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ART EDUCATION AND THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF NATION-BUILDING

The article is devoted to the topical issue of Ukraine’s national revival. Defining culture as the existence of the nation’s spirit, the author raises the question of the role of art education in the process of fostering spirituality. Attention is drawn to the postmodern tendencies of contemporary national artistic culture and possible ways of its further development.
Keywords: culture, artistic culture, art, art education, spirituality.

Shramko O. I.
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor,
Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University, Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine

10.34142//2708-4809.SIUTY.2022.156

Today, the problem of spiritual renewal of society is the most urgent and necessarily puts before the Ukrainian community the task of radically rethinking the role and tasks of the national education system on the basis of changing the value hierarchy of the essential priorities of the nation’s life. Finding itself on the threshold of an existential choice, Ukrainians need more than ever to understand the determinants of the current thirty-year situation of spirituality, in the captivity of which Ukraine has been building its independence.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the current problems of Ukraine’s national revival based on culture as the essence of the nation’s spirit, as well as the role of art education in the process of fostering spirituality.

The dissipative processes of Russification and massification of national consciousness and culture, value disorientation, dehumanization of man and society, moral and religious chaos have accompanied the postmodernization of the Ukrainian life world for many decades. And this crisis of spirituality is rightly identified by Ukrainian society with the global crisis of culture. It is in this concept that the ideas about spirituality are concentrated not only for the average person, but also for modern humanities as a whole, because “the concept of culture, despite the complexity and diversity of approaches to its understanding, most often denotes a complex of the spiritual life of man and society – the European concept of culture as the being of the spirit, as a spiritual formation, something that is subject to the human spirit and is its manifestation prevails” [1, p. 24]. To overcome the abyss of spirituality, the depth of which for Ukraine is measured not only by decades of “sovietism” and “Russification” but also by years of political chaos of irresponsible independence, means to raise, teach, and educate a new generation of Ukrainians-a generation capable and worthy of being independent. This should be the main task of the modern educational process in Ukraine.

Only a spiritually mature person with a set of certain principles can be truly independent, and if they are followed, they will be able to call the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian person full-fledged subjects of the cultural and historical process, capable of actively realizing their creative potential. Thus, the basis of national education is cultural self-understanding – awareness of the spiritual foundations of the nation’s life and the spiritual foundations of the life of humanity, because the process of nation-building has two poles of self-identification: understanding one’s belonging to a particular nation and understanding one’s place in the world.

The most influential way to achieve this realization is through the humanitarian component of education, which has long been out of favor. The reason for this is that the more education and professional literacy the modern world needs, the more the humanitarian gives way to the technocrat, and the human civilization is replaced by the civilization of computers and robots. Humanity is increasingly feeling hostage to technology – nuclear, computer, chemical, genetic – and is in desperate need of such existential and spiritual components as sensuality, mercy, tolerance, self-respect and respect for the Other, faith, honor and dignity, responsibility, patriotism, and spiritual unity. This indicates an obviously significant increase in the social need to foster spirituality, the moral and ideological nature of which is a barrier that prevents the dominance of scientific rationality, which leads to the expansion of technically transformed forms of consciousness and the desire for domination, wealth and comfort, to such personal autonomy, rights and freedoms that often turn into moral arbitrariness and permissiveness.

Humanitarian education as a process of fostering spirituality contributes to the growth of spiritual values and allows us to realize the importance of spiritual self-absorption for self-improvement and self-education, which determines the subjectivity of the individual in the context of the national and civilizational movement.

The concept of humanitarian education is complex, multilayered, and, of course, to some extent abstract. The system of humanitarian education contains various components, covers different branches of humanitarian knowledge, each of which deserves special attention. However, there is a branch in it whose importance in the process of spiritual education can hardly be overestimated: art education.

Just as it is difficult to ignore the role of artistic culture in the broader field of culture, so art education has always played an outstanding role in the education system. This is explained by the extremely powerful multifunctional potential of art both in relation to an individual and to society as a whole. Whichever aspect of education and upbringing through art we touch upon – socializing, educational, cognitive, communicative, etc. – in each case we can state the positive effect of influence on the individual, on the content of his or her spiritual being. This is due to the main, immanent function of art – its emotionality, its ability to fulfill all its functional duties through the awakening of the emotional sphere of a person. As you know, everything that is passed through the internal, emotional reactions of our psyche to any external influences stays with us for a long time, if not forever.

Today, the role of art education in fostering spirituality as the basis of national consciousness is more important than ever – art in education is “on time” because in the context of heroic resistance, unbreakable struggle for independence, Ukrainian society must take care of the spiritual education of the next generation, The education of its spiritual qualities of the highest quality – responsibility and patriotism, honor and dignity, mercy and sacrifice, tolerance and self-respect, love for the native country, and the ability to spiritual unity in the name of peace and freedom.

Art is the most effective means of fostering respect for national values and their assimilation as the deepest narratives of self-awareness.

But this only works if there is a consistent, systematic, and purposeful algorithm of methodically planned and coordinated integration of the educational process at all levels: general education (from preschool to higher education) and specialized education (from primary art education to art academies).

Ukrainian society has no right to raise another generation that will search for Russian-language content on YouTube and argue about the appropriateness of the name of Pyotr Tchaikovsky for the National Music Academy of Ukraine. Such questions a priori do not arise in Poland, France, Germany, or other European countries where we aspire to go – Europeans know and value their own, their composers, writers, and artists.

We should also not forget about the current state and future trends of Ukraine’s artistic culture, because art education is not just a part of it, it is, on the one hand, a reflection of this culture, and on the other hand, it directly influences its development, and is its full-fledged subject. The postmodern situation continues to show signs of instability, chaos, uncertainty, and inconsistency, and in the context of martial law, these characteristics of national artistic culture are extremely exacerbated. However, in this chaos, we can already find the sprouts of a cultural future that can turn into powerful sources of the nation’s spiritual revival. The artistic field of culture is able to grow and nurture these sprouts at both the popular and academic levels. It should be borne in mind that postmodernism knows no hierarchy, and that lullabies, fairy tales, poems by Vasyl Stus, songs by Okean Elzy, and symphonies by Valentyn Silvestrov have their own unique value.

The synergistic concept of socio-cultural dynamics, which is very popular nowadays, views culture as a highly complex system that finds its own ways of development. Chaos and uncertainty are ready to give way to stability and harmony, because chaos contains both destructive and constructive, creative elements. Finding and developing this creative principle, focusing on our own tendencies, directing the development of national artistic culture in accordance with our ideas about the future on the basis of the highest spiritual guidelines of nation-building is a responsible and prestigious task of art education, which should be solved in the process of tolerant cooperation between scientists and educators.

List of references

1. Shramko O. I. Art education and spiritual culture of the individual. Scientific Journal of the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. Series 14. Theory and methods of art education. 2009. Issue 8 (13). С. 22-27.