Greene, M.

- DEFINING AESTHETIC EDUCATION

PART I
aesthetics – particular field in philosophy about perception, sensation,
imagination and how they relate to knowing, understanding and feeling
about the world
- kinds of experiences associated with – reflective and conscious encounters
with the arts
- focus on way in which work of art can become an object of experience –
effect it has on altering perspectives on nature, human beings and moment to
moment existence
- adjective used to describe or single out mode of experience brought into
being by encounters with works of art

education – process of enabling persons to become different to enter

multiple provinces of meaning that create perspectives on works

to enter provinces, learner must break taken-for-granted aka natural attitude

and look through lenses of various ways of knowing, seeing and feeling in
conscious endeavor to impose different orders upon experience

aesthetic education – intentional undertaking designed to nurture

appreciative, reflective, cultural, participatory engagements with arts by
enabling learners to notice what is there to be noticed, lend works of art to
their lives in such a way they achieve them variously meaningful

when this happens - new connections are made in experience

new patterns are formed
new vistas are opened

art education focuses upon exploration of different media

- allows for many modes of expression, modes of learning a craft, ways of
leaving an imprint on world

teachers explore patterns, rhythms, effort shape, tonalities to such extent that
when they attend performances they can attend not only cognitively and
according to rule but with theirs emotions, nervous system, body-minds
brought new and in startling relation to the world

NOTES ON AESTHETIC EDUCATION – Initiation New Ways Seeing,

Hearing, Feeling and Moving
Education – unexplored possibilities and openings
- Signifies initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, moving
- Signifies nurture of special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness,
reaching out for meanings and learning to learn

Aesthetic education – integral to development of persons – to their

cognitive, perceptive, emotional and imaginative development
- Part of human effort to seek greater coherence in world
- Effort to move individuals to seek grounding for themselves so they
can break through cotton wool of dailyness and passivity and boredom and
come awake to colored, sounding, problematic world

Make possible living of lyrical movements – moments at which human

beings suddenly understand their own lives in relation to all that surrounds

How aesthetic education leads to discovery of new vistas, to bring of

severed parts together and making things whole – education for more
discriminating appreciation and understanding of several arts

Concerns:
1) find ways of developing more sensibility and awareness in our students

how to bring this about – initiate them into what it feels like to live in music,
move over and about in a painting, travel round and in between masses of
sculpture or dwell in a poem

starting point – ability to feel from inside what arts are like and how they
mean

kinds of qualities that distinguish each of languages of art:

time
color
sobriety
texture
contour
volume
light and shade
rhythm
beat
understanding can only be enriched when we work with raw materials of
music, dance, drama
medium of sound
medium of body in motion
medium of language or gesture or movement in space

art world – works of art exist in their own space apart from mundance,
routinized and everyday life

aesthetic space

significance of distancing and uncoupling

what is involved as we move from attending to work in integrity to moments

of presence, of felt relation to work when we allow imagination to play on
what is perceived
when we incarnate it and make it ours

work may infuse our consciousness, bring new and unexpected patternings
into reflected on experience, offer new vintage points in world

closing of gaps
making of patterns
effecting on connections – only we can make patterns and connections

making of patterns/connections identical with creation of meanings or

making of creations

sense-making process – what we want to learn to communication to those

we teach

MULTIPLE VISIONS – AESTHETIC MOMENTS AND EXPERIENCES

Aesthetic moment – living through lyrical moments of our own as we do so

- Experiencing works in particular way

Certain kinds of objects/events are suited for aesthetic regard

Made by living persons for living persons
Offer us visions if we are willing to open our lives to them, to attend

Appearing world – shaped, colored, sounding world through which we move

day to day, as we live, and which we pay heed

Perceiving – the beginning or ground

perception involves direct apprehension of complex totality as it is given and presented to

our viewing/listening consciousness

perceiving - active probing of wholes as they become visible

- involved sense of something still to be seen
- mental/imaginative participation
- consciousness of work as something there to be achieved

objects or events taken on aesthetic existence only in transaction with human

consciousness

aesthetic space - space determined by intensities of values of colors and sounds and
shapes of which we may have become suddenly aware

aesthetic qualities - perceptible attributes of actual objects and events

- attributes that are made to appear interesting and significant when they are allowed to
exist in an aesthetic space

works of art do not reveal themselves automatically, they have to be achieved

achieved by those who know how to notice and how to accurately perceive

vivid present - inner and outer time are unified

IMAGINATION TRANSMUTES (names) & ANTIC FABLES

antic fables - by Theseus in Shakepeare's Midsummer Night's Dream

- direct and indirect way of talking about arts

intraquality - what it is that permits us to find fresh significance in our being in the world

art-making - creativity

appropriateness of specific vocabs when talking about art and non-art and degree of
craftsmanship and care and discipline required for making and interpreting art forms

relevance of aesthetic education - encourage and must encourage more exploration of

media under guidance of artists, art teachers
- stimulate making of images, putting together words, notating of songs, editing of film,
shaping of gestures in available space

LEARNING/DEVELOPMENT, TACIT AWARENESS & EMPLOYMENT OF

POSSIBLITY

much of learning comes later

teachers need to become aware of distinctive possibilities and limitations of arts

- make them in any manner accessible to children and young persons if arts are to make a
signal difference in anyone's life

second order - aesthetics mode of Study

- it involves inquiry into or clarification of critical talking and writing
- involves reflection upon personal experiences with several arts

do aesthetics when:
- probe such matters as meaning of aesthetic experience
- distancing or uncoupling
- qualitative perceiving
- imaginative awareness
- aesthetic POV
do all this on grounds of actual experiences in context of sort of critical talk

aesthetic thinking assumptions: underlying our and critics judgment

- nature and place of arts
- beauty, significance, subject matter and form
criticism grounded in certain assumptions of this kind

another reason for interest in provoking - to clarify own notions of what arts can do and
be

1st notice what there was to be noticed

begun to impart aesthetic existence to work

- be present to it
- make it live for us

whatever studying do in arts should feed into our perceiving and enhance attentiveness
with which we address ourselves to particular works

aim to help students become more wide-awake, more aware

approach to teaching art is satisfaction which is simply had

in teaching, find a language that may help students attend

attainment of awareness

critical process - process of making available, this is important

tacit awareness - kinds of knowledge that can be made available and feeds

curriculum:
- want to create classroom situations that release students for live/informed encounters
- make richest sorts of experiences possible
- want choices to be made

awareness
modes of technical mastery -- required if works are to be achieved

aesthetic education - in process

- must be open-mindedness
- sense of explora
- response

do aesthetics - when think about what it means to release ourselves into an art space, an
alternative reality
- when consider challenge of transmitting a given work

aesthetic object - object of our own aesthetic experiencing

- something that offers kind of pleasure
- illuminates a distinctive way that can be cherished
- significance of space in relation to movement
- images and tonal qualities
- connection between meaning/rhythm in spoken lines
- visual metaphors in film

tacit awareness - subsid. kind of knowledge that feeds into facial expressions with art
work