Why is education more important than disease?

Summary of the main report of the first 14 annual meeting of New Education.

The National Education Research Institute conducted a questionnaire survey on more than 50,000 undergraduate graduates when making a comparative study of art education in the academic year of 1999-2000 and 2009-20 10. One of the questions is: "What knowledge is most useful?" The result of the answer is quite intriguing. The answer to graduation 1-5 years is "basic skills", the answer to graduation 6- 10 years is "basic principles", and the conclusion to graduation1-15 years is "interpersonal relationship", while graduation1.

This survey is not so much a summary of people's self-growth experience as an increasingly urgent call for art education in this era. So, what is the value and significance of art education in contemporary society?

(1) For individuals, art education is the main driving force for the early development of life and an important way to comprehensively improve their quality and ability.

In particular, art education is of great significance in the early stage of individual life. From the perspective of genetics, children and art are the closest, and every child has an artistic heart. Children are born artists. Every child is born with the spirit of play and artistic mind. The game is the best way to connect children with art, and the study found that the degree of children's play directly determines the quality of their growth. Because through art education, children's playfulness and artistic instinct can be developed, and children can perceive various forms of the world, such as lines, sounds and rhythms. Because of this, some far-sighted educators advocate that art education should become the main theme of school life during the period of 7- 14 years old. Therefore, children without art and games are lonely and unfortunate; Childhood without art and games is bleak. If a child loses his inner artistic instinct, "death" in the sense of human nature will come.

From the whole process of individual growth, art education is the main way to comprehensively improve individual quality and ability.

Art education helps to cultivate people's cognitive ability. People's cognitive ability is the primary and basic ability of people, and it is also the basis for forming other abilities. Intellectual education emphasizes the cognitive ability of logical reason and develops people's left brain. Art education focuses on intuitive and perceptual cognitive ability, and more importantly on developing people's right brain. From the perspective of brain science, art coordinates people's left and right brains, keeping them balanced and promoting each other.

Art education helps to cultivate people's creative ability. Innovation ability is an important content of human ability system, and it is also an important symbol to examine a person's sustainable development. Because artistic thinking is more intuitive, jumping and nonlinear, it will play a key role in any kind of invention and creation. In this sense, when "people turn to art, they enter the laboratory of creative activities". Kant described it this way: "Art is sacred, and it is deeper and deeper than science. The truth it reveals goes beyond the scope of science. " This sentence reveals from one side that artistic creation is original, a process of invention, and a process from scratch.

Art education helps to improve people's aesthetic ability. Marx said, "If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistic person." Rodin, the master of art, said that there is no shortage of beauty in the world, what is lacking is the eyes that find beauty. To cultivate beautiful eyes, art education is essential. Because one of the purposes of art education is aesthetics. Aesthetics is the core implication of the value of art education.

Judging from the formation of aesthetic feeling, art education is of great significance for awakening and shaping children's aesthetic feeling. Every child has an aesthetic potential in his heart, but it depends on whether he can be awakened romantically and whether he can be fully shaped into a higher level of artistic conception and life realm after corresponding precision. Through art education, sowing beautiful seeds in children's hearts can form a spiral experience structure and form enough rich feelings, perceptions and communication skills. Therefore, art education is also the awakening of aesthetic feeling.

Art education stimulates people's aesthetic needs, cultivates people's aesthetic taste and forms people's aesthetic concepts. People will gradually form a certain aesthetic ability by feeling, appreciating, understanding and creating works of art. Once a person becomes an aesthetic person, he can improve his life according to the beautiful style in his daily life.

Art education helps to improve people's psychological adjustment ability. With the accelerating pace of modern life and the increasingly fierce social competition, people's psychology generally has problems such as low tolerance, poor adjustment ability and weak purification ability. The reason why art has the function of psychotherapy is that it directly affects people's emotional world, has the closest relationship with people's body and mind, finds a balance between people's rational and perceptual conflicts, and changes people's life style from materialization and materialization to artistry and aestheticism. This is also the unique spiritual salvation function of art education. In Japan and other countries, using art to treat mental illness has become a new treatment technology. For example, through painting therapy, patients can release themselves and express themselves; Let patients vent their emotions through music therapy; Through drama therapy, patients can return to themselves by means of performance, and the effect is very remarkable, which is widely welcomed by people.

