Review the Development and Evolution of Aesthetic Education in Chinese Schools from a Policy Perspective

Since the promulgation of the first school education regulations in the early 20th century, Chinese school aesthetic education has gone through its first century of history. Six stages of development have been formed in this century of vicissitudes, namely, the budding period, the starting period, the salvation movement period, the tortuous development period, the reconstruction period, and the modernization period of the new era. From a historical point of view, we can sort out and analyze the policies of school aesthetic education, and we can learn that Chinese school aesthetic education has always insisted on the direction of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, guided by the principles of Marxist aesthetics and the achievements of specific Chinese practice as the methodology, adhered to the direction of cultural development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and aimed at cultivating qualified builders and successors for the comprehensive development of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Aesthetic education in Chinese schools places a prominent place on “establishing, cultivating and clarifying morality”, emphasizes the role of “beauty” in “goodness”, and follows the aesthetic guideline of “unity of beauty and goodness”. Art education and its practical activities are the main content of school aesthetic education. The formation mechanism, laws, and characteristics of the sustainable development of school aesthetic education in China are summarized from the perspective of the century-old school aesthetic education policy, which is of theoretical guidance for the study of the future development of school aesthetic education in China.