Arts Education in Japan

There was an Arts Education seminar on Tuesday morning that I didn't attend because I attended the environmental education seminar instead. The arts education seminar was led by Mr. Chihiro Tada, the Arts Education Institute Director. I kept hearing compliments about his presentation all morning, so I got notes from an art teacher who attended his presentation. Art teachers, this one's for you!

Tada believes that art education should be conducted when children are very young because art enhances creativity and imagination. Art produces the ability to express and becomes the sensibility of a person. "To know is not even half as valuable as learning to sense." But, Japanese education stresses learning by knowledge and memorization, and more emphasis is placed on science and math education than on arts education. In part, this is the tradition of Japanese education, but in part it's because industry and engineering respect knowledge more than creativity. Tada thinks that this needs to change and worries that if it doesn't, the arts will become an elective course of study in Japan. He also cited research on scientists who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics; the research showed that the winners spent a lot of time drawing as children. Drawing teaches you to see details. Tada has also created the Tokyo Toy Museum this past year. It sounds like a fascinating place, and I've included a link to the article at the end of this post. And let the comments begin with creativity, brainpower, toys, and car navigation systems....

"Children are ingenious players by nature. They can easily be excited by playing with a mere stone or sandbox," said Chihiro Tada, 47-year-old head of the Tokyo-based nonprofit association. "But nowadays, high-tech games and toys offer children little opportunity for being creative, and those high-tech games have significantly undercut their ability to play." "It is just like a car-navigation system. Once you start using it, you won't use the atlas anymore to find where you are," he said.

Here's the link to the May 15th Japan Times article.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080515f1.html