The Philosophy of a Creative Arts Educator
Wisdom is the Legacy Left by Harry Broudy 1905-98
Feb 13, 2009
Harry Broudy, according to Liora Bresler, one of the editors of Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present Day [Routledge, 2001], shows through developed argument, how the discipline of arts education consists of a body of knowledge based on expertise and scholarship beyond mere exposure and self expression.
The Important Role of the Arts in Attainment of Self-Realisation
Broudy developed arguments about aesthetic literacy and the acquisition of knowledge about what is beautiful. Although one can refer to a science of aesthetics, it is still a body of knowledge which pertains to, involves, or concerns pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality. The field of aesthetics is relevant to history and culture. It is a philosophical theory or idea about what is aesthetically valid at a given time and place. This example “the clean lines, bare surfaces, and sense of space that bespeak the machine-age aesthetic,” exemplifies the time relevance of aesthetic knowledge. Dictionary.com
Broudy saw education and development of the imagination as essential to the moral and social development of students. He believed that if a student was able to experience life through the eyes of creative artists, he or she would come to
- see the world in such a way as to be able to make informed choice about their place within it.
- be able to think about how they want to experience life as actors within their own world.
Artistic Investigation and Personal Inquiry
Creative modes of artistic expression, he continued, gave students the opportunity to explore personal experience through artistic investigation and personal inquiry. Artistic modes of expression make possible sustained cogitation upon complex issues of life. The education of the imagination means that students can acquire images of art that function as associative and interpretative resources supplying context that broadens and deepens comprehension.
The movement of Social realism for example was “a style of painting, of the 1930s in the U.S., in which the scenes depicted typically convey a message of social or political protest edged with satire.” [Dictionary.com] The way the world is portrayed by this art movement gives students a window to a way of seeing reality that they may never have experienced otherwise.
Broudy claimed that the arts should:
- fill a role similar to the humanities
- teach values,
- enhance beauty
- reduce ugliness and hate
He advocated that to do this they adapt goals of general education rather than specific arts education goals.
Broudy put forward such ideas as
- the use of “exemplars,” or models of clarity, through which the teacher could address aesthetic appreciation.
- the idea of ethical frames of reference, claiming that problems represented in art could make the students think about real life issues and problems
- develop of an ethic sensibility within students, so that science and technology would be controlled by future generations who had acquired educated values
Contribution of Arts Education to Cultural Wisdom
Wisdom, on this account, is development of appreciation and the education of perception of emotions, which develop as personal internal tools within which to form ethical education.
“Serious art” creates images of feeling that students may have hitherto not been a conscious of experiencing.
Through art
- underlying notions can be brought to consciousness.
- the unfamiliar can be approached
- aesthetic experience can be cultivated
- repertoire of feeling can be broadened and differentiated
- values can be developed upon which students can draw
When this happens, aesthetic experience penetrates the educational process, illuminating every mode of experience.
The Legacy of Harry Broudy
On this account, education is not about mere fact recall, which would not be sufficient to serve as appreciation education. Aesthetic education and development of the senses is desirable in a well rounded education as it adds another more intuitive way of approaching problem solving to the curriculum.
Like Elliot Eisner, Broudy wrote mainly on the field of visual arts and music education. He wanted arts education to move from the periphery to the core of schooling. He wanted arts subjects to be described as necessary rather than nice, claiming that imagination cultivated through arts education provided essential support to other functions of the educated minds.
Reference:
Palmer, Joy; Cooper, D. E.; & Bresler, L. (Eds.), Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present Day. UK: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2001.
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