Nurturing a "Beautiful Mind" for Teenagers

People's Daily - People's Daily

The "Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening and Improving school aesthetic education in the new era" was issued a few days ago, and the systematic design and comprehensive deployment of strengthening and improving school aesthetic education in the new era were carried out, and the Ministry of Education specially organized a press conference to interpret the document. At the press conference, a sentence by Fan Di'an, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and chairman of the China Artists Association, attracted people's deep thoughts: Aesthetic education is not only a lesson and an activity, but also an all-round and whole-process education for the comprehensive cultivation of students' ideological quality, humanistic accomplishment, aesthetic ability and spiritual realm, and is an indispensable "nutrition base" for students' all-round development.

Beauty is an important source of pure morality and rich spirit. Aesthetic education is not only a lesson and an activity, but also an aesthetic education, sentiment education and spiritual education that shapes a beautiful mind and benefits students for a lifetime.

In recent years, the importance of aesthetic education in improving aesthetic literacy, cultivating sentiment, warming the soul, and stimulating the vitality of innovation and creation has gradually been recognized and valued. More and more people realize that without the education of beauty, it is difficult to have a complete education. In the appreciation of art, the appreciation of classics, and the discovery of beauty, aesthetic education is to warm children's eyes and enrich children's hearts with beauty.

With the efforts of all parties, aesthetic education has achieved leapfrog development. However, we still have to see that in the face of the new situation, new goals and new requirements, aesthetic education is still relatively weak, which is not compatible with accelerating the construction of an education system for the comprehensive cultivation of morality, intellectual, physical and aesthetic work, and is not compatible with meeting the expectations of the majority of students for high-quality and rich aesthetic education resources. In particular, while various types of off-campus art training institutions are flourishing, there are also utilitarian orientations and profit-driven to varying degrees.

Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to deepen the reform of aesthetic education and strengthen the construction of aesthetic education courses in schools by opening up all the aesthetic education classes, building a teaching model centered on the development of students, and popularizing aesthetic education practice activities for everyone. On the other hand, we must be vigilant against the current phenomenon of substituting technology for art, emphasizing test-taking and light literacy, abandoning the utilitarian aesthetic education tendency, protecting children's imagination and creativity, and ensuring that every child can accept aesthetic education that benefits a lifetime.

It is expected that a good aesthetic education environment will be further created and a scientific consensus on aesthetic education will be further reached, so as to cultivate a "beautiful soul" for young people and cast a soul for the country and the nation.

People's Daily ( 08 November 2020 06 edition)