Art education helps to cultivate people's social communication ability. Art education not only enables people to learn to create, but also enables people to learn to cooperate and communicate. In the process of art study, we will use a series of visual, auditory and kinesthetic signals and actions to express our thoughts, opinions and suggestions, which plays an important role in the formation of communication and expression ability. Similarly, participating in the collective learning process of fine arts is the process of improving the ability of learning cooperation and communication, and these qualities are extremely important for students' life now and in the future.

More importantly, art education contributes to the formation of people's personality. Through different forms of art education, children gradually form a shallow sense of balance, space and structure. And will form a harmonious character according to these, constantly nourish the spirit, nourish life and improve human nature. The learning process of art, on the basis of cultivating memory and observation ability, must be accompanied by concentration, perseverance and purpose, which is an indispensable part of forming a complete personality. Its learning process is also a process of promoting the formation of personalized, unique, stable and integrated behavior, thinking and emotion, which undoubtedly plays a decisive role in people's current life, future growth and development, shaping and forming a sound personality and perfect human nature.

(2) For the school, art education is the adhesive of discipline fracture and the stimulant of job burnout.

In school life, art education has a particularly important value. It not only has a significant positive correlation with the study of other disciplines, but also makes school life relaxed and full of vitality.

In recent years, with the development of neurocognitive science, the value of art education has been further explored, and scientists have found that art serves long-term education. If we only pay attention to the test results and the test only pays attention to the knowledge system such as mathematics, art will obviously be at a disadvantage. "If we demand results in a short time, then art can do nothing. The nervous system of artistic development needs long-term accumulation to develop and perfect. However, once the advantages are revealed, they will be omnipotent, from fine motor skills to creativity and even the improvement of emotional balance. "

Scientific research shows that there is a stable positive correlation between adequate art education and performance tests in other disciplines. School-age students who participated in art activities scored significantly higher in the oral memory test than those who did not participate in art activities in the class. According to a study by the University of California, "students who take part in music activities three times a week have an average score of 40% higher in math, reading, history and geography tests than those who do not."

At the same time, art education will also have a positive impact on many other educational factors. According to EricJensen, an American scholar, "Art affects students who usually bring trouble to teachers in unusual ways, which reduces procrastination, truancy and dropout; Art makes the communication between students more friendly, less quarreling and discrimination, less cynicism; Art makes the environment full of discovery and rekindles the love of learning for those students who are tired of being instilled with knowledge; Art provides challenges for students at all levels, from slow development to smart talent, all students can find their own level spontaneously; Art allows learners to integrate into the real world, and cultural products such as drama, music, art and dance are attracting more and more audiences. Art makes students become persistent and self-managed learners, rather than a knowledge warehouse that only obtains facts from high-return exams; Compared with students with high socio-economic status, students with low socio-economic status get as much or even more knowledge from art guidance as they do. "

Why does art education have such amazing effects? We believe that this is first related to the "bonding" function of art. Art discipline (education should not be a discipline) is not only the lubricant of mechanical boring life, but also the adhesive of educational life separated by curriculum. Education should be integrated in essence, but due to the rapid growth of knowledge, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of learning, which has gradually branched out. This division of disciplines itself leads to the dispersion of the whole education. The existence of art education links education life into a harmonious whole, making study life more relaxed and beautiful, and making life not nervous and busy in the process of high-intensity study, but still calm and elegant.

This combination takes place in one day, several days, and every day of study. Just like during the break of a day, whether singing or dancing, this is not only art education, but also a wonderful connection between one class and another; Just like in the study of a course for several days and weeks, at the beginning and end of each course, we use art to present the writing of life in the course, which is also a wonderful connection between one course and another; Holidays between ordinary days, or "own festivals" created according to the needs of schools and classrooms, will polish a festival and illuminate the ordinary days during the period, thus organically connecting one day with another into an educational whole. ...

At the same time, the peak experience formed by high spiritual excitement and concentration will make people ignore physical fatigue, but people are not only spiritual people, but also material people. After high-intensity study, people's bodies will be tired, which will naturally lead to burnout. However, because artistic thinking, another kind of thinking, mainly uses the right brain, and other subjects use the left brain more, therefore, through art education, not only the right brain is exercised, but also the left brain is fully rested, which re-injects passion for the new round of learning.

