FINE ARTS
[The Art Department was requested by the President to act as a committee to report on the general plans and requisites of a new Art Building. The following statement by Professor A. Ames, Jr., was considered by the committee in formulating its recommendations.]
Up to date modern educationalists as a whole have overlooked the importance of the part that Fine Arts must play in education.
Without going into detail to explain the reason for this oversight, it is enough to point out that it is probably due to the, mechanistic philosophy of the past century which considered reality only in its aspects of classification analysis and reduction to law, refusing to recognize its qualitative or value aspects.*
The fallacy of this limited point of view is well recognized today. The, best thought, I understand, agrees that the qualitative, value aspects of experience are as fundamentally real as its "scientific" aspects, if not more so.
Education today is almost entirely occupied with teaching methods of classification, analysis and reduction to law.
The various sciences must of necessity limit themselves to this exclusively.
So largely must the various departments which teach semi-scientific subjects such as social sciences, history, etc. The subject matter of such courses deals largely with qualitative, value aspects of life and a great deal is said about such aspects. But the purposes of the courses and the nature of the subject matter practically prohibits any effective training of the students in response to the qualitative, value aspects.
The Fine Arts departments are the only ones which are peculiarly fitted to give training in the actual experiencing of quality and value. (I am using "Fine Arts" in its broadest meaning and include under it, for instance, that part of the teaching of English where actual appreciative response to literature is obtained). Firstly because the teaching of classification, analysis and reduction to law is foreign to its functions; and secondly because Fine Arts alone has at its disposal works of art of various kinds which are the best and only expressions we have of the quality, value aspects of experience.
But even the Fine Arts departments have often failed in their duty in this respect. For under the influence of the old philosophy they have busied themselves more, about the classification, analysis and reduction to law of objects of art than to training the students to respond to the qualities and values they may contain.
Religion even, whose sole duty is to train us to respond to the highest quality, value aspects of life has tended to fail in a similar way. But religion's failure to reach those who are being educated is due more to the fact that modern educational methods give religion nothing to build on. For when education not only makes no systematic attempt to train and develop the student's capacity to respond to qualities or values but in a great many instances even denies their existence as realities, is it any wonder that the students should not understand or respond to what religion is trying to do?
It is impossible to superimpose a religious structure on a scientific training alone. There is ah unsupporting gap between, a gap that can be filled by Fine Arts properly taught and nothing else. One trained to believe in the reality of qualities and values that can be taught by the Fine Arts and to respond to them, automatically responds to true religious values. One trained to believe only in the reality of classification, analysis and reduction to law lacks both the understanding and attitude of mind that are necessary to even comprehend what religion is about. It is not by any chance that through all history Fine Arts has always been the handmaid to Religion.
If I substitute the word "life" where I have used "religion" what I have said is equally true. We are not educated for life unless we are equally as well trained to respond to qualities and values as we are in our capacity to classify, analyze and reduce to law.
On the basis of the above the educational functions of a college of liberal arts could be divided into four branches. First: Science which teaches classification analysis and reduction to law and deals with nothing else.
Second: Semi-scientific departments such as History, Sociology, Political Science, Economics, etc. which though they teach classification analysis and reduction to law deal with subject matter that is inter-woven with qualities values. Third: Fine Arts which deals primarily with the qualitative values aspects and is only secondarily concerned with classification analysis and reduction to law.
Fourth: Religion which deals with those higher quality values aspects of life which are peculiar to its field.
Such a division of the curricular functions of a college would require a physical plant expressive of these functions.
The internal functioning of a Fine Arts department to fit into the above scheme might be as follows:
There should be an orientation course to teach the relation of "qualities" and "values" to the realities of life and the rest of education. Such a course is being tried out in the Department of Modern Art this year with satisfactory results and it is understood that the Department of English is prepared to extend the experiment to a section of selected freshmen next year in connection with the prescribed freshman English course.
This could be followed in sophomore year by specializing in one of the introductory courses in Literature, Music, Art or Religion. Here would be carried on the training of the students in concrete response to qualities or values within the special field chosen. In a course in the visual arts the students would be trained to respond to the general quality of values that are best expressed in the visual arts. In a course in music to the general quality of values that are best expressed in music. And so on.
*Compare Streeter's chapter on "Two Ways of Knowledge" page 71, in his book "Reality."
