Pratima Sinha, CEO DSR Educational Society, Hyderabad

In the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Aesthetic Needs are placed just below Self-Actualization.  According to Maslow’s theories, to progress toward Self-Actualization, humans require beautiful imagery or novel and aesthetically pleasing experiences through their five senses. Aesthetic sense is about having the ability to appreciate the beauty within the world around one’s self, on a day-to-day basis. Aesthetics offers humans the means to heighten our awareness of self and other. In a nutshell -If I need to know myself, my potential, I need to acquire a high sensorial ability of appreciating the beauty around me in different forms.

It becomes very relevant in today’s world to bring in the Aesthetics aspect and dimension into the Teaching Pedagogy as the need for fostering and nurturing creativity enhancing the curiosity and thinking skills has become essential. It is also a fundamental foundation and contributes significantly to achieving the higher purpose of teaching.

The study of aesthetics in education suggests there is a latent potential that exists in learning beyond simply acquiring objective information to logically discern reality. With an approach of holistic development of the child in the forefront of the education system, integration of art has become an absolute necessity. It can become a very powerful tool not only in escalating the learning outcome in all the subjects but also in assured improvement in the attention span in the students.

The goal of integrated teaching is to effectively cultivate the students’ art skills by increasing their aesthetic ability and building up their artistic culture, using it to cultivate their artistic ability, resulting in improving the students’ art quality. Participation in exhibitions, cultural programmes, appreciation and exposure to various forms of art and innovative teaching methods integrating art, influences students learning positively and significantly and effective improvement is very visible.

Every Art Activity organized by the school whether it is visual or performing art should be thoughtfully curated to focus on developing the maximum sensorial experiences.

The overall experience of the students   to ensure their complete engagement should be based on the following factors:

• Visual Beauty
• Auditory Enchantment
• Feel Good /WOW Factor
• Arousing Curiosity (to know more, to ask questions, to research)
• Excitement towards creativity
• Positive Vibrations in the brain (opportunity to think)
• Analyzing and Synthesizing thoughts
• Stimulating Innovation

Through the aesthetic appreciation process, students can enhance their aesthetic experience by touching and observing works of art and through tasteful gestures to arrive at a well-founded understanding and appreciation of art. The teaching community needs to spend more time appreciating and observing the creative work of the students so that they can lay a solid foundation for Aesthetic Literacy.

Final aim is to boost the creativity needs for the efficiency and stimulation of the development of an individual innovative thinking, enabling the individuals to utilize multi-angle analytical thinking and solve problems in the solving or analyzing process, reflected in a person’s innovation ability. To improve students’ ability to think and innovate for excellent learning outcomes.

As a result of highlighted aesthetic quality, the student will be capable of appreciating beauty, which at the same time will create an Aesthetic Culture in the School Community and instilling Aesthetic Literacy in the regular curriculum will be enhanced manifold.

It’s time we appreciate the language and beauty of art and let our students learn from it and move towards the next step of Self Actualization to be confident member of the future generation.

Also read: The Importance of Art Education in Schools