It is worth noting that the art education we are talking about here not only refers to the education of fine arts disciplines, such as fine arts and music, but also includes the art education implemented by other disciplines, such as mathematics and chemistry. When teachers talk about those magical graphic structures in math class and show those wonderful molecular combinations in chemistry class, children can not only make teaching lively and interesting, but also produce similar effects accordingly.

(3) For families, art education is the poeticization of daily life and the pleasure of moral education.

Family education is a subtle, subtle and all-round education, and it is the most basic and important link of the whole education. However, family education takes daily life as the carrier, and the reality of life not only accumulates the breadth and intensity of education, but also erodes and reduces the depth and height. Due to the special relationship of consanguinity, family education is prone to bias, with more rigidity and less flexibility.

Consciously carrying out art education in the family can first make daily life poetic, soften education, and finally make the existence of family members' lives as the poet Holderlin praised: "Full of achievements, but people live poetically on the earth."

At the same time, if the focus of school education is often the imparting of knowledge, then the education of moral personality is the biggest goal of family education. Art, as the crystallization of rich and beautiful human emotions and intuitive visual wisdom, can directly shock and impact the soul. Moral personality education through art education will avoid preaching and be more agile and enjoyable. In this way, art education can give full play to the advantages and weaknesses of family education, and avoid the disadvantages and weaknesses of family education, thus building a better and stronger educational body for education.

(4) For the society, art education can bridge the crowd cut by different standards and improve the cohesion and innovation of the whole society.

In society, especially in the post-industrial society of urbanization and globalization, the spatial distance between people is getting closer and closer, but the psychological distance is getting farther and farther. Choosing more and more people is increasingly cut by specific standards such as different pursuits, different occupations, different preferences and even different incomes, and becomes more and more isolated individuals.

American scholar Aberley clearly pointed out: "Art education is conducive to the formation of a cohesive society." Art education enables people to understand not only the art itself, but also the social culture, spirit and value behind the art. The culture, spirit and value attached to the art are more likely to be vividly spread and widely recognized, which will inevitably lead people to have the same social culture, spirit, value and discourse, thus forming a strong social cohesion. We may all feel the same way: whenever the magnificent and sad national anthem rings, we are always excited and deeply shocked by the patriotic feelings contained in it. If all citizens know their own art and culture, this society will be more likely to form * * *, citizens' cultural quality and contribution to society will be improved, and social cohesion will be stronger. From this perspective, art education also has the functions of improving national literacy, building a harmonious society and building a spiritual home.

Generally speaking, art always stands at the forefront of every era with the image of innovators and trendsetters. Through art education, we can understand the cultural ideological trend of the society, keep up with the pace of the times, attack the outdated social concepts with the help of the way of artistic thinking and the unique interpretation paradigm of works of art, and comprehensively grasp the essence of things at a deeper level, so as to renew and innovate ideas, rediscover and transform the world with new eyes and new ways, and promote social progress.

Take the once popular TV series "Soldiers Assault" as an example. A TV work with a military theme will only attract the attention of some viewers. However, because this work concisely presents a team spirit of "don't abandon, don't give up" and an individual spirit of self-improvement, it has become a social hot spot for a time and has been widely spread. If our education can be carried out through such works of art, this spirit can be carried forward more deeply, permanently and thoroughly in the whole society.

(5) For the nation, art education is a treasure to inherit the national spirit and a magic weapon to accumulate national culture.

Art and art education have a natural connection with the blood of the nation and its culture. Art and art education enhance a nation's aesthetic taste and cast a nation's cultural soul in the interaction.

Through art education, improve the artistic taste of the audience and urge the creators to create better works; Creators embody the individual spirit, present the thinking of the times, create better works of art, influence people and enhance their artistic taste; The combination of the two, * * * accepts the elutriation of time, and a nation is constantly inheriting and surpassing in this way, allowing itself to constantly innovate and create.

We emphasize that in art education, we should adhere to diversification and nationalization. This seemingly contradictory expression is exactly two inseparable sides of a coin. "Only the national is the world's." For example, Kunqu Opera and Peking Opera, the quintessence of China art, are important carriers of the excellent traditional culture and art education of the Chinese nation. Through this art education of excellent traditional culture, students can fully appreciate the history and culture behind these arts by singing, doing, playing, living and ugliness, so as to enhance their appreciation ability of excellent traditional culture and art. It is in this way that art education invisibly and profoundly shapes the spirit and soul of China people and determines China people's attitude towards life and aesthetic way. Not only have the seeds of China's art been sown in children's hearts, but they have also become "China people" and thus become valuable "world people".

