Adaptation

of Art Education to Suit

the Needs of Young People in
Malaysia
Azlan Andi Abdilah
Journal Article


Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to understand how art education can be adapted to
suit the needs of young people, especially secondary school students in Malaysia.
The education system in Malaysia plays a vital role and is closely linked with the
countrys development agenda that is the Vision 2020 for Malaysia (Mohamad,
1999). The Vision 2020 for Malaysia is set to achieve its laid objective to
become a fully developed country by 2020. However, without gaining new
confidence, current division in the Malay ranks and inadequate commitment to
education can lead to the vision becoming unachievable. Therefore, combating
these issues is very important in order to improve education for country
development since it is seen as a platform to indoctrinate national awareness
and social cohesion among the citizens of Malaysia (Liu et. al., 2013, pg. 93). In
order to achieve such goals, we need to foster creative problem-solving methods
for future generations through education. The way to form this creative thinking
is through the implementation of learning experience in art education. The result
will enhance the interest of the young generation in class, as well as encourage
creative outcomes engendered from disciplines in any field. In addition, art
education can be easily understood, no matter the background of the learners.
Keywords: art education, Malaysia, secondary school, art infused curriculum, art
appreciation

Introduction:
The study, which focuses on Malaysia, examines the public education policy and
art education needs of the country. Diversification in ethnicity as well as
linguistic groups together with a multi racially diverse culture has put
Malaysias educational system under some pressures and constraints. The
Malaysia World Bank senior economist, Dr. Frederico Gil Sander mentioned that
the education system in Malaysia is in devastating condition, definitely the cause
of more worry than households level of debt. He also stated that in school, the
children are currently doing worse than those in Vietnam, a poorer country than

Malaysia, and that the citizens should by now be alarmed at this situation.
(Ujang, 2014).

Since 2011, I signed up for three volunteering programs involving
underpriveleged students. The latest one was in July 2014, when I was posted to
Teriang Hilir Secondary School, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia as a Fellow Support
Corps (FSC) for 2 weeks to support teachers specifically in art education under
the Teach For Malaysia scheme. This has given me the opportunity to reflect
upon issues that were apparent during my volunteering there and which
continue to be significant in the development of art education and the visual arts
today.

Visual Art as compulsory subject.

In Malaysia, Visual art or Pendidikan Seni Visual (PSV) is a compulsory subject
from primary to lower secondary school level. However, visual art is no longer a
compulsory subject for upper secondary level students, while Science,
Mathematics, Malay Language and English are still compulsory.
This is because, in the second-year of upper secondary school, the student will sit
the Malaysian Certificate of Education or SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia), which is
equivalent to O-Level. In SPM, students are only allowed to take ten subjects,
and most of the students in top classes are assigned to take ten compulsory
subjects ranging from science and technology, and students in the bottom class
are left to take elective subjects such as visual art, merely to complete the
minimum requirement of SPM examination. Students in the bottom class tend to
have less interest in school, while the teacher does not have the full
determination to teach them the way they do the top class students. When this
happens, then there will be fewer students committed to scoring high marks for
elective subjects such as visual art. Ultimately this will decrease the index value
of the National Average Grade or GPN (Gred Purata National) in that particular
subject, and the Ministry of Education ranks the value of subjects in school by
this National Average Grade.
In the secondary school education system, Visual art curriculums are divided

into two areas, which are visual art production as well as the history and
appreciation of visual art. The visual art production comprises of fine art, design,
visual communication and traditional craft. This area emphasises the process of
making something, a visual production with focus, and understanding as well as
to critique. While the history and appreciation of visual art area is all about the
culture, imaginative elements, creative thinking theory, imposing critical
thinking, and of course encouraging the aesthetic values that can be contributed
to self, family, community and the countrys development by using an artistic
platform, as stated in National Education Philosophy. The National Education
Philosophy agrees that aesthetic values can be developed in the students
through visual art curriculum. Thus, the responsibility to integrate both the
production and history as well as appreciation of visual art into teaching and
learning was assigned to the respective educators (Kamal, 2013).
This matter was also highlighted by one of the most influential philosophers in
the first half of the century, John Dewey. Dewey believed that teachers should
constantly innovate. Not only do they need to master their field of study, but they
also need to practice creative techniques in the classroom. According to Dewey,
schools need to be powered laboratories where students learn how to learn, not
just what they need to learn. Logically thinking, the way to grab the attention of
the pupils and motivate them to learn is by creating an interesting way of
learning, and developing this creative mindset is difficult to achieve without a
platform, which is art education.
Therefore, an important step in influencing students positively is for the teachers
to change the perception among students that visual art is the subject of the
second class, and does not need to be taught in a way that involves meaningful
teaching and learning. Visual art should be considered as one of the main
subjects, so that the students are able to develop their creative thinking through
this platform.


