15 January 2012

Culture and arts in K-12 curriculum

If you turn the pages of K-12 curriculum documents of many coutries, you can find a close knit connection between their culture, arts and the school curriculum.

With the absense of value education and arts periods in many of our schools, it is not only important to develop quality curricula but also lesson materials connected to our Indian culture, traditions and art forms across subjects.

I had always tried to use our cultural traditions and art forms including choreography when teaching different subjects in my classrooms. My students not only understood lesson concepts well but also developed an appreciation for art forms such as this one.

In today's global context, it is important to impart culture and arts based education by using resources from other countries as well such that they can help children to appreciate cultural fusion.

(It seems that our textbooks have made a beginning in this direction by using articles such as mine as shown below.



But when textbook publishers use any external material, it is basic etiquette to  quote the source as well  as the author, unlike what Tamilnadu Government Textbook Corporation did when using my material in the textbook, relevant pages of which are shown below).


No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

My photo
Chennai, Tamilnadu, India
I am a retired K-12 Education Management Professional. I have worked at different levels in K-12 school systems, textbook publishing, elearning and Education NGOs. I have held memberships in The Association for Science Education (UK), American Association of Physics Teachers and The Malaysian Institute of Physics. I hold a 1st class B Sc Degree in Physics followed by B Ed [English and Physical Science] and M A [Childcare and Education] degrees. My published works include 59 articles in teacher development magazines in India and the US and a book entitled `Creative Classrooms and Child Friendly Schools' (listed in Amazon). This book is almost an anecdotal account of my professional experience in six countries (including Cambodia where I worked as Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Education, Youth And Sports). I served as mentor in the Certificate of Teaching Mastery Program offered by Teachers Without Borders.