the West, but for all young children, although everyone is an artist, the talent and expertise of art are different, how can we develop expertise and improve students' comprehensive artistic literacy? Now some children and teenagers are self-centered, and in the long run, even if these people become talented, they may be exquisite egoists. In my opinion, schools with such a situation can creatively carry out musical and drama education, establish a class drama club, let the whole class participate in the artistic practice of drama creation, rehearsal, performance, evaluation, etc., and students can exert their own expertise, under the guidance of teachers, or participate in planning, or participate in script writing, or participate in character costumes, props, stage art design and creation, or participate in song and dance performances, through collaboration, and finally present the completion of the play and aesthetic education on the stage. Because to do this work well, it is necessary to work together collectively, which naturally strengthens the communication and cooperation between students and slowly establishes a sense of teamwork. Of course, this is just an isolated case, and many innovative aesthetic education teachings need to be explored by teachers and students. This effective accumulation of experience is deep enough, and the school aesthetic education system in the new era will be established. Therefore, aesthetic education is practiced, and only creative practice can promote the construction and development of aesthetic education in the new era.

(The author is the vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the chairman of the China Music Association, and this article is excerpted from the author's speech at the "Seminar on the Development and Promotion of Youth Cultural Literacy Project" held by the China Literature and Art Foundation)