EDUCATION AROUND THE world is moving toward a new paradigm, with the arts at its heart.
Unesco has joined the driving force, planning a conference in Portugal on arts education for March, with ministers of education and culture. One of the men behind it has been in Hong Kong over the past month, hosting workshops and briefing educators, arts groups and government officials about the conference.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Dr Dan Baron Cohen, a member of the Scientific Committee of the Unesco World Conference on Arts Education, said the idea was to leave behind forever an educational model that many believe grew out of a competitive industrialised 19th century now dangerously failing the needs of this century, with its technological revolution, its conflicts and the increasing isolation and anxiety of its citizens.
Events like the recent violent rioting in France, largely by disenfranchised youths, had only heightened the debate.
The organisation was responding to demand from member states to provide a platform for ministers to think about a pedagogical shift, said Dr Baron Cohen.
At the core of the new model were proposals for the use of the arts - no longer a marginal discipline but with their creative languages vital across the curriculum - to teach cultural literacy. The aim was a new arts-based pedagogy to create personal and community transformation through story-telling, dance, drama and sculpture.