Seven problems of flower arrangement and flower industry

After more than 20 years' development, China's floral education has been criticized for its teaching quality, despite the increasing number of students and classes, resulting in a serious shortage of high-level floral talents and great defects in the knowledge and skill structure of floral designers.

Wan Hong, a Beijing flower artist, wrote an article at the first China Flower Arrangement and Floriculture Forum of the "Seventh Expo", analyzed and discussed the reasons for this phenomenon, and put forward some suggestions. This edition is published in two phases, hoping to attract more collections and discussions.

After the reform and opening up, with the rapid revival and development of flower arrangement art, flower education in China has experienced more than 20 years of development.

Especially in the late 1990s, China's floral education had a small climax when it was introduced into schools.

In the 265,438+0 century, floral education began to face difficulties, especially in the last two or three years, there were more and more students and classes in short-term floral training, and the teaching quality became worse and worse. The high-level floral education showed a shrinking trend after years of losses.

In sharp contrast with floral education, there is a serious shortage of senior floral talents, and flower retail enterprises are thirsty for talents.

Under the contradiction between the depression of floral education and the lack of floral talents, there are still deeper problems gradually emerging.

There are great defects in the knowledge and skill structure of flower arrangement and floral design talents in China.

First of all, commercial floral art has made rapid progress, but the level of system theory and basic skills of traditional floral art are poor; The operational capacity of commercial floral market is growing rapidly, but the flower culture is stagnant; The production techniques of commercial floral art popular in the West have made rapid progress, while the basic skills of traditional floral art in China have stagnated.

The defect of knowledge and skill structure of flower arrangement and floral design professionals has brought serious problems to the development of flower arrangement and floral design in China.

To solve these problems in flower arrangement and floral industry, we must first analyze the causes of these problems.

The author boils these problems down to the following seven aspects:

1. The idea of valuing business over literature

With the development of commodity economy, the tendency of valuing business over culture is not only manifested in flower retail enterprises, but also in trade associations and national industrial policies.

Flower arrangement is an important cultural activity. Our ancestors had already included flower arrangement in the "Four Arts of Life", but in the Song Dynasty, China took literati as the main participants in flower arrangement.

In the west, the title of "Floriculture Designer" also fully shows the recognition and attention of developed countries to floriculture.

Whether it is from improving the appreciation and consumption level of the whole people, improving the professional quality and social status of flower arrangement and floral industry, or enhancing the social image and industrial scale of flower arrangement and floral industry, paying attention to the cultural construction and publicity of flower arrangement and floral industry is the top priority of industry construction.

At present, the country invests a lot of financial and material resources to support the development of flower industry every year, but most of these financial and material resources are invested in the industrialization and commercialization of flowers, and little is invested in the cultural construction of flower industry.

However, the construction of an industry with strong cultural color has left the construction of its core culture, which can only make the industry wander at a low level.

It is understandable that enterprises attach importance to commercial interests, but if trade associations and national policies also attach importance to business and ignore culture, it is a major hidden danger in the development of the industry.

2. Lack of education development and personnel training planning.

At present, China's floral education and the cultivation of flower arranging talents are almost all driven by the market behavior of commercial institutions of floral education, which not only lacks teachers, funds and other conditions, but also seriously lacks foresight and planning.

For an industry, the education development and personnel training plan is an important guarantee for the planned, step-by-step and sustainable development of an industry.

Without the planning of education development and personnel training, the development of the industry is like an army without a commander in chief. Without organization and purpose, how can we not take detours?

3. The serious unreasonable educational structure is another major problem in the development of flower industry.

At present, the floral education in China is almost entirely supported by short-term commercial training.

Higher education, which should support the responsibility of cultivating high-quality talents in the industry, has hardly been carried out. Up to now, there are no floral design majors in higher vocational colleges and universities nationwide.

The problem of attaching importance to the theory of production technology and neglecting art education in higher education is very serious. Flower arrangement and floral arrangement only exist in higher education as elective courses.

Moreover, there are many serious problems in a few elective courses, such as serious shortage of class hours, insufficient funds, lack of teachers and imperfect teaching theory system.

An incomplete education system with such serious structural problems cannot provide enough talents for the development of the industry.

4. The level of floral education needs to be improved, and there are serious defects in the composition of floral knowledge and skills.

As we all know, flower arrangement is divided into two major schools: the East and the West. These two schools have developed independently for thousands of years. Until modern times, with the exchange of eastern and western cultures, American flower arrangement and modern flower arrangement combining eastern and western flower arrangement cultures were born.

At present, many domestic flower arrangement education institutions only introduce and teach a single flower arrangement style system, and even some flower arrangement education institutions mix several flower arrangement systems with completely different creative purposes, production techniques and design theories for a hodgepodge education.

This makes learners have problems such as incomplete theory and skills of flower arrangement, and even confusion of theoretical system and style of flower arrangement.

Flower arrangement and floral design is a practical comprehensive art which integrates botany, painting, sculpture, architecture, interior decoration and other disciplines. To raise flower arrangement and floral design to a new height, it is essential to learn from the knowledge and experience of other disciplines.

At present, there is a lack of comprehensive artistic literacy training for students in floral education in China, which makes it difficult to improve the professional literacy of floral design practitioners.

These not only lead to a serious lack of systematicness in flower arrangement education, but also create obstacles for learners' further promotion and development.

At present, the lack of high-level floral designers and teachers in China is closely related to our current level of floral education.

5. There are serious deficiencies in teaching methods, operation skills education and teaching practice of flower arrangement and floral education in China.

Flower arrangement is a practical teaching activity, which is very important for the training of students' hand-eye ability.

At present, the domestic flower arrangement education is nothing more than theoretical teaching, teacher's operation demonstration and practical operation training of a small number of students.

Such a monotonous teaching method and a serious shortage of teaching practice can't meet the increasingly high requirements of the industry for flower arrangement and floral design talents.

6. In the short-term commercial floral education market, there is a serious shortage of floral education teachers and the level is uneven.

Most of the teachers who are engaged in floral teaching do not have a good professional study, and only rely on certain floral experience and extremely unsystematic floral knowledge obtained from short-term floral education for teaching.

What's more, in order to save teaching costs, some floral education institutions choose teachers from students who have just completed short-term study and have no teaching experience.

These phenomena are not only the characteristics of floral education in China, but also the result of blind pursuit of economic benefits and vicious competition by social floral education institutions.

7. Oriental flower arrangement education, especially Chinese flower arrangement education is seriously lagging behind.

In the nearly 30 years of the recovery and development of the flower industry, the research on Chinese flower arrangement is more concentrated in the field of historical theory, and the research on the artistic thought, theoretical system, technical techniques, materials and utensils, teaching methods and many other aspects of traditional flower arrangement is seriously insufficient, or even hardly carried out.

This makes the promotion of traditional flower arrangement in China largely stay on the slogan.