The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

stresses the need for a broad approach to educationrather than a narrow emphasis on vocational qualifications.Many young people now at schools may neverget jobs — not through lack of qualifications but throughlack of jobs. This problem is not peculiar to Britain. It isinternational. Whatever steps are taken to deal with this,it is clear that there must be a response within theschools to what is taking place outside them. To seeeducation mainly as a preparation for forms of workthat are fast disappearing is clearly short-sighted.e Academic constraintsThe emphasis on education for employment is upholdingtraditional pressures in schools for academic attainment.These tighten the grip of examination courses onthe curriculum and make it resistant to change. Academicsuccess is also often pursued at the expense ofother equally important abilities in young people. Theundervaluing of these other capabilities instils into manypupils an undeserved sense of failure and wastes enormousreserves of talent and potential.Society needs and values more than academic abilities. Childrenand young people have much more to offer. The artsexemplify some of these other capacities — of intuition,creativity, sensibility and practical skills. We maintain thatan education in these is quite as important for all childrenas an education of the more academic kind and that notto have this is to stunt and distort their growth as intelligent,feeling and capable individuals.3 Cultural It is not just the patterns of working life which are changing.change The general culture of our society is becoming ever morecomplex and diverse. We live in an increasingly multi-racialand multi-cultural society in which we must learn to understandand respond to other ways of seeing and doing. Educationmust enable children to do this. We share the view ofHMI who concluded in their survey of Primary Education inEngland (DBS, 1978) that much more might be done inschools'. . . to make all children aware of other beliefs and toextend their understanding of the multi-cultural natureof contemporary society.' (DBS, 1978, para 8.24)We are sure that, in the forms of education needed in thischanging situation, the arts and the principles and methods ofteaching they represent, will prove to be more and not less