(6) For human beings, art education can help us form the third eye to see the world and give us another key to open the world.

Truth, goodness and beauty shine on mankind like three bright lights. "Truth" refers to inevitable knowledge such as science and truth, and solves the question of "what is it"; "goodness" refers to the inevitable categories such as morality and religious belief, and solves the problem of "how to do it"; "Beauty" refers to art, humanity, emotion, aesthetics and other probable fields, and solves the problem of "how".

If "truth" is the first pole of the world and "goodness" is the second pole, then "beauty" is the roof of the world. If science reveals different worlds in the same language, and morality and religion reveal the same world in the same language, then art reveals different human worlds in different languages. Pursuing truth, goodness and beauty is not only a way for all mankind to realize themselves, but also an effective way for all mankind to pursue truth, goodness and beauty through science, religion and art.

In this sense, art is the third eye for human beings to see the world. Once people learn to look at the world from an artistic perspective, they will naturally look at daily life and self-growth from this perspective, so as to find themselves in the mind, gain spiritual wealth, feel the meaning of life and live calmly in life.

Art is another key to open the world, which is another great value of art. This key can be called artistic thinking.

With the rapid development of science, people's understanding of everything becomes clearer and clearer, and a person learns and masters more and more knowledge in his childhood. This knowledge is basically orderly, accurate and linear, with cause and effect in logic and beginning and end in time. Through the study of this knowledge, children gradually grasp the world rationally, and their thinking is gradually trained into rational thinking.

However, the world is three-dimensional and multi-dimensional; It is both material and spiritual. It is impossible to have a comprehensive understanding of the world only by relying on science and moral religion. If science is an external pursuit, it is to analyze everything with various tools, while art is obviously an internal pursuit, that is, to perceive the world with your own intuition and grasp the world with your own experience. Marx once divided human's mastery of the world into two ways, one is material mastery and the other is spiritual mastery. The former refers to productive labor practice; The latter refers to art and other practices. This way of spiritual mastery is different from that of material mastery. It does not know the world by constructing a scientific knowledge system, but appeals to people's perceptual and intuitive ability to grasp the world. We don't rely on the inevitable logical structure to grasp the world, but rely on perception (that is, eyes with formal beauty and ears with a sense of music) to gain knowledge of the world. Therefore, from the perspective of artistic thinking, the scene presented by the world is sensible, rich, elastic and tense.

In real life, with the one-way development of rational thinking, artistic thinking is often suppressed. Picasso once lamented: "I painted like Raphael when I was very young, but I wanted to paint like a child all my life." Why is this happening? The reason is simple: art is the product of the artist's majestic emotion and the product of the blowout of experience through intuition. This process, for younger children, is more and more a natural state of existence, but for adults, it is a state that needs to break through the shackles to return.

Artistic thinking is like a "chaotic" overpass, which establishes an irrational connection between everything, especially many things that can be deeply perceived but cannot be described, which can be extended in all directions in an instant. Many outstanding scientists at all times and all over the world are often people with artistic accomplishment. For example, Einstein's fascination with music and literature has long been a household name, and Zhu Kezhen, Su, Li Siguang, and Wang also have profound artistic accomplishments. No wonder Dr. Betty Edwards, an American art doctor, called for: "Everyone should think like an artist!"

Undoubtedly, the combination of science and art, internal and external cultivation, keeping pace from the two poles to the middle, and finally integrating and balancing are the most ideal thinking modes, so as to understand the world more completely. Professor Li Zhengdao, a famous physicist and Nobel Prize winner, therefore stressed that "art and science are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated." From 65438 to 0987, Science and Technology Daily published articles about literature and art by nearly 30 famous scientists in China, such as Qian Xuesen, Qian Sanqiang, Qian Weichang and Su, showing that their artistic life greatly enriched their scientific imagination.

In a word, art education plays an irreplaceable role in the process of human development and social progress. Plato even had the view that art should be the basis of education. It can be said that not paying attention to moral education will damage the moral standard of a generation; Ignoring intellectual education will damage the cognitive level of a generation; Not paying attention to sports will damage the health of a generation; Not paying attention to art education has damaged the spiritual world of a generation and the spirit, imagination and creativity of a nation.