Arts hold an honoured place in every great civilisation, since beauty is a means of enriching our souls with supreme joy. Human beings have an inborn love for beautifying themselves and their surroundings as well as the intense desire to share their feelings and ideas with others.
EVOLUTION OF ARTS
Modern people appeared on earth about forty thousand years ago. Their brain was the same size as ours today and they behaved like the men of the present age. They were even able to make finer tools to help them to hunt. Modern people also had the practice of burying the dead and even painted the walls of the caves where they live. They prepared paint out of powdered charcoal, red and brown rock dust and animal fat. Their paintings were mostly prehistoric animals like bison, horses, rhinoceroses and deer. These animals were meant to stand for spirits or Gods. These types of paintings have been found in caves in many parts of France, Spain, North Africa and Australia. It is quite surprising that some of them are thirty thousand years old.
The primitive hunters who got their victims, the peasants who got better yields and the worriers who won their battles used to express their delight by singing and stepping rhythmically in chorus. These developed into folk forms later which were usually handed down orally as songs, stories, poems and rhymes. It also includes rituals and remedies, weather lore and even superstitions. These kinds of demonstrations developed into the art form of dance and music gradually.
ROLE OF ARTS IN EDUCATION
Civilization or culture indicates generally the sum of all the acquirements at a given time of human intelligence. This culture makes an impact upon the individual and shapes his personality. As the other components of the culture, education consciously attempts to affect the development of each student. As science or any other discipline does, Arts have its own internal structure that gives the process of education a creative momentum. Man is not just a product of his times. He has all important self awareness and a capacity to put history or his own time at a distance and to evaluate it. The child or adult engaged in the creative process imposes his will on the material and shapes an image of the world in his own way. Art-Education should provide the real atmosphere and generate appropriate experiences so as to generate creative attitude and activities.
One of the aims of teaching Arts is individualizing of personality. It helps to develop a gratifying sense of personal identity and a feeling of natural integrity. Arts offer in themselves a quality of intrinsic personal value that permits an individual sense of achievement and expression. Arts aim to integrate the various elements of the cognitive process for better human understanding. Art-Education provides channels of communication and helps the intensification of learning
ART-EDUCATION: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Art-Education has come to occupy a prominent place in school curriculum in recent times. There are psychologic, pedagogic and economic arguments for its teaching. Art is the most generally advocated from of manual work, and has come to be considered as the most fundamental of vocational subjects. Almost all countries have emphasised its value as an aesthetic agent in education. Aristotle included ‘free-hand-drawing’ as one among his subjects of instruction. Great thinkers like Comenius and Locke recommended drawing as a subject for schooling. “Besides drawing in flat, Pestalozzi would have the child study representation in three dimensions through modelling in day.
METHOD ADOPTED IN BRIEF
The existing Art-Education programme in the schools of the state was evaluated in a comprehensive and systematic way. For the purpose of evaluation, the broad area under investigation was divided and set up into five main sections based on its nature. They are:
1. Objectives of Art-Education at secondary level
2. Art-Education curriculum at secondary level
3. Curriculum transaction followed
4. Teacher competence
The data for the study was collected in four phases. In the first phase, the data were collected by thoroughly analysing the documents which are relevant and valid in this connection. In the second phase, the awareness and practice in the present set-up was examined and the data in this respect were collected by administering the questionnaire developed by the investigator for the purpose. In order to ensure the trustworthiness of the data driven, the investigator collected necessary data again by conducting direct observation of the programme of Art-Education going on in schools at secondary level. The observation schedule developed for the purpose was used in this connection. In the fourth phase of data collection, the investigator interviewed the administrators especially the headmasters and educational officers with the help of the schedule developed in this regard.
With this studies AVES has come up with a syllabus for Art education to inculcate creativity in the young. Join our art classes for this great venture.
REFERENCE BOOKS
Major Recommendations of the Secondary Education Commission, Educational Research – An Introduction, A Miscellany in Indian Music, From the Renaissance to Romanticism, History of Education in India, Research in Education, Teaching Effectiveness and Teacher Personality.