Art and Culture. So What?

The learning of the Arts and Cultures has been given more prominence recently when the Minister of Education encouraged teachers to “nurture in students a love for arts and culture”.  All educators know that they should expose their children to some form of Art and Culture; simply because such exposure is good.  What is so “good” about such exposure?

When children engage in painting, they are credited as being creative and expressive.  When children dress up in traditional costumes, they are termed as culturally exposed.  Both activities are not wrong, but their scopes are too narrow to fully reap what these two disciplines can illuminate.  Art education is not only about training our children to become artists.  We do not need to become artists to know how to appreciate great works.  Similarity, not only historians can benefit from the knowledge of ancient discoveries and advancements of the great Ottoman or Greek empires.

When artists create, they are expressing their ideas, motivations, feelings and sometimes, frustrations, albeit in a visual form.  When enjoying the artworks, we are not only looking at the colours and the painted images.  We are also communicating with the artist to understand another person’s point of view.  When faced with opposing views, do we have the courage to entertain the thought that people have different ideas, but the other person may not be “wrong”?  Are we then ready to provide our own responsible and justifiable perspectives?  When faced with a more "superior" opinion, do we have the humility to recognise our own limitation?

Culture helps us to navigate our own bearing and place in society.  Being aware and proud of our own sets of values and traditions give us the foundation and the identity to face challenges.  Being aware and respectful of other people’s history and culture make us less presumptuous and open to ideas and to celebrate diversity and similarities at the same time.  This broadens our outlook, allows us to better adapt to circumstances and to function more effectively and contribute maximally to society in our own unique way. 

The value that both the Arts and Cultures can bring to our children is immense. We need to approach them with more wisdom and not just seeing them as two non-exam-able subjects where minimal exposure is considered too much.