Arguing that more money should be pumped into curricular arts lessons, only for them to be ruined by an exam-oriented system which isn’t designed for them, is the wrong way forward, says Ashna Ahmad.
“The thing is, I don’t hate art, and I never have hated it. I love it. From a very young age, I have been singing and acting, visiting art museums and theatre productions, reading and writing voraciously, and above all, just being creative and expressing myself. And it’s sad, and symptomatic of the deep flaws in our education system, that this has been misunderstood.”
These are a few sentences from the introduction to my final portfolio for my Silver Arts Award, an extracurricular, multidisciplinary arts qualification which I was lucky enough to take in Year 10. I was certain that I wanted to take this qualification as soon as I heard about it — but I was equally certain that I never wanted to study a ‘creative’ subject at GCSE. My experience with the creative arts at school, from Reception to Year 9, was uniformly terrible... Keep reading on Varsity
“The thing is, I don’t hate art, and I never have hated it. I love it. From a very young age, I have been singing and acting, visiting art museums and theatre productions, reading and writing voraciously, and above all, just being creative and expressing myself. And it’s sad, and symptomatic of the deep flaws in our education system, that this has been misunderstood.”
These are a few sentences from the introduction to my final portfolio for my Silver Arts Award, an extracurricular, multidisciplinary arts qualification which I was lucky enough to take in Year 10. I was certain that I wanted to take this qualification as soon as I heard about it — but I was equally certain that I never wanted to study a ‘creative’ subject at GCSE. My experience with the creative arts at school, from Reception to Year 9, was uniformly terrible... Keep reading on Varsity