The Difference between Planting and Constructing

Education

Discussing Education in Art Schools may have been seen, but descants over Art Education in Schools is very less pronounced. It has been an area of disregard and demoralization both by art fraternity and non-art sections of the society. School level art education doesn’t embroil the art fraternity, because it doesn’t relate directly to contemporary art practices or to discourse of art, and non-art sections (laymen masses) are not aware about Fine Arts as a fully-fledged career. 

   

School Magazine Cover Page by Me
(Collage and mixed media on paper)

In both public and government schools, art education is not a ‘grade gaining’ subject, which students have to study and score high to obtain a good CGPA; instead it is a co-scholastic area.  Like music, dance, sports and work experience, art education introduced and included into curriculum with the aim of overall personality development of a child. Here the point of dismay begin when it loses the status of ‘co’ and enters into an ‘extra’ zone. Most of the schools outbid a hierarchy of subjects in their curriculum emphasizing the science and commerce stream. School administration feel a staunch exigency of it for saving student’s future in terms of making them able to earn a livelihood in their forthcoming lives. With such thinking schools also behave like non-art sections of the society that doesn’t induce fine arts as a desired career option.  

This attitude results into a burden on children to pursue science, mathematics or commerce without having any aptitude for it. Though I descry the urge of studying and emphasizing on ‘subjects’ till class-10, but I also feel the need of deciphering the child’s interest and competence right from class-8 onwards, so that s/he can decide her/his career at right time in right direction. There are children those have all the capacities to grow into a creative, analysis and exploration based profession, but they also get pushed into undesired and inept areas in their professional lives. A radiant and class topper student of my previous school who has adopted science stream in class-11 told me that her interest always lied in studying history not in science, but she was pressured to carry an aim of becoming a doctor due to his father’s qusere in a subject like history, who is an reputed engineer. He consider history a peril area to pursue. 

I recall my own school days, as I studied in both public and government school, where we had book of ‘Kala Shiksha’ in our curriculum but no ‘Kala Shikshak’ to teach. A lot of time I feel if I would have anyone to inculcate my creative interests right in school, I would not have wasted my five years in wandering around medical science and arts. It took time to recognize my real zest by own, because in family very few get anyone familiar with fine arts. But even today school’s administration generally consider art education for those children who are poor in studies even after all efforts. Bright students are not made for a thing like art because they can pursue other subjects, no matter how much they have suppressed their interests, creative expression and talent.

I assume it as complete stereotypical notion set in their mind, as people those become artists, writers, performers, art teachers and so on, they were not the weakest at academics. They could also pursue any other management, engineering or medical degree but despite of it they had chosen the areas of their passions. We have a number of significant and practicing artists those listened the sprouting sound of their hearts while keeping aside a well-settled career in another field. And none can deny the power of an honest passion that lead someone to satisfaction, hard work and success. It should be recognized by the system of school education that art touches our lives in many more ways than we know. A factory production of engineers, doctors and MBA’s is as lopsided, non-healthy and non-productive as constructing the sky-high buildings at the cost of mushrooming green trees. It just cannot fill the emptiness the human race is facing within, living in uncertainty and anxiety despite of all outward signs of progress like-flyovers, metros, cars, malls and everything that attracts from outside. 

Art is an expression that is born out of our own from the world we live in. It germinates from the changes that happen in our socio-political climate. I should agree that for people who are not informed about fine arts, its wide and multifaceted scope when the word ‘art’ is once mingled with ‘contemporary’ and its historical discourse, the first step to make them aware is arduous. And it’s good to see that some mainstream art galleries, museums and other non-profitable institutions are coming up with children learning programs, summer-camps and hobby classes. It could help anyone among them having some zest to embrace art for a lifetime. Their parents would also familiarized themselves with artistic creativity and would experience it at larger platform. After all they also need to know the baffling expressions of contemporary art, with its multiple formats, materials, mediums, and environment. In small towns where there is no such institutions, I am hopeful that with dedicated efforts of like-minded people and educators, the need and relevance of art and culture will be recognized and its presence will reach out to a huge number of visitors and art lovers beyond the art fraternity.

I am hopeful that art will not be banished to ‘free period’ activity or simply to beautify the classroom or school premises as said by Roobina Karode, Educator and the director of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art as it has a vital role to play than this. It is important to realize that creative and artistic pursuits have a humanizing effect on us. I feel it when I enter into a primary classroom, kids waiting for their art teacher with glowing faces and felicitating smiles. They become happy to imagine the freedom they get in art period replacing the whopping stick. Situation is contrasting with secondary class children especially of class-9 and class-10. They have forgotten the joy of creative learning in front of growing academic scud even being good in creative areas.

I am hopeful that art teachers in schools will not be identified as ‘free’ or to simply used like ‘stepney’. Schools should understand that art teachers don’t only work for their salaries and money, they turned their hobbies into a profession due to their love towards art and they would find useless earning money if they will be forced to create distance from their work. This is the responsibility of art educators to try people make understand about it, so art education can contribute into children’s lives like watering into sprouting seeds not like shaping the grown-up bushes in order to make them artificially attractive.