Arts as Education Pedagogy?

ITI Director T. Sasitharan was invited to a Drama Box dialogue with two other key players in arts education, Nazreen Osman and Kenneth Kwok. They discussed the implementation of arts education in schools, their roles in arts education and the challenges they faced. An excerpt of the dialogue was published on the Drama Box website.

"In 1993, the National Arts Council (NAC) launched the Arts Education Programme (AEP). Having been in place for 20 years, the cultural and educational landscape of Singapore has since come a long way. NAC has since launched other initiatives along with the AEP, working closely with the Ministry of Education (MOE), National Institute of Education (NIE), and other independent arts groups and artists, to deepen the integration of arts education into the mainstream education system. It is definitely a far cry from the days when arts was taught only as a stand-alone subject. However, Singapore's education system has often been criticised to be too narrow in scope, rigid, and puts little emphasis on creative thinking. Does this still hold true today? How has the implementation of Arts Education altered the landscape? Has Arts Education fulfilled what it set out to do?

In this issue, we made three key players of Arts Education – Nazreen, Kenneth and Sasi, sit down for a candid discussion, about their complementing and contrasting roles, and the challenges they face."

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