LA Essay

The Arts should be made a compulsory component in the school curriculum. Discuss.

Singapore has been pushing out the holistic education model approach in primary and secondary schools in recent years. The reason why the government has been so active in this initiative is because one should engage in other forms of learning, not only academics but also the Arts. The Arts should be made a compulsory component in the school curriculum and more can be done to enhance the development of students holistically and their learning process in the aspect of the Arts.

In schools today, government has pushed out initiatives to allow students to be appreciative of the Arts and learn beyond the textbook. For example, the TOTE board in schools subsidises fees for performances pertaining to the Arts, like musicals and plays. This encourages students to take the initiate to appreciate the Arts in their free time. However, in Hwa Chong Institution, there is a phenomenon in my class and other classes, where students rarely use this TOTE board. Personally, I do not use this platform for appreciating the Arts as the process of obtaining tickets for a certain performance involves a troublesome step where one has to find a group of friends to watch the performance together with the individual before getting the subsidy. Thus, the Arts should be made compulsory so that students will use the TOTE board initiative more effectively to appreciate the Arts, and enhance our learning experience.

Equally important is that the Arts acts as a form of recreation to students for them to take a break from the academic curriculum. For instance, I regularly spend my weekends visiting museums, like the recently opened ArtScience Museum, and watching musicals like the W!LD RICE production, Emily of Emerald Hill. In addition to appreciating the Arts, I also engage in such activities to relieve my stress accumulated from school work, even if it is for a few hours when I watch a play. I immerse myself in the fantasy world created by the atmosphere and plot of the story to toss my worries out of the window for a short moment. In our school curriculum, we have numerous commitments like ACE, project work and 3^rd language. We should occasionally take a break and relax ourselves by appreciating the Arts and maintaining our social well-being. Thus, the Arts should be made compulsory to allow students to have a school-based avenue for recreation.

In addition, the Arts is an avenue where a student can be creative, imaginative and express oneself freely. For example, a topic which can be taught in the compulsory Arts subject could be Artist Trading Card, or ATC for short. For those unfamiliar with this concept, it is an artwork that has the only requirement of being able to fit in a standard poker card size card. Materials and topics for these artworks are up to the choice of the creator. Most importantly, once one has created an ATC, one should trade the card with someone else, so that one is exposed to the variety of art forms out there. One such avid trader is my mother. She has been creating and trading ATCs for a few years now. Whenever I ask her why she persists in this nobby, she will reply that she is able to let her imagination run wild in creating these cards, and she is able to express herself through these artworks; as the saying goes “a picture speaks a thousand words.” Thus, the Arts should be made compulsory to allow students to express themselves innovatively.

In conclusion, I feel that the Arts should be made a compulsory component in the school curriculum. Though some teachers and students might argue that this subject is unimportant and acts as a distraction from their academic studies, I believe that this is a stereotype of the Arts. When a student is able to engage oneself in the Arts, apart from the reasons mentioned above, one is able to live one’s life meaningfully and would be able to be more sociable. One is able to interact with others more easily as no one likes an individual who is only good in one’s academic studies, but an individual who has a whole rounded education and knows how to appreciate the Arts.