Rethinking Aesthetic Education

Scholars have continuously debated about the importance of aesthetics in art education and of aesthetic education and have posed numerous questions about the possibility of practicing aesthetics in the educational field. Aesthetic education was first introduced in the structured curriculum of Discipline-based Art Education (DBAE). Since DBAE, the significance of aesthetic education has become manifested, and the meaning of aesthetic education has become recognized. However, aesthetic education in DBAE was not fully developed. The primary reasons for this lack of development include an absence of available curriculum for aesthetic education, problems with aesthetic education related to its birth under the influence of modernism, and the complex and ambiguous meanings that the term aesthetics has. Because of these reasons, it is still difficult to define aesthetic education, which has led to the continued confusion about what aesthetic education is and how to teach aesthetics to children. In addition, some scholars insist that the discourse of aesthetics in art education is useless. Therefore, this study suggests that these difficulties and problems come from a narrow understanding and interpretation of the meaning of aesthetic education. Thus, this study attempts to overcome these problems by redefining the meaning of aesthetics by reexamining the term aesthetics from its origin in order to break through the modernist dichotomy between body and mind, emotion and reason, sense and thought, as well as art and life. Based on this investigation, this study emphasizes the importance of aesthetic education and the possibility to practice it in art education.