The Democratic Ideal of Access to Culture
Jan Jaap Knol
If we look back on the past hundred years, I believe we can distinguish three phases of thinking with respect to cultural education and cultural participation.
The Educational Ideal and Education of the Working Classes
The first phase is that of the educational ideal and, as an extension thereof, the idea of education of the working classes. Recently I read Stefan Zweig’s Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers (“The World of Yesterday”). Significantly, the apodictic German subtitle is “Memories of a European”. The most light-hearted passages of this monumental book describe Zweig’s youth at a Viennese secondary school. Here we read how the young Stefan Zweig eagerly devoted himself to the enjoyment of the arts. He describes his own enthusiasm and that of his schoolmates against the backdrop of the Habsburg era: “In itself, this enthusiasm for the theatre, for literature and for art was quite natural in Vienna.” Zweig himself came from an upper-middle-class background, but at the beginning of the previous century the educational ideal led to a widespread conviction, throughout Europe and particularly among Social Democrats, that access to the high arts should be given not only to young people being educated at secondary schools but also to members of the working classes.
Democratisation
The ideals of education as a whole and education of the working classes in particular were not abandoned after the Second World War, but they did lose ground considerably. Through the ascendancy of pop music and other forms of popular culture, the accepted status of the high arts was increasingly called into question. When famous artists such as Warhol and Beuys began to put the status and character of art up for discussion as well, and authorities in other areas such as science and politics were challenged more and more frequently, the idea of education of the working classes was replaced by the idea of access and free personal choice. In discussions about education, the focus shifted further and further away from traditional 19th-century concepts of “knowledge” and “cultural education” towards the concept of personal development. The ideal of democratisation led – in the Netherlands, at least – to the widespread establishment of cultural education institutions, which were of good quality – albeit rather strongly institutionalised in character– and had professionally trained personnel. Whether the customer was king at such institutions is, however, a matter of debate.
Participation
Now we have arrived at the third phase: the phase of participation. The big difference between this phase and the last lies in the fact that people, not least due to the considerable influence of the Internet and, above all, of Web 2.0, are increasingly unwilling to have their choices made for them, a form of patronisation – no matter how well-meant – which in the past was definitely an element of “education of the working classes” and “democratisation”, particularly when these concepts were embodied in institutional contexts. In the Internet it is no longer journalists, but people like you and me who decide, in their communities, what is to be considered new and what is not. Now that everybody can download music at will from the Internet and disseminate it, the music industry is being impelled to change its business strategy. And as a result of the appearance of e-books, libraries and bookstores are also redefining their central functions. Nowadays it is not particularly difficult to hold a pessimistic lecture on the disappearance of a common body of cultural knowledge. At the same time, it cannot be denied that people – of all age groups and in all their diversity – are highly active in cultural spheres.
Thus, we are in the position of having to make a number of decisions. Of course it is possible to cling to the classical ideal of education, not just to a small extent but quite radically. It is definitely possible, but I think this would inevitably be a choice in favour of elitism. We can also, based on institutionalised thinking, cling to the ideal of democratisation. But teachers, educators and sometimes also parents have already lost touch when it comes to the involvement of children and young people with the new media. In particular, popular youth culture is developing so fast that is simply impossible for institutions to keep up as far as their curricula are concerned.
The answer lies, to some extent, in a synthesis of the educational ideal, democratisation and participation. The teacher of today is still the embodiment of the educational ideal. "Teaching" is the verb, but the "teacher", the noun, is also definitely a part of it all.
I am convinced that providing access to culture as a democratic ideal has to be a basic principle of cultural policy. Every child deserves the chance to become acquainted with the world of art and culture. Of the three key terms, however, it is "participation" that counts the most. We don’t want a one-way street going from educators to listeners. Or programming that “spoon-feeds”. Or authorities that are only interested in earning applause. What we need, for example, are museum directors that involve the public as actively as possible in their collection policy, their exhibitions and their presentations.
Let me go back to Stefan Zweig: “Every attitude of passive passion is, in itself, an unnatural one for youth, for it is in the nature of youth not only to gather impressions but to respond to them productively. For young people, loving the theatre means working (…) in the theatre themselves at least in their wishes and dreams.”
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