Implementation of art in core subjects
The community in Malaysia sees art as an option, as if art education is only for
those who are gifted, or valued merely for entertainment factor. According to
published report of the UK National Advisory Council on Creative and Cultural
Education (NACCCE), staff with skills and abilities in innovation and creativity
are some of the key players to fulfilling current and future needs of the human
resources field (Cheng et. al., 2014). Undeniably, this can be achieved through
nurturing art in education, as in the more developed countries, such as UK and
USA. They have established special departments and organisations just to
explore an art infused education. Lakeview Arts Education Partnership (LEAP)
is a program in the USA where they bring artists to collaborate with inner city
schools to embed art more radically into learning and teaching (Cheng et. al.,
2014).
In practice this means that for example, dancers are collaborating in the teaching
of mathematics, drama specialists and musicians are team teaching history and
visual artists are involved in English language teaching. By experiencing and
participating in various forms of artistic and creative expression, students will be
able to better comprehend the academic subject matter. In this way, all students
including those that do not have the talent in the art also will gain a positive
impact; this can be seen from the implementation of art education system by
Steiner school. Also known as Waldorf education, Steiner schools adopt the
philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), which is the scientists and scholars
from Austria, who began practicing his philosophy in the first school he built in
1919 for the children of employees at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in
Stuttgart, Germany, and eventually evolved worldwide until now has had more
than 800 schools.
The concept of the curriculum is based on arts, sciences, and humanities. Which
is done from an artistic point of view, because Steiner believes that every student
has different ability and learning from different way. The Hutchingson and
Hutchingsons (1993) Canadian study of gifted students showed that non gifted
mainstream students which involved with the Steiner curriculum adopted the

creative behaviour of gifted students characteristics (Woods et. al., 2005). Thus,
it is apparent with artistic touch to the implementation of the core subjects are
relevant.

Art education outside classroom.
Perceived that Malaysia education system is based on the syllabus that has been
assigned by the Ministry of Education, customisation of curriculum may take
time and involves many processes. Therefore, there are various platforms for art
education practice that can be implemented through agencies or organisations
outside the curriculum practice. For example, a contemporary art project named
Prudential Malaysian Eye, in which the British Council took part as strategic
education partner to design and deliver programmes, which engage students
from secondary school and higher education through creative education.
Curated by Parallel Contemporary Art and the Saatchi Gallery, starring by
emerging Malaysian artists exclusive artworks collection, the project uses UKs
comprehensive experience in creative education field to provide long term
legacy as well as to promote creativity through art and English mediums. A lot of
activities are established through this project such as Student Artist Forums.
Student Artist forums normally held for 5 days. Students will get the opportunity
to engage with the artists and share ideas and stories about their artistic journey.
Besides that, there is also an art competition, My Neighbourhood Creative
Education Art Competition that encourages students to understand and
appreciate different art styles, by creating their personalise artwork. Not only
that, they also provide workshop for teachers, Teacher Creativity Workshop. In
this workshop teachers will also be trained to use a free resource pack designed
to help students to get their own answers within the scope of 21st century skills,
creative thinking and rich language. This program will provide a variety of
learning experiences that are different and creative that will be promoted by the
British Council's established digital arts and education networks.
Besides Prudential Malaysian Eye contemporary art project, there is also Teach
For Malaysia (TFM), an organisation that opposes education inequity, which
have the same concept with Teach First and Teach for America under the global

