Cultural Education Through the Arts - Benefits

Hi MIMU,

I read your last post on teaching cultural diversity through visual arts, but my question is what's the point??

Signed,

Skeptical

We can appreciate your skepticism, Skeptical, but don't worry! We've really thought this through and Udy has put together a few key points about the benefits of using visual arts to teach cultural diversity.

• Expose students to the voices, images, feelings, ideas, and experiences of diverse cultures;
• Provides opportunities to broaden and enrich students’ cultural knowledge of diverse peoples;
• Facilitates the opportunity for students to communicate and to share knowledge and information across cultures
• explores the cultural, historical, psychological, and political roots of students’ own identity and examines the complex intersections and interconnections of race, gender, class,ethnicity, religious belief, sexual orientation, ability, and age that comprise the  canadian culture
• Develops critical thinking skills by providing students with activities that will enhance their capacities for imagination, intuition, reasoning, and evaluation, as well as contribute to achieving perspective, constructing and discerning relationships, and gaining self-awareness
• Develops skills to differentiate between “looking” at the surface of art and culture, and “seeing” beneath the surface to discover meaning and values in one’s own culture and the culture and art of diverse peoples.

An inclusive classroom values the social and ethno cultural backgrounds of all students. Diverse family customs, history, traditions, values, beliefs and different ways of seeing and making sense of the world are important contexts for enriched learning through visual arts. All students need to see their lives and experiences reflected in artwork. Students who, for whatever reasons,feel alienated from learning often benefit greatly from experiences in art work.

Visual arts afford students unique way of knowing and expressing what they know.