"Spiritual and Moral Education in Art Classes"

"Spiritual and Moral Education in Visual Arts Lessons"
Klimova E.N. – Visual Arts and Technology Teacher, Stary Oskol, MBOU "Secondary School No. 19 with in-depth study of specific subjects"

“To educate a person who feels and thinks, one must first educate them aesthetically.”
— Friedrich Schiller

Today, the world of our children is filled with overly loud and coarse music, overly bright and aggressive cartoons, excessively violent computer games, oversimplified “mobile” communication, and children's books devoid of genuine emotion. Children often get "stuck" in front of computer screens — a trend seen as modern. But what do they gain from it? On the one hand, when a child is tech-savvy, they develop quick reflexes and learn to choose strategies for behavior and learning.

One of the reasons for the spiritual emptiness among youth is the lack of exposure to true, high art — art that nurtures the soul. Subjects in the aesthetic cycle are essential to bridge this gap.

One of the core principles of the "Visual Arts and Artistic Labor" program is “from life through art to life.” This principle of maintaining a constant connection between art and life emphasizes the broad use of children’s personal life experiences. Observing and emotionally experiencing the surrounding reality, along with understanding their own feelings and inner world, are key conditions for the spiritual development of a child — forming their ability to see the world independently and reflect on it.

The main goals of spiritual and moral education of schoolchildren include teaching them to distinguish the beautiful and the noble from the ugly and the base; developing their ability to feel, understand, and appreciate beauty in the surrounding world, in nature, in public life, in work, and in art.

The educational potential of art — what is it? Art captures the spirit of life: high art — the spirit of inspired life; low art — the spirit of vulgar and angry life. Art's intonation, its main distinctive feature, absorbs the energies at work in society and forms the atmosphere of life: energies of faith or disbelief and confusion, sacred inspiration or indifference, spiritual vigor or cynicism, great hope or despair, love or hardened hearts.

All of this is taken into account in the second-generation Federal State Educational Standards of General Education. The standard defines the expected outcomes for the subject area "Art," which should reflect:

1. the formation of students’ foundational artistic culture as part of their overall spiritual culture, as a distinct way of understanding life and a means of organizing communication; the development of aesthetic and emotional-value perception of the world; the development of observation, empathy, visual memory, associative thinking, artistic taste, and creative imagination;

2. the development of visual-spatial thinking as a form of emotional-value assimilation of the world, self-expression, and orientation within the artistic and moral space of culture;

3. the assimilation of artistic culture in all its diversity of types, genres, and styles as the material embodiment of spiritual values expressed through spatial forms (folk art from different cultures, classical works of Russian and international art, contemporary art);

4. the cultivation of respect for the cultural history of one’s homeland, as expressed in architecture, visual art, national imagery in the material and spatial environment, in the understanding of human beauty, and much more.

The goal of spiritual and moral education is to transform socially necessary expectations into internal personal motivations for each child. Let us attempt to address this issue through the tools of artistic and aesthetic education.

One pressing task of aesthetic education is developing in children the ability to perceive beauty in themselves, in others, and in the surrounding world. A person lives among people and represents the national and social culture of society. Their aesthetic views and judgments reflect their level of spiritual and moral development. Artistic activity, as an integral part of spiritual and aesthetic education, consists of three types of activity:

• Perception (consumption of art);

• Aesthetic knowledge (art studies);

• Artistic activity.

Collaborative aesthetic activity fosters the development of an aesthetic and emotionally rich view of the world, observation, visual memory, associative thinking, artistic taste, and creative imagination, as well as positive relationships with peers, the ability to collaborate, and to understand and appreciate others’ creative efforts. Are these not the very values emphasized in the foundational principles of spiritual and moral development