Art and education
Art and education
Young children are endowed the gift of seeing the world about them intuitively, with an innocent freshness as yet unaffected bv the rational dictates of experience. One of the chief concerns of any mode of education must therefore be to retain as much as possible this natural awareness in the child and yet provide a method of training that will truly educate.
The purpose of education is not only, in the famous words of Franz Cizek :"to let the children grow, develop and mature."It has also to be a mode of initiation so that each person may be as well equipped as possible for living his own life and for contributing to the good life of others and of the community.
It is in this respect that education by means of the arts is so valuable because it fosters the whole development of the personality, uniting intellectual activity with physical skills, but fusing them in a creative process that is in itself among the most precious attributes of man.