Taichung City Dongshi High School—Carp Leaping Over the Dragon Gate: From Legend to the Mindset of a New Generation

This program centers on "interdisciplinary aesthetic education," combining local culture, practical public art creation, and interdisciplinary collaboration to address common issues in vocational education such as learning gaps, insufficient sense of value, and disconnect between theory and practice. It attempts to establish an aesthetic learning path that moves from "perceiving culture" to "participating in public action," and further to "global communication," making aesthetic education a holistic learning process that can be experienced, undertaken, and translated into valuable lessons. The curriculum design centers on the co-creation of public art on campus, emphasizing that aesthetic learning does not end with the completion of a work, but occurs over a long period of observation, manipulation, revision, and shared responsibility. In the process of physical creation such as clay sculpting, paper modeling, and painting, students need to repeatedly examine proportions, structure, and overall dynamics. Through group discussions and adjustments, they learn to transform their personal visions into public forms, building a sense of responsibility for quality, safety, and others. This process helps students understand that aesthetics is not a subjective preference, but a comprehensive ability closely related to structural judgment, public use, and cultural context.
In terms of cultural aspects, this program uses the spirit of Lu Ban (a legendary carp master), the imagery of carp leaping over the dragon gate (a mythical fish), and local temple art as learning materials. It combines art field trips, sharing of the life histories of folk artists, and comparisons with world art history to guide students in understanding that traditional culture is not a statically preserved symbol, but a "living culture" continuously accumulated, revised, and inherited through generations of craftsmen, communities, and life practices. Through a multicultural perspective, students reinterpret the contemporary significance of local culture and transform it into important intrinsic material for their own creative and public art practices. This program also emphasizes the supporting role of interdisciplinary learning in aesthetic education. By combining mathematics, drafting, AI technology, and bilingual learning, students understand that the creation of public art relies on the collaboration of multiple professions. For example, through geometric calculations in cutting and arranging "wishing scales," students understand the importance of fair support and structural feasibility; through drafting and mechanical principles, students learn how dynamic structures respond to artistic imagery; and in AI-assisted creation, students are guided to translate their physical creative experience and cultural understanding into digital visual language, cultivating sound and responsible technological application skills.
Throughout the learning process, this program consciously addresses students' social-emotional learning (SEL) needs. Through the transition from individual creation to collaborative public art creation, it guides students to gradually develop self-awareness, social awareness, and responsible decision-making abilities, making aesthetic learning a process of emotional understanding, value judgment, and the cultivation of public ethics. Students not only learn how to create, but also how to position themselves within a collective and take responsibility for the collaborative outcome.
In designing AI applications, this program deliberately places digital tools after physical experience and cultural understanding, avoiding the overriding of technology on aesthetics and humanism. The course guides students to understand that AI is not the main subject of creation, but rather an auxiliary tool to help organize, amplify, and reinterpret human experience, thereby cultivating students' judgment, sense of responsibility, and cultural stance in the use of technology.
Overall, this program does not aim at a single course or technical training, but rather guides students through a complete learning process of "observation—participation—responsibility—translation—sharing" through phased curriculum design. Ultimately, through the completion of public art and life rituals (tea parties), it helps students reflect on their creative experience and transform what they have learned into a long-term identity with the campus, culture, and self-worth, making aesthetic education a sustainable and extendable life learning experience.