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CHILDREN NEED ART
A Case for Aesthetic Education and Future-oriented Cultural Policy
No one will argue with me when I say that „Children need art“. When I state it as a question “Do children need art?” again, next to no one would say no. Of course children first need food and drink, a roof over their heads, healthcare, and social services. These are essential, but even so, not always implicit in our world.
Don’t worry, I am not going to stress you with numbers and facts about malnutrition, refugees, the spreading of Aids in under 21 year olds in Africa, child abuse in Europe, child pornography in America or child prostitution in Asia. I am also not collecting for charity organizations or for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund. I am only trying to bring the theme of my presentation into context. Then when we speak of art for children and art by children, we must always speak of them in relation to the social contexts they belong to. We must look at the challenges of our times in relation to the qualities of truth, beauty and goodness determined by our cultural history and traditions.
The dramatic transformation from an industrial to an information society is often compared to society’s transition from agricultural to industrial in the 19th century. Just as the changes in production methods and priorities had an impact on all aspects of society in the past, the adoption of information and communication technologies have fundamentally changed the homes, businesses and economies of today. These changes, today as in the past, seem to evoke mixed feelings: of well-founded fear, but also accompanied by euphoria. Also radical, is the movement towards economic expansion, as well as a changed understanding of the role of state, administration and its citizens.
As in earlier times, as the shift towards an information society takes place, arts and culture are playing a deciding role. The development of arts and culture has always been in close interaction with technological potential and new ways of diffusion.
First Thesis
Arts and culture are actively involved in the transformation of society - from the service sector to the knowledge sector - acting to a large extent as “content delivers” for the information society.
Arts and culture are not separate from social and technological change, rather a part of them. For this reason, they impact the change process, as well being impacted by it. In the process, we do old media and diffusion methods are not disposed of, instead they are simply supplemented by new ones. Our focus must therefore turn to the design of the basic elements in order to convince arts agents, diffusers and producers of their economic and social value. The truth is that only when enough interesting content is offered, will new information technologies be used. Arts producers, as well as trained artists, musicians, actors and writers are needed more than ever because:
- Only they can deliver the content that the world-wide new media requires.
- Only their research can further develop the aesthetic of the new media.
- Only through their cooperation with technicians and scholars can new products be developed.
Culture and Education
Support of arts and culture is important for the transition to an entrepreneurial knowledge economy. Arts and culture foster creativity in a population. They are by no means just decorative elements. In this sense, spending on art should not be seen as useless consumption, rather a priceless investment in the development of society.
Arts and culture are an integral part of the information society, however arts and cultural offerings are not enough on their own. Large attention is currently being given to cultural education. In the UNESCO commission’s final report “The Future of the Media in Economics and Society” there are several mentions of the importance of further education for a successful transition into the information society, and key to securing employment.
Second Thesis
Cultural education is the prerequisite for further education readiness. Included in a cultural education are strong reading and media skills. Cultural education confronts people with things they aren’t accustomed to, thus opening their views, and is at the same time fun. This is certainly one of the best conditions for a successful educational process.
So that arts and culture can take the place of significance that it continuously demands, as also seen in policy statements, it is essential that cultural institutions and artists work toward publicly promoting the arts and culture, beyond just major events. This includes the entire spectrum of cultural institutions: from art and music schools to the libraries at theatres and museums
Children and Artists
“Never before, in my mind, has there been so much junk dumped on children as there is today. I mean, just look at the products that adults scale down to an imagined or already-proven level for a child. But the truth is, when it comes to matters of life and death, love and hate, jealousy, lies, cunning, hope, longing, desires and so on, these little people know their way around. It is we who could stand to re-learn a few things. However because children openly allow themselves to be bombarded with this whimsical, funny, “tralala” junk, the question, about children and art, seems so terribly normal that I sometimes feel like I am from another planet when I don’t want to make a difference between adults and children. When I want to take children seriously. My memories of being a child and my experience with children have taught me that the way a child plays and the way an artist plays are not at all dissimilar.” This quote comes from Friedrich Karl Waechter, a German children’s author and playwright. He does not want to make a difference between art for children and for adults. This is the exception!
Third Thesis
Adults all too often make a distinction between what is suitable for children and for themselves. And cultural policy makers are adults too. When we speak of culture, children are left out of the discussion. When we speak of children, culture is not considered.
