Understanding, Valuing, & Living Art: Art Appreciation for College © 2018 is guided in its design and execution by the Commission of Higher Education (CHED)’s Outcomes-Based Education (OBE). This approach to teaching is modelled after an analogous approach to management like Management by Objective. The point of teaching is not to stuff students’ minds with a lot of material, hence, promoting rote learning, but rather to make students go through a learning process where the outcome is measurable. Learning is about competence in an area of knowledge, and the acquisition of knowledge linked to critical thinking. The college curriculum presupposes active learning, which has already been fostered by the K-12 syllabi and curricula. This active learning leads to skills.
This textbook covers all the essential points of the CHED Art Appreciation curriculum but does not follow its outline slavishly. For instance, instead of putting all the sections on art history together, history has been divided and placed after a discussion of an art form. An example, Chapter 3 on visual arts segues into art history from paleolithic art to the brink of Greco-Roman or Hellenistic art. The reason is that these two periods in art history reinforce the discussion on elements of art and the role of art in society.
This textbook has nine chapters, corresponding to the standard 18 weeks of the curriculum. Each chapter is taken over two weeks or over six sessions of class. The first two chapters place art in context. Chapters 3-8 discuss the art genres of the Visual Arts (Chapter 3), Architecture (Chapter 4), Music (Chapter 5 ), Dance (Chapter 6), Theater (Chapter 7), and Film (Chapter 8). The seventh art genre, literature, is not discussed because literature is more than adequately covered by other courses. The chapters end with a discussion on Creative Practices (Chapter 9).