Читать книгу The Art of Foreign Language Teaching - Peter Lutzker - Страница 23

In contrast to his contemporaries in the European reform movements in the first third of the 20^th century, the writings and work of John Dewey (1859–1952) continued to influence different aspects of educational thinking throughout the 20^th century.87 His evaluation of the role of artistic experience in education was highly influential in shaping the ideas of those leading contemporary educators such as Elliot Eisner, Seymour Sarason, Jim Garrison and Howard Gardner who have all developed their own concepts of the nature of artistry in teaching and learning. Dewey’s influence on educational thinking in this respect has also not been limited to the United States.

In his seminal work Art as Experience (1934) Dewey elucidated his understanding of what constitutes the nature of artistry:

An artist, in comparison with his fellows, is one who is not only especially gifted in powers of execution but in unusual sensitivity to the qualities of things. This sensitivity also directs his doings and makings. (…) In an emphatic artistic-aesthetic experience, the relation is so close that it controls simultaneously both the doing and the perception. Such vital intimacy of connection cannot be had if only hand and eye are engaged. When they do not, both of them, act as organs of the whole being, there is but a mechanical sequence of sense and movement, as in walking that is automatic. Hand and eye, when the experience is aesthetic, are but instruments through which the entire live creature, moved and active throughout, operates.88

Within this holistic view of artistic-aesthetic experience, he places a particular emphasis on the role of perception within the changing and dynamic artistic process:

An incredible amount of observation and of the kind of intelligence that is exercised in perception of qualitative relations characterizes creative work in art. (…) The real work of an artist is to build up an experience that is coherent in perception while moving with constant change in its development.89

For Dewey, such artistic activities and processes were not limited to the domains of those working in the fine arts; he considered them to be central to all human experience. He thus argued that viewing artistic and aesthetic realms of experience as existing separately from the everyday realities of people’s lives pointed to a fundamental misunderstanding of their potential relations:

The hostility to association of fine art with normal processes of living is a pathetic, even a tragic, commentary on life as it is ordinarily lived. Only because that life is usually so stunted, aborted, slack, or heavy laden, is the idea entertained that there is some inherent antagonism between the process of normal living and creation and enjoyment of works of aesthetic art.90

In his foreword to the writings of the renowned art teacher Henry Schaefer Simmern, he explains what he views as the guiding principles underlying artistic processes in teaching and learning:

The first of the principles to which I would call attention is the emphasis upon individuality as the creative factor in life’s experiences. (…) This creativity is the meaning of artistic activity – which is manifested not just in what are regarded as the fine arts, but in all forms of life that are not tied down to what is established by custom and convention. In re-creating them in its own way it brings refreshment, growth, and satisfying joy to one who participates.

Accompanying this principle, or rather inseparable from it, is the evidence that artistic activity is an undivided union of factors which, when separated, are called physical, emotional, intellectual, and practical – these last in the sense of doing and making.91

In many respects, Dewey’s understanding of the nature and significance of artistic experience can be considered the keystone of his educational writings.92 He continually drew parallels between teaching and artistic expression. At the same time, he makes clear that this concept of teaching also requires a fully new understanding and vision of education than that which was prevalent in his times:

It is by way of communication that art becomes the incomparable organ of instruction, but the way is so remote from that usually associated with the idea of education, it is a way that lifts art so far above what we are accustomed to think of as instruction, that we are repelled by any suggestion of teaching and learning in connection with art. But our revolt is in fact a reflection upon education that proceeds by methods so literal as to exclude the imagination and one not touching the desires and emotions of men.93

Of particular relevance in regard to his view of teaching was the emphasis which he placed on the development of the imaginative faculties of pupils and teachers. Developing empathetic and imaginative capabilities through artistic experience is seen as a decisive mode of learning. This is equally true for teacher and pupil. Such experiences have their most profound effects, not in the visible results of a particular activity, but in their long-term transformative and motivational consequences. At the end of Art and Experience Dewey writes,

Imagination is the chief instrument of the good. It is more or less a commonplace to say that a person’s ideas and treatment of his fellows are dependent upon his power to put himself imaginatively in their place. But the primacy of the imagination extends far beyond the scope of direct personal relations. (…) While perception of the union of the possible with the actual in a work of art is itself a great good, the good does not terminate with the immediate and particular occasion in which it is had. The union that is presented in perception persists in the remaking of impulsion and thought. The first intimations of wide and large redirections of desire and purpose are of necessity imaginative.94

Not only have Dewey’s ideas regarding art and experience had a significant influence on the thinking of a number of later educators, but his attempts to develop an educational science based on using scientific methods in an artistic manner also demonstrated the first pragmatic possibilities of mediating between what had been perceived as irrevocable polarities of thinking.95