Towards Quality Art Education: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Quality art education promotes emotional development, as well as cognitive achievement, which is a key factor to achieve quality education. Art education is an instrument par excellence that a nation can rely upon to bring about self-reliance. Quality art education produces positive learning outcomes, such as creating positive attitudes to learning, developing a greater sense of personal and cultural identity, and fostering more creative and imaginative ways of thinking in students. Arts-based processes allow students the opportunity to express their knowledge, ideas and feelings in ways that do not necessarily involve words. Unfortunately, the value of arts-based learning in Nigeria is diminishing because of some challenges, including the negative perception of the course by students, parents and even the society at large. It is against this backdrop that this paper brings into focus the position of the course in Nigeria’s educational system with a critical analysis of challenging issues such as: the supply and training of qualified art teachers, negative attitude of individuals and government, social identity, lack of facilities and materials, among others. Recommendations were proffered on the way forward. The paper finally concludes that good quality art education is an essential component of holistic education (formal and informal).

Keywords: quality, art education, challenges, opportunities