It's World Art Day today (April 15) to highlight and reinforce the links between artistic creations, expressive arts, society and other disciplines to create awareness of the diversity of artistic expressions and their varied applications.
According to UNESCO, it is also an occasion 'to shine a light on arts education in schools, as culture can pave the way for inclusive and equitable education.'
In a small group discussion, with Dr Lalit Kishore, Anil Sankhla, Dhaval Jain, Tanishq Sharma, and Shelly Tibra as members, was held at Centre for Communicative English in Jaipur, in which the role of visual arts in creating visual symbols in pedagogy or classroom learning was stressed since majority of learners including those with special needs are visual learners. "Art can be extended beyond expression and creativity to forge links with visual learning by creating visual codes," stated Dr Kishore.
In India, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has brought out a teacher guidebook “Art Integrated Learning” (AIL) to provide an equitable experiential learning across school level curricula of various prescribed subjects.
It needs to be mentioned that the document is required to be seen as motivation for using a pedagogical framework for various disciplines as well to cover the ‘cognitive, socio-emotional and psychomotor domains of the learner’. In other words, the proposed pedagogical framework that is both “inter-disciplinary and holistic in nature.”
Here are two excerpts from the document.
-Art experiences, both in visual (drawing and painting, clay modelling, pottery, paper crafts, mask and puppet making, heritage crafts etc.) and performing arts (music, dance, theatre, puppetry etc.) lead to a better understanding and construction of knowledge about different concepts.
-Arts have the flexibility to accommodate age-appropriate opportunities for learners who can explore at their individual pace.
The document suggests that at pre-primary and primary levels ‘all education should be through the arts’. The objective of children’s participation in visual and performing arts is to make learning joyful and engaging.
The document should be read by the school functionaries to recast the curricula at pre-primary and primary levels level to make a shift towards inclusive education to accommodate children with special needs
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