An Examination of the Functions of a General Education Art Curriculum in Universities

Abstract

Both domestic and foreign universities offer arts courses as part of the general education curriculum. This alone reveals the value of arts courses in a university general education. Further, a general education art curriculum has certain functions within a university. In this article, I explore these functions. For this reason, the method of literature analysis is used by the author. First, this article explores the objective of general education in universities. Second, the necessity of arts courses for a general education curriculum in a university is discussed. Third and finally, this article examines the functions of a general education art curriculum in universities. According to the results, the functions are as follows: (1) cultivating the aesthetic subject consciousness of students; (2) cultivating the knowledge and humanity of students; (3) enhancing the aesthetic ability of students, and helping students understand local traditional arts; (4) promoting students' diverse abilities; (5) equipping students with the competence of artistic thinking, including knowledge integration and expression; and (6) cultivating broad worldviews and humanistic caring among students.

Introduction

In the face of the globalization of education, many countries have tried to promote the export of higher education in recent years. Foreign student enrollment is increasing because of measures that attract foreign students, such as the establishment of an excellent learning environment. Thus, to create an excellent learning environment is important. Professional education and general education should also be further developed to create excellent university courses, and develop an excellent learning environment. “General education” is the nation’s largest educational program—the part of the curriculum deliberately designed to prepare all students for life, work, and citizenship by fostering their knowledge of the wider world (science, cultures, art, histories, societies, etc.) and by preparing them to think analytically and artistically, and learn collaboratively. General education is a key to participatory citizenship for students (The Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2015; The Ministry of Education, 2014).

In fact, students should have a broad base of knowledge, independent thinking, art appreciation and problem-solving ability, which are the aims of general education. Since the development of university education is affected by social change and pragmatism, more and more attention has been given to cultivating professionals, while the practice of holistic education is often ignored. As a result, students attain professional ability, but lack humanistic concern. The original emphasis on endowing the “human spirit” is gradually disappearing, making some people deeply anxious. Thus, many scholars and educators have suggested that universities should strengthen the general education curriculum to overcome the current deficiency by effectively cultivating students to think independently, be familiar with the various disciplines of knowledge, and to become broad-minded individuals with broad life competency, including artistic competency (Wu, 2009).

The development of artistic competency is certainly needed for everyone nowadays, and we can cultivate such artistic competency by promoting a general education arts curriculum in universities. Furthermore, in Confucianism, a “perfect personality” must be built through a comprehensive education. Confucius advocated the “six arts” (ritual, music, archery, riding, books, and numbers), which were the six required courses for a gentleman in ancient China. Six-arts teaching is part of a general Chinese education. These “arts” also reveal a great deal about Chinese culture. Nowadays, universities should also implement comprehensive six-arts style general education. Music, one of the “six arts,” can be expanded upon later and is defined as the ability to enhance the beauty of art education. In fact, spiritual development needs knowledge, skills, and competency (Wu, 2012). In terms of competency, in addition to the development of cognitive competency, it also includes the development of artistic competency, which is highly needed for everyone, and artistic competency can enhance people’s capabilities of morality, will, emotion, and aesthetics.

Furthermore, art not only serves as a vehicle for spiritual development and ultimate value exploration, but also reveals the ideal of sound spiritual development and the establishment of ultimate values (Liu, 2012). Art is at the core of civilization’s pulse and enables the structural transformation of society. The content and form of artistic expression is the expression of cognitive emotions. Art curricula aim to develop students’ artistic competencies based on sensory perception abilities, and art is quite an effective media for enhancing students’ aesthetic qualities (Lin JZ, 2012). Therefore, to enhance the aesthetic qualities of students, some general education centers in universities have planned a general education art curriculum series. And what is a general education art curriculum? As far as Harvard University is concerned, a course in the history of art is included in the general education curriculum in 2018 to make students better understand the history of art. It aims to produce practical wisdom, and it asks Harvard students to consider how they will best use their liberal arts and sciences educations, and their lives, in the service of both knowledge and humanity (Harvard University, 2018b). The aim of National Taiwan University’s general education program is to enhance students’ aesthetic tastes (Center for General Education at National Taiwan University (NTU), 2016) by cultivating humanitarian awareness in students and guiding students to appreciate and develop a sense of beauty in life, including an appreciation of music and art (Center for General Education at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), 2016). Universities have certain minimum requirements in each of these general education areas that each student must complete. This represents a kind of “art-oriented general education” at universities. However, if students want to get the most out of education, they must enrich it with additional studies from the many courses offered (Chen, 2010; Western Illinois University, 2015). Based on the above discussion, art courses are available in the general education curricula of some universities. Therefore, we must ask, what are the functions of a general education art curriculum in a university? These questions are the focus of this article. For this reason, the method of literature analysis is used by the author to complete the following aims:

explore the objectives of general education in universities;

explore the necessity of arts courses for a general education curriculum and further highlight the importance of such arts courses;

examine the functions of a general education art curriculum in universities; and

understand what can make some differences to students and what students’ capabilities are improved.