network; Teach for All. The basic concept of TFM is The Achievement, Affect, &
Access Impact Model (3AIM) they believes what the teacher knows influences
their actions in the classroom, which in turn has the same effect on what
students believe and do in the classroom. Therefore, in order to create a creative
mindset among students they need to develop creative skills and knowledge
among teachers. That is why the recruitment process for TFM main program
which is the 2-year Fellowship program is quite strict, TFM only recruits
Malaysians from top universities around the world and young professionals who
are keen on making a difference through education and with their unique
module TFM will train their Fellow by focusing on providing the mindset, skills
and knowledge to create tranformational change. There are many other
interesting programs organised by TFM, besides the one that I joined as I
mentioned earlier, a 2 weeks Fellow Support Corps (FSC) program where the
volunteers will get the experience to be in school supporting the fellows, TFM
also inviting industry leaders and public figures come together to teach
alongside Fellows for a day.
Not only that, there are few other well-know organisations such as Projek
Kalsom, that implementing creative education through motivational camp that is
fully run by University students for first-year upper secondary school students
for the past 20 years. These are only some examples of programs that the school
can participate in an effort to create a new interest in teaching the students,
because a unique learning way, such as joining motivational camp, having a
young overseas graduate teacher, and engaging with artists may give greater
impact to some individuals than their whole education year.

Art education in Rural Area
Regardless of socioeconomic indicators, level of social issues or dominant race of
students, the levels of art education are lower in rural districts therefore
resulting students in rural areas tend to receive the least amount of art education
(Illinois Arts Alliance, 2005, p. 2). Findings showed the urban schools have the
ability to have better interpersonal relationships with students than teachers
who are in a rural area. Furthermore, the analysis found that there are significant

differences between school in urban and rural area in terms of level of

competency in communication efficiency and relationship between teachers and
students. The urban teachers served a higher level of competence in terms of
their communication efficiency compared with teachers who serve in rural areas.
(Hassan et. al., 2006).
In spite of the low level of art education, rural school should be exploiting assets
to boost the arts in their education programmes. Involvement of community is
deemed as the most extensive asset to develop and implement the curriculum, as
well as teacher training and partnerships. Project ARTS (Arts for Rural Teachers
and Students) encouraged the community to collaborate with students, and a
major goal of the project was to enhance parents and community members
involvement (Marche, 1998). Through the project ARTS, the curriculum focused
on the communitys people, their histories, local festivals and arts and crafts
traditions (Clark & Zimmerman, 2000, p. 35). Hence, a stronger sense of
community is instilled as part of the arts project content, showing the
significance of the involvement of the community in the development of art in
rural areas. At the same time it will lead to positive communication betwen each
other.
One of the examples we can refer to in terms of impact created by a rural area to
the national education system is from Paulo Freire, one of the well-known art
education figures who has a very big impact on the educational system in Brazil.
Freire started with the Adult Education Program, which emphasizes the
understanding of the concepts of art and literacy, as well as encouraging the
development and production of a festival involving performance and art
programs based in rural areas in his own region, Recife. About three years after
that, his friend Paulo de Tarso, who was the Minister of Education at that time,
was impressed with his work in Pernambuco, one of the states in Recife region.
He decided to implement Freires idea into the Brazil-wide National Literacy
Program. (Morris, 2008). Therefore, it is clear that with a similar system we can
prove the effectiveness of art education in rural areas, and we are able to have a
big influence on the national level of education.

Art education in Urban areas

Students in urban areas experience different problems where urban lifestyle is
always in a rush, target scores for school syllabus are too competitive, family
issues such as parental divorce, and teenagers social problem, result in
emotional distress and lack of interest in learning, A major study that took place
in Chicago showed up to 50% of the citys urban youth had various levels of
depression, inclusive of 10% that suffer from other emotional illnesses arising
from stressors within the urban environment (VanLandeghem, 2003).
In order to tackle such issues, art therapy is commonly instilled to create a
surrounding that is more interesting. Research has stated that well structured
music and arts education programs are able to enhance peoples emotions, thus
improving readiness for learning, and reducing stress and negative social
behaviours (Holloway and Krensky, 2001). Urban art and music education can be
deemed as preventive paediatric medicine, which has significant value in
assisting children with overloaded stress. A South Bronx former art and special
education teacher, Tim Rollins initiated the project of Kids of Survival (K.O.S) in
which he gave the young people an opportunity to voice out through paintings.
These were later acquired by the Museum Modern Art to be shown throughout
the world as a symbol of individual and social transformation (Holloway and
Krensky, 2001).
Even in Malaysia, the Ministry has established the School of Arts in major cities
like Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru and Kuching,. The Ministry of Education (MOE)
have pooled their energy and made plans in line with the National Education
Association and the National Cultural Policy in connection with Enriching
Culture, Arts and Heritage, aiming towards creating a society that is aware and
appreciative of the importance of art. Among the artistic activities implemented
in School of Arts are: Arts in Teaching and Learning, Art in the Curriculum,
Teacher Training Education, Executive Coach Training School, Art Appreciation
Program, and Internationalisation Arts Program. In short, urban students need
the arts to develop their full potential and denying it is societal teen abuse. We
should not wait until they are emotionally disturbed before we offer them the
benefits of a well-rounded arts education. (Creedon, 2011)

