On Teaching Aesthetics in Secondary Schools and Education for International Understanding

Leonardo. Vol. 12, pp. 54-58. Pergamon Press, 1979. Printed in Great Britain. ON TEACHING AESTHETICS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND EDUCAT10N FOR INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING* Jan L. Broeckx”” I Although I have great pleasure in being allowed to present the General Introduction to this Conference, I started drafting my text with quite some misgivings. Indeed, the theme of this Conference comprises no less than four subjects that aredifficultto penetrate: teaching, aesthetics, education and international understanding. Each of these is capable of various definitions, one of which I shall each time be obliged to choose in order to support my argument. It will then be your task, during the proceedings of this Conference, to determine asto how farmy options should be accepted or rejected, deepened or amended. But I should not confine myself to a merely terminological introduction. I should also try to raise some reasonable points about the possible connections between teaching, aesthetics, education and international understandingno matter what each of these terms may mean. So one should-not without reservations-ask oneself whether aesthetics is really something that may be taught at all, whether education may make use of something so difficult to define as aesthetics and whether international understanding may be guaranteed by any method of edukation whatsoever. What may the mild powers of education do against ideological fanaticism, against political struggle for supremacy and against the selfishnessof the social-economic‘interests’?What standards of education may be applied to vanquish the absurd disputes between peoples, social groups and individuals about aesthetic appreciation, aesthetic styles, aesthetic traditions , aesthetic prejudices and other sacred cows of the aesthetic stock. *This paper was presented at the Conference for Representatives of Unesco Associated Schools on the subject The Teaching of Aesthetics and the Educationfor International Understandingorganizedby PaulMorrenof the Belgian Ministry of NationalEducation and Culture(Dutch SpeakingSection).It was held at the State Institute Klemskerke-de Haan, near Ostend, 1&16 Sept. 1978, with support from Unesco. Those desiring further informationon the Conference should write to Mr. P. Morren, Sec.-Gen., Unesco Conference ‘Aesthetics’, Constitutiestraat 73, B-2000 Antwerp, Belgium. ** Musicologist, Oude Vierschaarstraat 58, 9831 Deurle, Belgium. And wherein will those who ‘teach’ aesthetics find a justification for impressing upon others, as gospel, their own taste, their own stylistic sense, their own traditions and prejudices about aesthetic values. There we have some fundamental questions to which I do not pretend to know the answers-let alone universally valid answers-but which neverthelesshave to be asked and explained. My only purpose in bringing forward this introduction may consequently be to draw up an inventory of the theoretical and practical problems that may crop up with the theme of this Conference. It would be unfair, however, if I should not commit myself at all. That is why I feel obliged to propose a very personal, provisional and hypothetical solution for at least some of the problems I shall evoke-hoping that my proposals may be useful as a starting point for your -discussions. I1 Let me start by saying something about the possible meanings of the concept international understanding, which serves as the ultimate goal of education and the teaching of aesthetics in the theme of this Conference. I know at least two meanings of this concept that I consider extremelydangerous and entirely objectionable. The first is ‘international alliances’-that was the meaning that ‘international understanding’ had in the past and has had to the present day. So I feel obliged to qualify that meaning as ‘historic’ and ‘realistic’. It consists in grouping peoples and nations in order to render every other group of nations and peoples powerless and, if necessary, to destroy them in order to gain world predominance. Apart from catastrophes of war and of economic disorder, this kind of imperialistic international understanding also had baneful consequences in cultural and aesthetic respects. For there also exists something that is called ‘cultural or artistic imperialism’ that is the international understanding of technologically highly developed and ideologically fiercely motivated nations that aim at, and result in, degenerating and destroying the culture and aesthetics of more contemplative and more tolerant societies. So from the 16thcentury onwards, until a few decades ago, Western or Christian culture played havoc with the...