The Significance Music Education As Aesthetic Education

Becoming a man of unsurpassed virtue has been the ultimate goal of education since ancient Greece. Aesthetic appreciation plays a positive role in a person's self-development which not only means the pursuit of beauty but more importantly involves the attention on human beings per se, bringing about the unity and harmony between sensitivity and rationality and a poetic living for people. The education of aesthetic appreciation plays a significant role in the improvement of people, regarded as the sole means to constructing a complete personality. Due to the influence from the west, the focus of aesthetic education in China after introducing the systematic theories from the west has been on promoting social reforms and improving people's life. The theory of aesthetic value which is committed to transforming people's mentality and improving people's life through aesthetic and artistic education reflects significantly salient features of personality education, embodying conspicuously noticeable characteristics of the times and national spirit.Music education in China took shape at the dawn of the 20th Century when there was a perceived need for aesthetic education. As an important means of aesthetic education, music education started to develop at that time.The adverse effect of the contemporary popular culture, however, blurs the concepts of beauty and the boundary between entertainment and art, Raymor's educational philosophy of aesthetic education had important impact on China's music education in the school setting and as a result, music education with aesthetic appreciation at the core was incorporated into the curriculum for the music course.At the end of the 20th Century, Elliot's pragmatic philosophy of music education started to influence the education of music and aesthetics.With the implementation of the curriculum with aesthetics at the core, are the problems with China's music education in the school setting attributed to the unclear objectives or inappropriate methodologies or the pragmatic philosophy of music education in practice? How to pinpoint the philosophy of music education which is the most applicable to the Chinese context? What should be the focus of music education and how to further develop it? Adopting literature review and qualitative reasoning as its chief research methodology, this thesis is expected to shed some philosophical light on music education from the perspectives of cultivating and enhancing people's values and quality and life through music education.