The objective of general education in universities

For the sake of modifying the disorder of our society and the deviation of our education (Hsu, 1998), we need a kind of “holistic education.” Moreover, we need to cultivate students to be a whole person. Therefore, education is important, because it strongly influences personal and social development. Teachers must understand the essence of education and have a high educational awareness to enable students to lead healthy and fulfilling lives (Shih, 2014). And teachers in universities must also understand the essence of “general education” to help university students lead healthy and fulfilling lives.

Generally speaking, “general education” is hard to define (Belknap and Kuhns, 1977). As we know, general education originates from the liberal education of ancient Greece. Liberal education, as it took form among the Greeks, had several aspects. Perhaps the initial aspect to consider is the one revealed by the etymology of the word “liberal.” This word takes its root from the Latin word liber, meaning “free.” There are many conditions of freedom, but the ones to which the Greeks referred in speaking of liberal education were political and economic in character. Liberal education, therefore, was the sort of education that was appropriate for a “free man” or, as later centuries were to say, a “gentleman,” in contrast to the sort that was appropriate for a slave. Obviously, the education of a free man, who was a citizen, voted, held public office and bore arms, would not be the same as that of a slave, who was not a citizen and did none of these things. The education of a free man would be very different; and by living on the work of slaves, he had ample leisure to devote to education, an advantage the slave never possessed.

Furthermore, this early conception of liberal education was well stated by Aristotle (384–322 BC) in Politics,

There is a distinction between the liberal and illiberal subjects, and it is clear that only such knowledge as does not make the learner mechanical should enter into education. By mechanical subjects we must understand all arts and studies that make the body, soul, or intellect of freemen unserviceable for the use and exercise of goodness (Brubacher, 1966).

In fact, the purpose of general education is the development of the human mind, to enhance humanistic qualities. Liberal education is a widely accepted and extolled mode of education in the modern world. It aims to liberalize people from their natural inclination towards self-centeredness in cognition, and from their individual limitations as shaped by conditions such as the narrowness of their scope of learning, or prejudices inherited from particular socio-cultural contexts. The ideal result is the creation of people who can think independently and reasonably, act confidently and responsibly, and interact with other people with consideration and flexibility. Harvard College, an educational institution of international repute that unreservedly promotes liberal education, states succinctly: “Education at Harvard should liberate students to explore, to create, to challenge, and to lead” (Kwok, 2010).

Therefore, liberal education requires students to master a wide range of skills and build up a broad base of knowledge to enable them to cope competently with the complex modern world (Kwok, 2010). The purpose of general education is to provide a generalist and holistic education. The current concept of “general education” in universities is actually from the 19th century. At that time, there were many European and American scholars who did not accept serious academic and knowledge division; therefore, the development of “general education” was intended to cultivate and improve students’ abilities in independent thinking, an understanding of different professional skills, and only then, finally, to develop them into a “holistic person.” So the cultivation of the “holistic person” has always been a topic of concern for general education in universities. It is to be hoped that students can attain a “more perfect” human nature. The strategies for cultivating the holistic person are as follows: show and maintain concern about students’ knowledge integration and moral manifestation; cultivate the students’ human nature; demonstrate concern with students’ life experiences; and promote that a general education is as important as a professional education (Shih, Hsu and Ye, 2018).

In addition, developing independent thinking ability and training “complete” (holistic) people has become important to general education in universities. In 1984, the Ministry of Education (Taiwan) provided the “University General Education Elective Implementation Guidelines.” It requires all universities to provide courses in literature and art, history and culture, the social sciences and philosophy, mathematics and logic, the physical sciences and the life sciences, and applied science and technology as part of their general education subjects (Lin et al., 2013). Moreover, “aesthetic literacy” has to be included in the core of general education.

Furthermore, there are some things no university graduate should be without. These include proficiencies in written and oral communication and mathematics and an appreciation of the whole range of human thought and experience. Through the general education curriculum, students learn to think critically, understand and appreciate multiple perspectives on issues, and improve skills in research and problem solving (Western Illinois University, 2015). General education emphasizes the importance of holistic education and passing on the most valuable elements of the human heritage. The spirit of general education is to cultivate the students' cultural accomplishments, the wisdom of life, analytical ability, communication skills, and the momentum of lifetime learning. As world citizens concerned with humanity, students are not only taught to be knowledgeable but also to be able to understand the meanings of self-existence and respect the values of different cultures (Wang, 2011).

