I. The Five Functions of Calligraphy Education
Educational theorists from ancient and modern times, both in China and abroad, have pointed out: Aesthetic education is an important part of school education. It plays a crucial role in cultivating students' healthy aesthetic concepts and abilities, refining their sentiments, and nurturing all-around developed talents, which cannot be replaced by other subjects. Art [bulk calligraphy and painting] education is an essential content and pathway for implementing aesthetic education. It is an indispensable component for comprehensively enhancing students' cultural qualities and promoting the spiritual civilization construction of university campuses. Different from other art educations, calligraphy art education has irreplaceable roles and status in fostering college students' humanistic qualities. Therefore, strengthening calligraphy art education in universities is an effective way to fully promote quality-oriented education and also an important means to enhance contemporary college students' humanistic qualities. Practice has proven that sensuous cultural education centered on calligraphy art culture plays a significant role in cultivating comprehensive qualities. Its functions and values are manifested in the following five aspects:
(1) Through the infiltration of calligraphy art culture, it can promote the formation and improvement of moral qualities. From appreciating and evaluating the styles of calligraphy works to upholding the patriotic spirit of calligraphers, this process is not only lively but also enters the unconscious level from the conscious level, leaving a deep impression that lasts a lifetime.
(2) Through sensuous cultural education centered on calligraphy art education, i.e., activities such as viewing, practicing, and writing excellent model books and calligraphy audio-visual materials, students' cognitive (intellectual) qualities can be enriched. "The purpose of practical writing is to convey sound and meaning through the form of characters. The purpose of calligraphy art, however, goes beyond that to express emotions, temperament, cultivation, and realms." In these frequent activities, learners' observational skills can be promoted, memory abilities strengthened, especially emotional memory, image memory, and motion memory, effectively advancing the development of imaginal thinking. This includes the imagery and infectivity of calligraphy art cultural qualities, which can promote knowledge retention and memorization.
(3) Through the naturalness and wholeness of calligraphy art cultural activities, skill training can be deepened and transferred, favorably promoting the formation of students' multi-faceted operational skills, such as hand flexibility, balance, as well as the balanced development of visual, kinesthetic, auditory, and tactile senses.
Through the flexibility and variability of calligraphy art culture, it can promote the development of students' cognitive functions and foster innovative capabilities. Truly outstanding calligraphy artworks all possess innovative characteristics. Through appreciating and creating calligraphy artworks, students' creative thinking can be advanced. This can also enrich the breadth and depth of learners' emotional and affective activities.
(4) Through scientific education in calligraphy art culture, it can significantly promote the comprehensive development of students' psychological qualities, including logical thinking abilities, higher-level needs, affective qualities, and the formation of aesthetic values, worldviews. Through the accumulation of humanistic qualities, Chinese traditional culture can be promoted and national spirits carried forward, thereby facilitating the complementary developmental progress of the sensuous quality system and the rational quality system.
II. Current Status of Calligraphy Education
Even with the aforementioned functions and values of calligraphy art, regrettably, the newly established "World Calligraphy Alliance" in Singapore excluded China. This indirectly reflects our lack of cherishing our own culture and the declining trend of calligraphy education. The aesthete Wang Chaowen once lamented: The traditional cultural foundation of their generation was already worse than the previous generation, and the current generation is even worse. Currently, our calligraphy education is indeed severely neglected. Influenced by exam-oriented education, most schools fail to recognize its importance, making regulations ineffective. In primary and secondary schools, calligraphy education is often relegated to a secondary position or does not exist at all. Some universities offer elective calligraphy courses, while many do not set up any calligraphy classes, and these electives are only available to a small number of college students. Nowadays, university students, eight or nine years ago when they were in primary and secondary schools, hardly received any calligraphy education. Surveys show that less than one percent of students learned calligraphy during the middle and elementary school stages. Moreover, there is a lack of qualified teachers in terms of educational implementation. Most current calligraphy teachers have not received specialized calligraphy education, or use outdated teaching methods, or mechanically instruct students to copy model books. They rarely delve into psychological, pedagogical, or aesthetic issues in calligraphy teaching, unable to go beyond simple repetitive copying and reach the cultural level of calligraphy art. Even in the sequence of art course settings in national universities, calligraphy is absent, and there is no long-term university calligraphy teaching outline formulated and argued by experts specializing in calligraphy art education. Textbook construction neglects Chinese culture, mostly compiling into handwriting manuals. There exists a phenomenon of "one wave," "one model book," "one teacher," and "one method" in calligraphy art education, seriously hindering the development of calligraphy art education and delaying the cultivation of students' basic writing abilities. No wonder some university graduates and master's students write like elementary school children, with slanted strokes, ugly structures, and disordered pages, far behind Japan and South Korea. Given this, as advocated by many insightful individuals, it is necessary to emphasize tradition in universities and let college students make up for this lesson.
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