The Arts-in-Education (AIE) Programme, which aims to enlist a range of art forms to liven up the school day and enhance teaching, got off to a colourful start this week - complete with giant fruit and a caterpillar.
The joint creation of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the Education Department and the Hong Kong Institute of Education, the pilot AIE scheme is targeted at local primary and secondary schools and invites teachers and artists to suggest ways of integrating the arts into various subjects in the next academic year.
Dr Cheung Ping-kuen, chairman of the Arts-in-Education steering group and a member of the Arts Development Council, highlighted AIE's three aims. 'First, we believe that students will find it easier to understand the teaching materials through the use of different art forms. Second, education can become more student-based as more students are given the opportunity to participate in class. Also, learning can be made more fun with more drama, colour and music,' he said.
Ng Ka-hei, artistic director of Exploration Theatre and leader of a similar programme organised by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department last year, is confident the approach will be effective, arguing that the performing arts taught students the importance of observation and co-operation.
The classroom-oriented nature of the AIE programme differentiates it from the council's Artists-in-Schools (AIS) project run over the last three years. This project invited artists to organise extra-curricular activities for senior secondary students in 34 schools.
It has now become more common for local teachers to integrate arts education into language subjects. Now Dr Cheung hopes to see more innovative projects, such as music-in-mathematics and dance-in-biology.
To demonstrate, he invited a group of students to turn into fruit and the segments of a caterpillar during a launch conference at the Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association of Hong Kong. The caterpillar swallowed pieces of fruit, whereupon the student playing the fruit would latch on to the end of the caterpillar, showing how food makes an animal grow.