Sustainable Education for Sustaining Communities

This article presents an overview based on field trips to a select number of schools in Thailand and one in China. The aim was to look at the teaching of the arts in the primary and secondary curricula and its potential scope in relation to a more sustainable education. This factor lies at the centre of educational aspirations that aim to achieve a quality education for employment, deeper understanding of social issues and the development of life skills for adaptable, flexible individuals with a solid grounding in the best human values.

It is important to rethink current educational models in the light of providing a holistic education that makes links between the arts, sciences and humanities. Research in this field indicates that students are closer to attaining their potential when a holistic approach to learning is achieved.2 Each country has its own characteristics and the contrasts between their various approaches to incorporating the arts into education remind us how diverse the world, is in spite of globalization and the ‘global village’. In this article, I identify some new developments, through selected examples in China and Thailand, where the arts are used as a unifying principle in providing a quality education. The truth of the matter is that the arts can, in fact, be the catalyst to unlock old attitudes and achieve a much greater retention rate in classes. An arts-related curriculum can increase interest in the subject matter, give students confidence in themselves and provide them with new ways and means of learning. Above all, by integrating the arts into learning, the subject becomes far more attainable and students feel stimulated to learn.