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Reclaiming the Arts: Thoughts on Arts Education and Cultural Diversity

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Arts Education and Cultural Diversity

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Abstract

This chapter is an attempt to wrestle with terms and concepts of arts education and cultural diversity. It seeks both to ask questions and to provide direction. It revolves around five topics: Arts and Appreciation; Arts and Education; Arts Education and Cultural Diversity; Range of Research; and Reclaiming the Arts as a Building Block in Cultural Diversity for the sake of Arts Education. The growing tendency to find ‘one language’ by clarifying and defining terms and concepts is replaced here with questions. Questions as tools to serve the conceptual basis for understanding, analysng and designing ways to investigate and work with an idea. A ‘research guide’ consisting of three key questions, followed by ten questions asking what and how, is proposed here to equip its user with open options to stimulate the mind. The main effort in this chapter tends towards finding an answer to one profound question: Why is it that the arts have a major role in cultivating culture and education, and yet, at the same time, amongst the four fields, The Arts, Education, Culture and Diversity, arts receive the smallest consideration? The answer is anchored in understanding that arts in education must rest upon their capacity to develop a better and more joyful life which brings into being humanity, and not necessarily their possible usefulness. The spirit of arts meets ideas of tolerance in the intersection of education and diversity, in the playground where thought should be translated into practice. Reclaiming the arts into arts education and cultural diversity is a quest for humanizing and thus improving the quality of our lives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Parts of this section are excerpts from my chapter, Appreciation: The Weakest Link in Drama/theatre Education, see: Schonmann (2007).

  2. 2.

    Monitoring National Arts Education Systems (MONAES): Some Results of Two Surveys among Arts Education Experts around the World Research Group Monitoring National Arts Education Systems (MONAES) Author: Teunis IJdens Netherlands Center of Expertise for Cultural Education. For information about the MONAES project: see www.lkca.nl/monaes.

  3. 3.

    Parts of this section are excerpts from my chapter (submitted): Reflections on Understandings of Arts Education: A Comparative Perspective, see references below.

  4. 4.

    The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It supported standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals could improve individual outcomes in education. The Act required states to develop assessments in basic skills.

  5. 5.

    Cited from the UNESCO (2002) Universal declaration on cultural diversity (Paris: UNESCO). From the preamble, director general Koichiro Matsuura’s statement.

  6. 6.

    Cultural Diversity and the Arts: Language and Meanings. Pamphlet. Edited version of Chapter Four of Cultural Diversity and the Arts, a section of the research report commissioned by the Irish Arts Council in partnership with the office of the Minister for Integration/National Action Plan against Racism (NPAR). The report was authored by Dr. Daniel Jewesbury, Jagtar Singh and Sara Tuck (2006–2010). www.artscouncil.ie.

  7. 7.

    See footnote 6.

  8. 8.

    Parts of this section are excerpts from my video lecture, Cultural Diversity and Arts Education, the Inaugural UNITWIN meeting, 26–28 April 2017, in Singapore.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Shifra Schonmann

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  1. Shifra Schonmann
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Correspondence to Shifra Schonmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Chee-Hoo Lum

  2. UNESCO-Chair in Arts and Culture in Education, University of Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany

    Ernst Wagner

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Schonmann, S. (2019). Reclaiming the Arts: Thoughts on Arts Education and Cultural Diversity. In: Lum, CH., Wagner, E. (eds) Arts Education and Cultural Diversity. Yearbook of Arts Education Research for Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8004-4_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8004-4_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

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