AESTHETICS EDUCATION AND ITS POSITION IN THE 21ST-CENTURY DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

In the paper, the author considers philosophical, aesthetic and pedagogical concepts explaining the specific position of aesthetics education in the education system and its importance in developing the ability to express authentic attitudes not only in the assessment of the arts but also in social processes of a democratic society. A historical account is part of this consideration, as it gives us an overview of cultural epochs in which emphasis on the aesthetics education of a young person became a national interest or, on the contrary, it stood partly on the edge of interest. Through the ideas of important thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries (John Dewey, Paul G. Woodford, etc.), I try to emphasize the potential of musical, artistic, literary, dramatic education in the development of critical thinking as a fundamental attribute in the education of an authentic, free- and democratically- minded person. Active reception of art and the evaluation of artistic expressions occupy an important place in the awareness of one’s position in a society that faces many civilization and political challenges, such as poverty, migration, change of cultural mechanisms, and reception habits. All this requires reflection at the level of the philosophy of education in co-operation with its related disciplines, like pedagogy, aesthetics, cultural studies, and their applied educational disciplines. The definitive recognition of a dignified status for aesthetics education is one of the ways of coping with the civilization challenges of the 21st century and of flexible re-evaluation of the changing trends in the technologyoriented society structure and the one-sided general education