To sum up, general education requirements are grouped into six broad areas: communication skills; natural sciences and mathematics; social sciences; humanities and fine arts; multicultural studies; and human wellbeing. Knowledge of these subjects is the mark of an “educated person” (Western Illinois University, 2015). The “educated person” is the ideal of higher education, and the aim of higher education is to cultivate the elite of society, and make them become future leaders to improve the overall quality of society. The “educated person” is an independent, autonomous person who was called a “free man” in Ancient Greece. However, to develop such talent, professional education alone is absolutely not enough; supplemental general education is needed (Chang, 2012).

University campuses must address students’ interests, daily lives and social development. Furthermore, the campus atmosphere should promote arts and humanities to exert the function of situational enlightenment, and enhance the life experience of beauty for teachers and students. This is the ideal of art courses in a university general education (Lin JZ, 2012). Furthermore, under the vision of general education in universities, the teaching of a general education art curriculum can connect with a variety of different types of knowledge, and thus effectively improve university education. So we can understand the necessity of arts courses for general education curriculum in universities.

The necessity of arts courses for general education curriculum in universities

What is the necessity of arts courses for a general education curriculum in universities? The author explains the reasons as follows.

Art is an important element of the humanities

University general education has launched an urgent effort to make young people live with art rather than just live with knowledge. With the aim of success in general education, we should begin to require more emphasis on humanism and adopt program designs in the study of visual art to stimulate students’ interests in the relationship between real-life and art (Lee, 1996), and cultivate students’ humanity. The program in general education lies at the heart of the intellectually transformative mission of Harvard College and seeks to prepare students for meaningful lives of civic and ethical engagement in an ever-changing world. Courses in the general education curriculum transcend disciplinary limits, challenging students to make intellectual connections across boundaries. They ask students to grapple with complex and fundamental questions to teach students to discern meaning, imagine possibilities, and ask better questions of themselves and of others. General education aims to produce practical wisdom: it asks Harvard students to consider how they will best use their liberal arts and sciences educations, and their lives, in the service of both knowledge and humanity (Harvard University, 2018a).

Humanities education is often considered to be the main component of general education, and art is often considered to be the important element of humanities education. This shows the close relationship between art education and general education, so there are a lot of art courses in general education curricula in universities, such as “History of Art,” “Photography and Beauty,” and “Western Classical Music.” In fact, it is one of the largest areas of the general education curriculum from which students select courses. Students study art courses, not to be an artist, but as a means to improve the humanity of students. We can cultivate the humanities by practicing general art education. Because art is an important element of the humanities (Lin JZ, 2012), we can see the necessity of including art courses in the general education curriculum of universities.

Aesthetic feelings can promote students’ cultural and creative capacities

General education is education of the whole person. This kind of education makes up for the shortcomings of humanity education in a utilitarian society (Tsai, 2012). The humanity education in a utilitarian society ignores the cultivation of aesthetic feelings for students. As such, the education of humanity can be accomplished through the practice of art courses.

In fact, the creations of artists in various forms and mediums, and having their ideas implemented in practice in life, can unfold all kinds of talents and potential. When the meaning of a work of art can produce mutual communication, understanding and interaction, then art is able to walk into the core values of people's livelihood and culture. Moreover, university education should focus on conducting creativity in cultural life. Art offers potential for emotional thinking and diverse creative energy. And, in turn, creative thinking plays an important role in the value and significance of learning. Art appreciation is a kind of interactive, affective engagement with artworks. With interactive aesthetic education, art appreciators and artworks form a close relationship, and enhance the students’ aesthetic feelings. Aesthetic feelings push students’ cultural and creative capacities to the next level (Lin SS, 2012). For these reasons, we can see the necessity of art courses in the general education curriculum of a university.

An examination of the functions of general education art curriculum in universities

Cultivating the aesthetic subject consciousness of students

The purpose of aesthetic study is to gain an aesthetic experience to form a cultural aesthetic subject consciousness (Wang, 2013). This encompasses the continual motivation to support the teaching process, reflecting upon oneself and having positive interaction with students. In terms of the aesthetic subject consciousness, aesthetic behaviors mainly include three aesthetic modes: aesthetic conscious subjects (teachers), aesthetic objects (art works), and aesthetic subjects (students). The aesthetically conscious subjects (teachers) create “art works of curricula” by means of aesthetic intentionality. We can say that once teachers become aesthetically conscious subjects, they put their aesthetic consciousness into educational praxis. Furthermore, students (aesthetic subjects) transform from aesthetic subjects into aesthetically conscious subjects in the learning process as the expression of aesthetic objects is conveyed in their aesthetical values. Subjects can gain perceptions in three different ways:

situation consciousness,

imagination consciousness, and

liberation consciousness.

