Professor Vlad Pâslaru, Romanian and Bessarabian (by origin and geographical location), is a landmark of pedagogy "beyond the Prut", of a school of pedagogical thought (and not only), of a direction and rootedness, in what we call today , the sciences of education, which deserve all our attention and valorization. As one who knows the community of pedagogues in Bessarabia, through proximity, direct experience, immersion in common activities, integrative interest, I testify to the professionalism, dedication, creativity, involvement not only of the academic body (from Chisinau, Balti, etc.), with whom we have privileged relations, but also with the didactic procedural outfit, at the macro or micro level, exercised by educators at all levels of education, through exemplary services of high didactic value.
One of the topics of interest of the university Vlad Pâslaru is the literary-artistic education, namely that formative component that aims to form, consolidate, chisel our receptivity in relation to the embodiments of sensibility and experiences, from the past or contemporary, at an artistic level. This is why, for reasons not so much "didactic" as epistemological, clarifying, penetrating, we are proposed, through the present paper, an introduction, even deepening, of some conceptual elements, horizons, strategies, solutions to facilitate, educators and the educated, together, an entry into the world of artistic values.
The idea of inclusion in a dictionary, explicitly as an epistemological discourse, terms, keywords, meanings of some words that refer to art, reception of beauty, artistic joy, artistry, training for beauty, co-participation, artistic empathy, artistic attitude, value judgment And so on And so on it seems auspicious to me, especially since such an explanatory "concentrate" can acquire pragmatic, documentary, educational, projective value in the multiple circumstances of training in this direction. Searching and limiting yourself only to what Google-type engines offer you is a simplified, if not problematic, approach of a machine-like, impersonal, stochastic coordination. A query, in front of a dictionary, is nothing more than a random "walk" through virtual space. The classic dictionary, like the present one, is assumed, filtered, arranged from the perspective of a human, personal positioning - of a search experience lived and exercised on an individual or collective level. It cannot encompass everything, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) might, but it does bear witness to a way of thinking, feeling, imagining – with the assumptions and precarities of the humanity within us.
What does this dictionary contain and what does it refer to? The Dictionary of Literary-Artistic Education (DELA) is an epistemological reference (with concrete references to the ontological, actional, procedural plan) for the training of the art receiver, of the literature reader, and proposes 182 articles and definitions of terms specific to the field of training-development of the receiver cult of literature and art and a limited number of terms of general epistemology and pedagogy, related to literary-artistic education (ELA), presented both as etymological, lexicographical values, as well as explanatory, implicative ways of arts pedagogy, reading pedagogy, reception aesthetics .
Being a pioneering positioning of the author who inventories, deepens and puts into circulation the terminology of a field of education that is about 6000 years old - since writing and reading exist, but conceptualized by newer approaches such as aesthetic theory, semiotics, literary theory, didactics of art, etc. only at the end of the century 20th century, the pedagogical terms (and adjacent to the pursued issues) that the author proposes are approached from an innovative epistemic platform - that of the types of human existence and the type of human knowledge specific to ELA - artistic-aesthetic knowledge. At the same time, we highlight the integrality, the inter-disciplinary approach, the multiplicity of explanatory perspectives that intelligently couple epistemic positions coming from the literary-artistic theory, the aesthetics of the arts, the philosophy of art, the didactics applied in relation to various artistic discourses, the semiology of art, grammarology, structuralism, literary criticism and history, etc.
We mention the fact that DELA follows another work, dedicated to the theory of literary-artistic education, materialized at the level of a PhD thesis in pedagogy, developed by the author, with related publications (Introduction to the theory of literary-artistic education, Chisinau, 2001; Bucharest, 2013 ) and is part of a wider renewal movement, both at the level of theoretical and procedural-practical positions. We know too well that the educational system in the Republic of Moldova is also going through system reforms, inquiries and notable curriculum redefinitions. Also benefiting from relevant influences/confluences of the Russian school of psychopedagogy (traditional or contemporary, recognized at the global level - leaving aside considerations of a political, strategic nature), but connected to everything that means modernity and European, democratic values, education from Bessarabia knows a dynamism, fervor and revival, on qualitative lines, which deserve to be taken as benchmarks including for education in Romania. The present performance, due to Professor Vlad Pâslaru, is part of this trend and desirable horizon. For example, the Curriculum of the Romanian language and literature, developed and edited at the Publishing House Șiința, in 1997, by a mixed team from the Institute of Pedagogy and Psychology in Chișinău (precursor of the Institute of Educational Sciences) and the Institute of Educational Sciences in Bucharest, came up with a new vision of teaching the Romanian language and literature in school and the first theoretical school curriculum model in the educational space of the two Romanian states. Based on this reference, the curricula for the mentioned discipline, valid for both countries, were developed, manuals and other curricular supports were edited. Also, experiences in this field (designing programs, textbooks, but also actual teaching) have proven that in each cycle/year of education/studies, both pre-university teachers and university teaching staff they urgently need works of a theoretical, methodical character both to understand the new concept of LLR teaching in school (more concretely, through disciplines such as Communicative-Linguistic Education, Literary-Artistic Education, in the Republic of Moldova or different names included in the Language and communication, in Romania), as well as to form the relevant teaching staff that teaches Language and Communication, Romanian Literature, etc. in the Republic of Moldova and Romania.
The current theoretical-explanatory reference is addressed to a wide audience, starting from those who are training to become teachers, the current teaching staff who teach humanities or socio-human subjects, but also cultural trainers, the public interested in the processuality of reception and creation in the literary area - artistic. Working as a researcher and university teacher alongside and together with school and university teachers for 50 years and publishing several studies and articles on the epistemology of ELA, the author has bent and been interested in identifying and clarifying some theoretical and experiential landmarks of training in this direction, proposing solutions for the initial and continuous training of the relevant teaching staff. Therefore, the editing of DELA is not only an individual gesture, with an attributive-restorative character, to configure the professional identity of the academic Vlad Pâslaru, to identify some explanatory frameworks related to this topic, but also a challenge to identify, in the future , and by other colleagues, of related epistemological horizons for those interested in literature research and the formation of the literature reader - students, masters, doctoral students, researchers.
We are pleasantly impressed by the precision of the thematic construction, the problematic and bibliographic references and references, the correlations with complementary, clarifying, comprehensive correlative terms that come to support the primary meanings of the concepts in question. We also value the inter-textual and inter-domain dimension, the inclusion of cumulative, reinforcing, evidential lines of explanation. In the end, this tool proves to be a cultural operator, a guide for entry and value assumption along historical, anthropological, metaphysical lines of human creation. Inter- and trans-disciplinarity, somewhat concealed, make the current dictionary an access path to wider territories, which explanatory support - and not only - the internalization of literary-artistic expressiveness. Intra- and inter-cultural openness is ensured by citing some cultural, academic, scientific, artistic landmarks from Romania and the Republic of Moldova, but also from the perimeter of European and world modernity or current events. References and concrete illustrations, from Creangă and Eminescu to notable names of contemporaries (I won't name them, they are many and conclusive), from the philosophers of Antiquity and the Holy Fathers of the Christian Church to contemporary semiologists and literary historians, etc. there are other evidential axes that validate an extensive, in-depth, serious, professional approach.
We congratulate our colleague Vlad Pâslaru for the undertaking - both innovative, comprehensive and courageous - to come up with such a scriptural offer, supported by accuracy, method, affinity and attachment, which helps us to understand and enjoy, through mind and sensitivity , of human creation - in general, and of the Romanian one - in particular.
Constantin Cucos
Bârnova-Iasi, April 2024