Cornell Study Bulletins for Teachers Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II MEANS AS JOHN DEWEY says, men attempt J to enhance and perpetuate mental images charged with emotion by objectifying them.1 An aesthetic sense c... more »an therefore first of all be cultivated by creating mental images that are charged with emotion. Sometimes this may be effected by the mere contemplation of beautiful objects, as when one gazes at a sunset or looks upon a work of art. The image may be vivified and the emotion made more intense by reflection upon the deeper meaning of that which is represented. This may be called passive education in aesthetic judgment and appreciation. It is good as far as it goes; frequently, however, children respond but feebly to our most enraptured exclamations over the beauties of nature or of poetry, painting and sculpture. We may think their apperception at fault, and labor tirelessly to kindle the fires of enthusiasm. These are efforts to inject ourown conceptions and emotions into our pupil's head; we should seek rather to evoke them. 1 "Cyclopedia of Education," article "Art in Education," Vol. I, p. 224. All great teachers of art insist that, to evoke aesthetic images and to intensify aesthetic emotion in the student, one must not only permit him to objectify his emotion- charged image, but must encourage and aid him to do so. If we would have him appreciate the drawings of others, we must lead him to draw according to his own mental images, however imperfectly. His aesthetic sense may be blunted, however, by drill on technique. If he would appreciate painting, let him mix and apply colors; if he is to enjoy music at its highest estate, let him learn to sing or play; and so on throughout the useful and applied arts. This is good doctrine, but teachers are somewhat loath to apply it to themselves. They argue that it is good...« less