The Future of Education

Since the very beginning of the human kind, art is a language, a way to speak out loud without words, to represent its own reality, to set cultural milestones, and, last but not least, an ancient type of education.

Being aware of its own culture is a step to knowledge. Art deals with creating and communicating symbols, hence education through art should emphasize the importance and the meaning of the reference points each culture created in time. Statues, buildings, traditions, costumes are all human understanding and serve as vehicles of conception for all human knowledge. The artefacts human populations created in order to share knowledge help us to understand the world we live in, and set the basis on which we make our own judgments. 

Students get information through their senses and the school is about to make sense of these accumulations from the very first grades. It is crucial to focus on local art heritage not only on universal culture – to the end of high school, all the information, together with perception and all the cortical interpretation, have to be revised and reloaded, if it’s needed, in a more comprehensive form. The quality of being, the joy of belonging, and the joy of knowledge, as well, are the final accomplishment. The fresh graduated can ‘read’ the message of a local statue, building, costume, traditions, being open to and aware of other culture’s reference points. The aim is to create a person who is aware of local art-heritage, who is ‘enough’ art-literate to understand, enjoy and promote the street happenings, the theatre and concert-halls, the museums and collections, as well. The school should help its students to get and to understand the information they gathered through senses, to select the authentic, to be open to beauty in all its forms, to ‘read’ this beauty formulated in the terms of art at the community level, otherwise the sense of real value could be irremediably affected – I see, and I know I see; if not, all the art manifestations are invisible.

We live in a time of deep changing, our responsibility as teachers is greater and the need for reference points has to be satisfied by means of good quality – of education and communication as well – and by emphasizing the specific messages of each community. The local / specific artistic heritage is the closest cultural milestone to get into consideration, in order to create the basis for further, universal interpretations.