Art education for Dyslexics

Dyslexia is defined by the International Dyslexia Association as a specific
learning disability that is neurological in origin. Some of the vivid
characteristics are difficulties with accuracy and / or fluent word recognition as
well as poor spelling and decoding abilities, which result from unexpected deficit
in the phonological language component that is related to other cognitive
abilities. This can also result in issues with reading comprehension and
avoidance of reading experiences, which can delay growth of the vocabulary and
background knowledge (Lyon, et. al., 2003, p. 2).

Dyslexia can be cured with eye coordination and psychomotor training, when
they can educate the brain with imagination through the visual, and relating this
to ways of writing and literacy. This method has been practiced by Albers
teaching method in design, where he used various materials such as paper, wire,
rocks and others to demonstrate the possibilities as well as limits of those
materials (Kotz, 2004, p. 91). Students are require to fold paper into sculptures
to enhance understanding on the three dimensional properties that are usually
seen as two dimensional. On the other hand, students also needed to solve
colour problems, so he constructed situations where colours can be
distinguished differently in different environments. Such activities help the
students to see, as Albers stated when he was hired "I want to open eyes"
(Duberman, 1972; Gobbo, 2010).

One of the teachers in Malaysia, Tiong Houng Ching, has introduced the concept
of "Method of Progression or Kaedah Ansur Maju (KAM)" to train students in the
class using the concept of repetition and recognising forms. This study was based
on the reaction of 5 dyslexic students having trouble reading and writing in the
Transition class. Transition class is a preparation class before entering the first
year of secondary school for school leavers who attend the National Type School,
for example Chinese or Tamil Primary School, not exceeding the eligibility
requirements. They will undergo a Transition class for one year to enable them
to master the basic communication language of secondary level, namely the
Malay language. Tiong Houng Ching started the study by training these 5

students to draw shapes and various kinds of lines to be associated with the
alphabet and numbers. Results showed that all the students showed positive
progress and the majority of them were already able to read and write neatly.
(Ching, 2005).

Another study is by the Professor of Art Education at Buffalo State College, Lucy
Andrus, who initiated Art Partners innovative programmes, described as
preparation for teachers to work with students with special needs in urban
settings. She also added that in preparation for teaching, the university students
need to fix their preconceived attitudes and beliefs in which everyone has the
capability of artistic behaviours as well as there is nothing special about
disability (Andrus et. al., 2012). This shows that art approach is suitable to be
implemented in education for dyslexic students.

Conclusion

In summary, arts education can be effectively promoted and implemented to suit
the needs of students in Malaysia, and that should not only be for primary school
but also the secondary school level, regardless of background and even for
students with learning disabilities. Outside classroom promotion can lead to
inside classroom support, thereby influencing the subjective viewpoints of
teachers on arts education. I can conclude that the following approach should be
used to influence teacher receptivity towards arts education. First, external
organisations should provide programmes that promote arts integrated
education, such as relevant training activities and artists-in-schools events. This
can encourage the cultivation of an artistic school atmosphere.

School authorities, apart from emphasising the development of an aesthetic
school environment, should realise that mutual communication, discussion and
support of teachers are also important factors of influence on the effective
implementation of arts education. Schools should also promote the importance
of the arts and endeavour to change the perception that academic instruction is
delivered only for the sake of exams. The successful promotion and

implementation of arts education requires both in-school and off-school support

for teachers and the students, helping them to understand the importance of
creative thinking through arts integrated education and developing a more
favourable outlook on day-to-day teaching methods. Art must participate
through visual education and persuasion in the development of popular attitudes
and behaviour in the classroom environment. This is the route to arts infused
curricula, which can lead eventually to a better society.


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