Arts education

I was asked to participate in a UNESCO “Survey on the Implementation of the Road Map for Arts Education Resulting from the First World Conference on Arts Education.”

The Road Map for Arts Education is an international agreement the Philippines signed in Lisbon in March 2006. It sets forth the aims and concepts of Arts Education, the essential strategies for effective arts education, and research on arts education and knowledge sharing. Like other UNESCO agreements, it gives recommendations to be implemented by member-nations.

These are the aims of arts education: (1) uphold the human right to education and cultural participation, (2) develop individual capabilities, (3) improve the quality of education, and (4) promote the expression of cultural diversity.

The numerous recommendations of the Road Map revolve around advocacy, partnerships, evaluation, government recognition, policy development, and training for teachers and artists.

The questions in the survey focus mainly on the response of the Philippines to the Road Map. I have not submitted my answers to the survey, but I can say that, in general, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) has done quite a lot in its own spheres of influence, particularly in informal and nonformal education. We have some way to go, however, in getting arts education into the mainstream of formal education in DepEd and CHED.

Reading the Road Map, I was struck by the large input into the document done by the Philippines. Cecile Guidote Alvarez, Presidential Assistant for Culture and Executive Director of the NCCA, was instrumental in expanding the original narrow definition of arts education in previous UNESCO documents into what it is now in the Road Map.

Alvarez was in South Korea in 2005 during the planning sessions for the Lisbon conference. She spoke convincingly about the need to have a cultural ideology that would encompass not just the formal school system but the vast majority of people (in many countries, most people did not or do not go to school). She gave examples from her own personal experience in setting up cultural education programs in various settings. In particular, she described PETA and the Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble, two of the groundbreaking groups she founded.

PETA, of course, as it is now documented in the marvelous and comprehensive 2008 history book A Continuing Narrative on Philippine Theater: The Story of PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association), edited by Laura L. Samson, Brenda V. Fajardo, Cecilia B. Garrucho, Lutgardo L. Labad, and Ma. Glorioso Santos-Cabangon, has become an internationally-recognized national theater movement.

The Earthsavers DREAMS Ensemble was designated in 2003 as UNESCO Artists for Peace, “in recognition of their dedication to the Organization’s aims and ideals and their contribution, through the performing arts, to the propagation and promotion of UNESCO’s message of peace, tolerance and hope,” as the citation read.

The two Philippine examples clearly proved that arts education could be and should be extended to radio and television, prisons, hospitals, adult illiteracy programs, and the differently-abled (at that time, the last group was still referred to as “mentally challenged and physically handicapped”).

The international delegates agreed with Alvarez and included her suggestions in the draft document. The Philippine experience thus became a major part of international policy as spelled out in the Road Map.

Because of the extraordinary value we place on family, we Filipinos often think small, thinking mainly of our own families and not of non-relatives. Nevertheless, we also think of the nation during extraordinary times (such as when a volcano erupts or when a boxer wins a million-dollar match).

We have not really started to think in even larger terms, namely, of the world community. Like it or not, we are in a globalized world, where the greed of a few stupid investment bankers in New York can destroy the entire world economy and where the stupidity of a greedy (thankfully, former) American president can provoke widespread terrorism. But it is not only in economics and politics that we have to start being citizens not just of our country but of the world. In the realm of arts, we have as much to gain and as much to lose when we highlight or marginalize arts in the curriculum, as mandated by the international community.

When we say that we can make a difference, we should now think not only of making a difference for our family or in our nation, but in the world. That we can do that has been proven time and again in various fields. In particular, as far as the Road Map is concerned, we have proven it in the case of a Philippine cultural minister speaking her mind at a major international meeting.

FUSE TRAINING: The Foundation for Upgrading the Standard of Education (FUSE) held a teacher-training seminar last Monday and Tuesday on “The Teaching of Literature in High School.” More than a hundred principals and teachers from DepEd NCR and Calabarzon participated in the seminar. I want to thank the staff of FUSE for being extraordinarily helpful, the three trainors (Marjorie Evasco, Jaime An Lim, Antoinette Montealegre) for their time, and the participants for their enthusiasm. Literature is on its way back to being at the core of secondary education!