Aesthetic Literacy and Changing Education Paradigms

ABSTRACT

The paper will revolve around the following key concepts:

The aesthetic-refers—following the educator Sir Ken Robinson—to the state of being fully alive, when our senses and those faculties that make us human are at their peak.

Aesthetic Literacy-refers to the competence and ability to see more, hear more, feel more and think more, not in fragmented but in multi-sensory and multi-dimensional ways.

Changing Education Paradigms-refers to paradigms that go beyond the Enlightenment, Fordist (assembly line) model of the mind on which the present education system is still grounded; it is a model ill-suited to respond competently to multiple sensory stimuli (e.g. images, video games, gadgets, ads) that deaden the senses (the unaesthetic), within rapidly changing cultural, climactic, and political conditions.

This paper presents the arts (popular, fine, folk, traditional, multimedia) as powerful and transformative resource that awaken the senses towards urgent educational paradigm shifts, especially in light of the K+12 curriculum and the present GE framework.

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<mediaplayer>File:GE_Datuin.flv‎</mediaplayer> Prof. Flaudette May Datuin
Associate Professor, Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters

This vodcast is part of the UPD General Education Conference 2012