A critical requirement of alternative cultural policy is cultural learning. Through training in active perception by means of cultural media, every person should be capable of acquiring any skills and information that are offered. This leads to higher personal productivity due to increased cultural and social competence. I use an aesthetic education model, more tightly connected to the arts than to pedagogy. The model looks at the period after sensual perception takes place, examining human development process in relation to theoretical and technical training. The social misery resulting from a separation of the population into two groups, one culturally entitled and one culturally deprived, does not only result in a relapse to 19th Century class-based education practices, it also marks the inability of our education system to convert current knowledge into practice.
Keeping children from receiving aesthetic education means exposing them to exemplary unfairness from the beginning, since only a small part of their natural talents are given the chance to surface. Further potential isn’t given a chance to develop, remaining inaccessible to the individual and the community. Let me use an example to demonstrate what role the arts can play in an aesthetic education, concentrating on my own reflections on theatre for young audiences.
The Arts as a School of Sight
The arts live on mutuality, on mutual observations, on mutual exchange. The arts need the actor and the audience. The arts are always a meeting, a meeting of the senses, of ideas, and the search for meaning. The arts are therefore always aesthetic education. Educational theory defines three major ways of learning. Next to the scientific-rational and the ethical-moral views, lies the aesthetic experience. The arts are committed to sensual perception, and likewise, the interpretation of the meaning of patterns and symbolic interactions. That this exceptional aspect of the arts is not always taken seriously, that this idealistic quality of the arts is not always understood to be part of it, and that this existential impact of the arts is not always converted into practice, must be recognized here. The time is ripe for the arts focused specifically on young audiences. Never before have there been more reasons to support the arts for children and the youth. Never before has an educational and politico-cultural debate more strongly demonstrated a case for the necessity for the arts for children and young people. The Study on Education “PISA” (Programme for International Student Assessment) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which for some countries proved quite eye-opening, provides an opportunity for the art to campaign for a role in comprehensive aesthetic education. One of the richest nations of the world was, in international comparison, far behind. Particularly weak results were seen within the areas of reading competency, problem solving and self-directed learning, areas which are very closely related to aesthetic education. However, there is seems to be silence about this social decline. Particularly scandalous is that - however one wants to technically judge the study - not only do the criteria show a striking neglect of the arts and aesthetic education, but also that they were never even considered in the study profile.
One thing, however, is clear from the study: the importance of education and of the young generation for our society This must have ramifications in cultural policy and in youth politics. Theatres for children and the youth must become the emphasis of every cultural institute! Not only at Children’s Day, but all year round; not for the ticket sales, not for the statistics.
Children’s theatre as a medium of social fantasy
Children’s theatre is a view of life, a mirror of the times and a fantasy-full look at reality. The pieces represent the realities of children and youth. They deal with everyday life stories, with family, school and free time. Those on the stage have a relationship with their audience. Children’s theatre is a medium for social fantasy. A second reality can be seen, showed and played, causing reason for astonishment and providing reason to reflect. The whole world is integrated onto a small playing space. Conflicts are named and problems are openly talked about. Insubordination is tested out and anger isn’t held back. A lot is possible on the stage: Democratic behaviour, social learning and of course, dreaming. Children’s theatre is a school of seeing. Magnificent sets and empty spaces characterize the productions. Costumes and masks find use, and a small finger plays along just as a belt, a violin or a headlight. The theatre is like a code needing to be unscrambled. At its best, an aesthetic education par excellence.
Children’s theatre is an experience of feelings. What is friendliness, desire, annoyance, fear? Being able to take a bath without getting wet, that is what constitutes a good piece. To shiver together, enjoy together, experience together. Not the feelings caused by some cheap effects, but feelings evoked because of a story, because of a real situations. Care needs to be taken in this context, as children and youth want to be taken seriously.
Children’s theatre is storytelling theatre. Stories that are not always pretty, because children’s worlds are not perfect either. Therefore both light and shadow belong, because they are part of life. There are children’s theatres, that do not only fight against the prejudice that the form and content of theatre for a young public is allowed to be a bit cheaper (similar to a child’s menu in a restaurant: half price for a half portion), but that are also in the position to prove through their daily work that the not-quite-adults can be quite open to the abstract and absurd, as well as for the existential and experimental. The measure of all things seems to be the truthfulness of the acting/playing, the communication between players and between actors and audience members.
