Different Perspectives of Arts: in Politics and Education

10
Mar
2014

The debates on arts continue to exist, packaged in the International Conference for Arts and Art Education held in the Academic Service Center Building of the Faculty of Languages and Arts (6th March 2014). Dr. Goh Beng Lan and  Rudi Corens, the two keynote speakers gave their  perspectives to the conference participants.

He stated that the essence of life was not merely about rights and duties. In addition, humans should learn and act properly to find the essence of life. They did not need sophisticated theories to find it. Forgiveness, openness and chances for dialogs were enough to erase the border of differences. He added that the differences happened as a result of the differences of historical backgrounds. He believed that the attitudes were importantly needed in life.

In the other hand, Rudi Corens told about his perspective in the children’s world. The artist and the curator of  Kolong Tangga”  Museum (Kolong Tangga means “understairs”, the museum of children traditional games) defined arts as the inner power of  human who had to come back from his nature to learn continuously. He expected that art education would able to provide the space for freedom of expressions.

Rudi believed that art education was good to build characters. However, it was a shame that the  implementation of art education was only found in the slogan.  Art education was actually to make a bridge between education and characters in order to give freedom for people to express themselves.

The materials in art education are varied. Nevertheless, he chose games as the media because games were the intrinsic elements of children’s world. “A game is the reflection of the real world”, he said. For instance, barbie is the sample of injecting values or perspective of American toward woman. In Indonesia, he showed Kolong Tangga Museum as an alternative to provide children a space for new things.

The development of children relies on the roles of parents and educators. Rudy emphasized that their significant roles in the children’s growth should make them aware of giving children art education since the early ages. (Zidnie/Rony/Febi)

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