In 1835 and 1836 the House of Commons organized a select committee to investigate the feasibility of founding schools of design for the development of industry. Following upon the select committee’s survey, the first government-sponsored school, that is, School of Design was established in 1837. The School was under control of Board of Trade and the mission of the School was the training for artisans. Responded to the economic and industrial needs, the curriculum of the school was concentrated in copying the traditional decorative design.

As is shown in this history, art education has nothing to do with self expression at the beginning. It was for training of eyes and hands of artisans. Under the leadership of Henry Cole, who had been appointed as a general superintendent of the Department of Practical Art, art education was rapidly changed from vocational training to a branch of general education. Cole exerted himself to make public taste firmly connected with morality by standardization of art education and the industrial arts exhibition at the museum of ornamental art (later Victorian & Albert Museum).

Cole’s South Kensington System was criticized by John Ruskin, Ebenezer Cook, and others in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this context the self expression of children became to be the central theme in art education.

The transition of art education in Japan is similar to England with time lag. The art education in Japan originated at the School of Arts and Technology under control of the Ministry of Engineering.  In Japan as well as in England art education was regarded as an efficient means for industrial development. Some European artists who had been invited by the Japanese government taught oil painting and sculpture by the method of academy.The education of fine arts started at Tokyo Fine Art School established in 1887 (later Tokyo University of the Arts).

In general education drawing was set in the curriculum at the beginning of Meiji era, which aimed at training of eyes and hands of students. The style of art education was copying the figure and line of the examples of textbooks. This style remained in the first modernized textbook in Japan Sintei Gacho(New Textbook of Drawing) published in 1907 which had a far-reaching influence in elementary schools at that time.

Coping with this trend the Free Drawing Movement emerged in the 1920s, which was advocated by an artist Yamamoto Kanae. Influenced by European fine arts, especially French Impressionism, he recommended self-expression of children.

This presentation tries to clarify those histories of art education in England and Japan and exemplify the starting point of self expression in art education.

Stuart Macdonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education, 1970 Arthur Efrand, A History of Art Education, 1990 Elizabeth Bonython & Anthony Burton, The Great Exhibitor, 2003 Mervyn Romans ed., Histories of Art and Design Education, 2005 Malcolm Quinn, Utilitarianism and the Art School in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 2013 Hitomichi Ueno, A Study on the Art Education Movement (in Japanese) 1981 Kazuo Kaneko, The Method and History of Art Education (in Japanese) 2003