Theatre for Young Audiences needs Cultural Policy
Children and young people’s theatre are taking the issue of education seriously. A co-operation between schools and theatre, the "Schauburg", through Munich’s Children and Young People’s theatre, has formulated a summary of the theme as "complexity versus simplification". "In the past there was sometimes the complaint that our work was too demanding and more secretive than adult theatre. The release of the PISA study and the deplorable results of German students in relation to international standards confirmed a case for our work. It is not enough to just simplify. It is not enough to transform complex content down to the smallest denominator in simple language, using simple methods, with only the simplest staging. It is insufficient that children and young people are given a “children’s portion sized” education, and access to culture that consists solely of fatty french-fries and ketchup. They need to be offered a serious, complex basket full of educational possibilities. Whoever sets children and young people at the cat’s table, should receive a receipt from PISA" (www.schauburg.net)
The point is not that students be presented Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare and Lessing during school. Education is a form of world appropriation, and therefore theatre for young audiences must move the issues of young people to the centre. Basic theatre skills can be taught to audience members: The ability to be able to decode the reality of one’s world. Theatre is a medium of signs and symbolism.
Fourth Thesis
When theatre is good, it provides the opportunity to learn how to decode and interpret their meanings. This form of abstract thinking is a key skill that young people desperately need to develop for their future success. To be able to read the signs of the times, is a creative strength which must be firmly promoted.
Theatre is a most unusual experience in that it allows us turn everything that exists on its head, to set the usual rules off balance. Therefore, it refers to a completely different quality than we usually think of as learning. Nevertheless it should bring a certain mastery of connections, experiences and knowledge, as well as the potential though orientation and overview of the big picture to use what is learned for critical self-reflection and to better interpret these situations. In children and young people’s theatre the greatest hope would be for an aesthetic ambiguity where an intersecting joyfulness is staged in an environment where movement, in the playful sense, is set free.
As an extracurricular learning place, children and young people’s theatre can help supplement school education. What a chance for the full-day school: The combination of in-school and extracurricular cultural education for children and young people! Children and young people’s theatre, not as a field trip or makeshift filler, not as an additional lesson as schools with other means, and also not as a babysitting service to fill afternoons with programs from the outside. Children and young people’s theatre could partner with schools. It could become an integrated part of school curriculum.
Education in Artistic Taste by Means of Theatre
"Much of that what people are able to share with each other and need to share to share with each other in order to build stable social structures”, says German brain researcher, Wolf Singer, “does not allow itself to be completely communicated in rational speech.” That is why he emphasizes the importance of developing non-language based communication competencies, saying that these require practice and refinement. Children and young people’s theatres have been taking these ideas seriously for decades. The wallflowers. The fifth wheels. That should change, can change, and must change somewhat. Through the development of a differentiated means of judgement and perception, the theatre for children and young people can contribute to the formation of artistic taste, as it provides multidimensional, poetic pictures that appeal to the senses. Alone the meaning attached to a story and its dramatic presentation, can contribute.
Fifth Thesis
In my experience, there is only one absolute necessity for arts productions, for children and young people, and that is that they must go to the edge. They must be stories that don’t avoid, diminish, or appease conflict, rather realistically portray its consequences to children.
A child’s life is no walk through the garden of paradise. It can be Hell, and when we don’t want to lie to the youth in the arts, than Hell also belongs on stage. If the arts for children do not shrink away from the harshness of social reality, then the debates will take care of themselves. Young people do not want to be protected in the arts. They first feel taken seriously when the arts make their own bad experiences visible and real.
When culture is being spoken about, it is rare that children are mentioned. Likewise, when we speak of children, culture is not usually in the picture. Children and young people have a right to arts and culture, as was agreed upon by the Contracting States in Article 3 of the United Nations’ Children’s Rights Convention. It concerns children’s rights to full participation in cultural and artistic life, as well as access to suitable opportunities for cultural and artistic development. Children and young people’s theatre is thereby only one field of cultural policy, which also includes child and youth policy as well as educational policy. Cultural education for children and young people has the task of creating, maintaining and expanding active cultural infrastructures for children in their municipalities, thereby strengthening and invigorating the variety of culture as food for all. And the arts can only have this function of offering key-competencies to children and young people, if they truly reach and inspire them.
Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schneider is Director of the Institute for Cultural Policy and Dean of the Faculty for Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Communication at the University of Hildesheim. He is also a member of the German Parliament’s Inquiry Commission, “Culture in Germany”, as well as President of ASSITEJ, the International Association of theatre for Children and Young People, a member of UNESCO, with centres in 78 countries worldwide
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