Individuals, through these ways, can really be liberated and become conscious subjects. In this way, we can cultivate the aesthetic subject consciousness of students (Wang, 2013).

Cultivating students to become individuals with knowledge and humanity

A general education art curriculum does not intend to train students’ professional and technical capacities, but aims to cultivate students’ broad wisdom. The goal is to provide students with good abilities of expression, reasoning and reflection. Further, students attain the ability to “feel” from the art form. As a result, we can develop students’ independent thinking, and furthermore, students can master different forms of knowledge to become an individual with knowledge and humanity (Lin, 2013). To complete the above task, teachers are highly encouraged to play freely with educational imagination in creative and unique ways (Chen, 2010). In advocating for an education that is more holistic and inclusive, one of the ways to accomplish this is to focus on the inclusion of the arts into general education curricula. The art courses “History of Art,” “Photography and Beauty,” and “Western Classical Music” are designed with this in mind for the students at NTNU.

Enhancing the aesthetic ability of students, and helping students understand local traditional arts

In accordance with lifelong learning competences, in particular, the competence relating to cultural awareness and expression (which includes extending personal growth, constructive control of emotion, identity, innovation and creativity, critical thinking, and intercultural communication), arts education serves as a starting point in the co-creation of culturally conscious and aesthetically sensitive individuals (Denac and Čagran, 2012). Furthermore, as far as arts education is concerned, liberal arts education is committed to developing a liberal aesthetic literacy, and enhancing the character of students. The object of education might be a metaphor for the majority of the audience. Back to the individual level, in fact, everyone should have professional competence and general literacy. The difference is that life depends on professional competence to survive, and general literacy is to enrich our life (Wu, 2012). In addition, Liao developed a “community culture” with a theme-based general art knowledge course in which “action learning” serves as a teaching strategy and a way to assess the performance of the course. The results of implementing this course are that the teaching strategies of “action learning” are integrated with art courses; this can encourage students to actually practice and perform art, and enhances the aesthetic ability of students (Liao, 2009).

In addition, art can reflect cultural awareness of the local characteristics involved in life aesthetics. Through arts appreciation, students understand local traditional arts, and discover the beauty of Taiwan’s art (Lin JZ, 2012). This broadens and deepens the perspective of the students and familiarizes them with traditional art and culture (Zhang, 2014). Wang and Wu (2010) designed an integrated curriculum which includes cross-fields and creates a dialogue between the arts and various specialized fields. And finally, researchers attempted to induce students to find out about local ancient or historic buildings, some of which had been built using Western art elements, to learn about diversity of cultures and experience a sense of identification with Taiwan, and enhance the aesthetic ability of students.

Promoting students’ diverse abilities

Art is a special spiritual product that expresses the artist’s unique understanding of life in a perceptual form, as well as the artist’s discovery of the beauty in life, thereby enriching people’s understanding of life and enabling people to enjoy rich aesthetic enjoyment. Art courses can enhance students’ abilities of imagination, creative thinking and problem-solving. Such courses can also enhance students’ development of cognitive, emotional and psychological actions. Art courses can promote students’ communication skills and strengthen students’ reading ability. Moreover, art courses can promote students’ cross-cultural understanding, make students learn aesthetic judgment, and can give students a positive self-concept (Wang and Wu, 2010). According to the above description, art courses can enhance students’ diverse abilities. In Wang and Wu’s study, making some application of creative teaching methods from the arts and humanities domain can be made to problems in general education at the university. They find that art courses can enhance students’ overall abilities of imagination, creative thinking and problem-solving.

For example, Chen and Wang's research explored the practice of aesthetic life in “Art Design & Life” courses. The purpose of this course was to arouse students’ motivation to learn and create, using their previous learning experiences as a starting point. Through nontraditional classroom settings such as charity events, students were able to put into practice what they had learned from the class, enrich their experience in practical aesthetics, and build up an appreciation of art. The course was designed around the practice and creation of art and art product packaging. By donating and marketing art products through charity events, non-art students were able to experience the whole process of creation and design, and understand the various forms of art marketing and difficulties commonly encountered. In doing so, students gained a comprehensive experience of marketing art products and developed the ability to practice art for the greater good of society (Chen and Wang, 2014).

