Thiruvananthapuram: The CBSE has decided to make arts education compulsory for Classes from 1 to 12 and asked every school to reserve a minimum of two periods per week for the purpose.
According to the guidelines published on the official website of the CBSE, the board has recommended that arts education should not be restricted to the major spheres such as music, dance and visual arts, including crafts and theatre, for the students of upper primary sections.
The CBSE suggested that the students of classes 6 to 8 should also be introduced to culinary art to give them a strong understanding of multi-disciplinary links across their subjects. They should be taught the value of nutritious food, crops and spices grown in the country, oil extraction from various seeds, good agricultural practices and pesticides use.
Arts education will help the child apply art-based inquiry, investigation and exploration, critical thinking and creativity for a deeper understanding of the concepts. Also, art integrated learning is a strong contender for experiential learning, as it enables the student to derive meaning and understanding directly from the learning experience, the guidelines said.
Other objectives are development of communication skill, reflection and inquiry skills, appreciation for aesthetic and creativity, and helping the students identify 'multi-disciplinary’ links between subjects, topics and real life.
The understanding is drawn from the NCERT position paper on national focus group on arts, music, dance and theatre. The paper said that in the current situation our approach to organise the curriculum is to present knowledge as ‘packaged’ usually in textbooks, along with associated rituals of examinations to assess, where knowledge acquisition and marks become a way of judging competence in the subject area.
