Questioning the role of art in Waldorf and English Canadian mainstream education.
Date
1997
Authors
Keppie, Margaret Buie.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dalhousie University
Abstract
Description
Faced with rising violence, decreasing achievement levels, financial cut-backs, and increasing cultural diversity, today's educators may well assume that art has little significance for education when compared with such pressing issues. Indeed, the educational function of the arts has not been well established in public education in English Canada for more than a century. In this thesis I juxtapose this situation with the contrasting one evident in Waldorf schools, which form part of an alternative educational movement introduced into Canada in 1968. Founded in Germany in 1919 following the educational principles of social philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf schools promote social responsibility, cognitive development, community building, and unity in diversity through a curricular and pedagogical approach in which artistic activity is central to the whole educational process.
The juxtaposition of an educational system in which art is widely understood to be of peripheral significance, and an educational movement in which art is central, creates an opportunity for comparative analysis along lines suggested by the work of scientist/artist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), among others. In such analysis, differing cases are placed side by side so as to shed light on each other.
My thesis is that art plays a fundamental role in mediating between knowing and doing. Without such mediation, thinking develops which is skillfully calculating but lacking in compassionate morality, while at the same time, activity too often becomes violent and aggressive, or alternatively, apathetic, when unmediated by a caring attitude. Thus thinking and doing both require mediation through one's emotional and feeling life if they are to come into healthy balance, such that people become more thoughtfully active, and more actively thoughtful, in all their lives. Artistic activity schools such mediation, and therefore can be understood to play a crucial role in education.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1997.
The juxtaposition of an educational system in which art is widely understood to be of peripheral significance, and an educational movement in which art is central, creates an opportunity for comparative analysis along lines suggested by the work of scientist/artist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), among others. In such analysis, differing cases are placed side by side so as to shed light on each other.
My thesis is that art plays a fundamental role in mediating between knowing and doing. Without such mediation, thinking develops which is skillfully calculating but lacking in compassionate morality, while at the same time, activity too often becomes violent and aggressive, or alternatively, apathetic, when unmediated by a caring attitude. Thus thinking and doing both require mediation through one's emotional and feeling life if they are to come into healthy balance, such that people become more thoughtfully active, and more actively thoughtful, in all their lives. Artistic activity schools such mediation, and therefore can be understood to play a crucial role in education.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1997.
Keywords
Education, Art., Education, Philosophy of.