In addition, Lin Hui-Jen published a book Aesthetic World in Piano Music. In this book, Lin illustrated the fine-arts-course's outline and recorded a high-quality CD describing the complete scheme of the course. According to Lin’s arrangement, this lesson combines both theory and performance parts. A teaching method based on merely providing an oral explanation from the past should be avoided. Students could join concerts, visit arts-related tours, music subjects and activities. The primary goal is to help students grow by and for themselves based on interests and abilities. Lin stated that the best study results can be obtained through creative teaching; for instance, when an individual or small groups learn to play piano, students can play a simple melody to understand and project the musical meaning. Using this “learning by doing” approach can encourage students to train their ear to inspire multiple ways of thinking from a music aspect. According to Lin, students showed a passion to continue to attend concerts and to explore their musical life. The goal of this type of course is different from other applied music courses or music apprecation courses. It develops aesthetic experiences and multiple forms of ability in the art and music areas for students (Lin, 2014).

Equipping students with the competences of artistic thinking, knowledge integration and expression

Instead of professional training, general education art curriculum is appreciation-oriented. The courses in the general education art curriculum also emphasize aesthetic ways to feel and think (Chiung, 2011). There are two tasks for general art education in a university. On the one hand, it is expected to compensate for and supplement a fundamental art education. On the other hand, it aims to facilitate students’ balanced development, which is also the ideal of general education. To achieve both of these, general art education goes back to the nature of art education, which means leading students to develop abilities of cognition and feeling in the way they see the world, and express one's understanding and interpretation of the world. In this way, a person cultivates the capacity to see and express. In other words, general education aims to cultivate a person with subjectivity. Based on this perspective, the main purpose of general art education is not in transmitting a knowledge of art, but in equipping students with the competences of artistic thinking, knowledge integration and expression. Based on the above discussion, three directions could be considered to improve a general education art curriculum: (I) Creating art is valuable for artistic thinking and aesthetic experience, so it should be involved in the curriculum. (II) It is important to invite students to explore artists’ thoughts and views on the world and life, and reflect upon themselves; an art curriculum should offer students the opportunity to clarify their personal aesthetic viewpoints and construct the meaning of art for them. (III) An art curriculum should create aesthetic experiences through the process of teaching (Zhou, 2009).

Cultivating a broad worldview and humanistic caring among students

Aesthetics education in liberal arts courses promotes art appreciation and creative potential in students, and cultivates a broad worldview and humanistic caring among students. This is the ideal of holistic education, and it is also the educational ideal at all times (Lin SS, 2012). I reference the literature that states this. In Hsu’s course, “Multi-Dimensional Art Appreciation Program,” the framework of the program is derived from the core value of general education that focuses on multi-dimensional art appreciation through various processes. These processes of understanding artistic works include vision, hearing, and performing. In addition, the program aims to incorporate knowledge from both commerce-management and applied-science study groups. Students from both study groups allocate most of their time to multi-dimensional art events with the rest of their time spent analyzing artistic works. This allocation then creates opportunities for students to acquire a multi-dimensional art experience and helps them in developing innovative thinking and ideas. Furthermore, through analyzing the contents of art works and observing their creation processes, students will be able to enjoy profound experiences in multi-dimensional art events. They will also extend their focus to social issues, especially the correlation among culture, environment, and multi-dimensional art (Hsu, 2012). In this way, students cultivate a broad worldview and humanistic caring.

Conclusion

The educational field nowadays has been gradually expanding. The range of learning is no longer limited to campuses, and the related issues have also extended to both society and the workplace. Moreover, higher education fosters students to become active participants in public affairs. With respect to the general art education in universities, what courses should be designed and what teaching methods can be applied to enable students to internalize art learning as a kind of ability and further become practitioners of art (Liao, 2009)? This is an important issue. As a result, arts courses appear in the general education curricula of both domestic and foreign universities. This reveals the value of arts courses for a university general education curriculum. Furthermore, a general education art curriculum has various functions within a university. These functions are the focus of this article. According to the findings, the functions of general education art curriculum in universities are as follows:

to cultivate the aesthetic subject consciousness of students;

to cultivate the knowledge and humanity of students;

to enhance the aesthetic abilities of students;

to help students understand local traditional arts;

to promote the diverse abilities of students;

to equip students with the competence of artistic thinking, including knowledge integration and expression; and

to cultivate broad worldviews and humanistic caring among students.

It is hoped that such an exploration can broaden the vision of general education in Taiwan.