National curriculum on its way' and a challenging art education

Abstract

This study explores the nature of a "challenging" art education. In Proceedings, National Curriculum on its Way Sina Farrugia writes that: "All children ... should be given an education in the expressive arts which is coherent, continuous and challenging". However, in the same book, it is also stated that time allotted to the creative arts is less than 6% of the timetable and the visual arts only 3%. Therefore, this statistic may show that in Malta, the creative arts in education are not given enough space to be "challenging" as Sina Farrugia might wish. I sought the opinions of the members of the focus group on 'Creativity and Self-Expression' and other educators' views about the kind of art education that is offered to Maltese children, and also discussed ways of improving it and making it more challenging. We discussed the following issue: Does art education simply teach skills or does it aim to challenge society's culture and values? Finally, this research shows that there is not one single definition of a challenging art education. It also depends on the art educators to make it challenging enough and there are various ways of doing so by first and foremost making it stimulating and relevant to our students. Art education should not be restricted to the traditional methods but should embrace innovation, creativity, self expression, culture identity, multiculturalism, values and controversial issues.