Visual arts education in the primary curriculum
The
centrality of visual arts education
Art is a unique way of knowing and
understanding the world. Purposeful visual arts activities expand children's
ways of exploring, expressing and coming to terms with the world they inhabit
in a structured and enjoyable way.
Children first learn to respond
aesthetically to their environment through touch, taste, sound and smell, and
their natural curiosity suggests a need for sensory experience. Visual arts
education helps to develop sensory awareness, enhances sensibilities and
emphasizes particular ways of exploring, experimenting and inventing. The
visual arts curriculum provides for a wide range of activities which enable the
child to develop ideas through imagery, thus providing a necessary balance to
the wider curriculum. Learning in and through art can contribute positively to
children's sense of personal and cultural identity and to their whole
development.
The
visual arts in a child-centered curriculum
Each child possesses a range of
intelligences and he/she needs a variety of learning experiences in order to
develop them fully. Visual arts activities enable children to make sense of and
to express their world in visual, tangible form. They can also be unifying
forces in children's learning and development: drawing, painting, inventing and
constructing bring together different elements of children's experience from
which a whole new experience can develop. Understanding visual imagery opens
additional ways of learning for children and enables them to record real or
imagined ideas and feelings. Opportunities to explore and investigate the
visual elements in their environment help them to appreciate the nature of
things and to channel their natural curiosity for educational ends. The
confidence and enjoyment that stem from purposeful visual arts activities can
have a positive effect on children's learning in other areas of the curriculum.
Children who have had experience in exploring and
experimenting with a variety of art materials and media are likely, as they
develop, to produce art that is personal. A quality visual arts programme
ensures that each child has a variety of enriching visual arts experiences in
both two- and three-dimensional media.
