Team-04

Team 04's Wikispace Members&Country: Ruixiang Huang--China; Kaitlin Newth--Brazil; Katelyn McCormick-Jamaica; Rakhee Bajaj - India; Brittani Lince-Australia; Brittney Steinwascher--Ghana; Chris Schwartz - Puerto Rico















**Rakhee Bajaj:**
When I compared __//India//__ to //__China,__// it absolutely surprised me to see how similar two countries can be in terms of their education systems. People in India also believe that children should get all the information as soon as possible, who are therefore drilled with information from primary school itself. Art is taught up until primary and secondary school, after which it is stopped due to the pressures of teaching math, science and other core subjects, to the demanding population. It is funny how much i agree with you, the first thing that shocked me as well when I did my research for India was the increase in the number of arts organizations that are present in the country today. Since I have been in school in India (K-12) I have barely seen any organizations taking the initiative to educate the general population on art and creativity. But it was a pleasant surprise to actually see it happening to such a great extent. I think that the two asian countries are very alike in the matter of education and art, which could possibly be due to the similarities in the culture in the east. __//Australia//__ was similar to __//India//__ in terms of the cultural diversity due to both their geographical locations and 'unique conditions'. Both the countries have a variety of art produced and displayed in galleries and shows based on the different cultures and are valued and prized. Like //__Brazil__//, //__India__// has a very high illiteracy rate due to the conditions of the public schools that are made for the poorer students to attend, which are not free of cost as in Brazil. The private schools are way better in terms of the education they provide but are more expensive as well. Illiteracy rate is also high in India, as people from poor families believe that their children could earn a great deal more by working at someone's house instead of studying and pursuing education. The Indian government has made child labor illegal, but this has done little to decrease the illiteracy rate. However, it has been a few years since the rates have decreased and more and more people have started to see the advantage of having an educated life and this has brightened the future of many in India and has also improved the economy of the country.

**Brittani Lince:**
In our group, __Australian__ arts education seems to be most related to that of __Brazil__. Both countries value the arts and require them to be taught in school. __Australia__ and __Brazil__ are areas that place high value on the arts because it is immersed in their cultures. In both countries, the law is in charge of requiring how much art should be incorporated in the schools. __China__ and __India__'s governments work similarly but for the opposite cause. These countries do not believe the arts are important enough to be taught all throughout an individual's education. They tend to focus more on the science and math courses in the hopes of competing and succeeding. The education I received in the __United States__ seems to follow that of __Australia__ and __Brazil__. In the __United States__, we value the arts and require them to be taught in the schools, at least until high school. Once in high school, students have the option of continuing on in the arts, in the form of band, choir, art, or drama classes. There are also many after school clubs that focus on these subjects. __Australia__ offers and even requires that students take all of these classes and then some.

**Chris Schwartz:**  When I compare Puerto Rico and China, I find that both countries place relatively low importance on arts education in their school systems. China values a very technical education, and because of its large population, to compete with other students the arts takes a back seat to more technical skills. Similar situations are found in India and Brazil, but for different reasons. Like Puerto Rico, India and Brazil place a low priority on the arts in schools in favor of other types of classes. In India there is a low literacy rate (about 76% in India and 90% in Brazil vs. 99% in Puerto Rico), so more emphasis is placed on teaching young students the basics of how to function in society. This is a lot like the public school systems of Brazil. The low literacy rates of students who cannot afford private schooling where the arts are more prevalent forces the public schools to focus on the basics and not art. Culture has a lot to do with the types of education students receive. Puerto Rico, China, India, and Brazil are all very industrial countries, so the culture is to mold students into people who can eventually go work in that environment. This frame of mind takes away from arts education in schools for an education that students can apply to an everyday job in an industrial country. The thing that surprised me the most about comparing these countries was how little priority was given to arts education. I would have thought that more populous countries like China and India would focus more on the arts to give their students a way of expressing themselves and give them an opportunity to stick out in school. Art is a great way to express yourself and to be unique. I also found it interesting that Puerto Rico and Brazil model their education system after the United States instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and make their own education model.

I was surprised that there're such a lot of similarities between //__China__// and //__India__//. Both countries required children to study hard since the primary school. Students in both countries have keen competition due to the high population. And due to the high pressure of the competition, schools and the society do not pay enough attention to arts but focus on subjects like science and math. Why these two countries are such similar in the education system? I think this is because of the impact of the culture. Both countries are in Asia and their culture environments are pretty similar. This video will show you how Americans see their education system while comparing with India and China: media type="youtube" key="2K9PbYBQzK4?version=3" height="395" width="703" align="center"
 * Ruixiang Huang:**

After comparing with //__Brazil__//, I found //__Brazil__// and //__China__// both get classes about poetry. This did surprise me. Actually in China, poetry is much more like a language in the ancient time. It is pretty hard to understand what the meaning of poem is. People in China believe this “language” is a kind of art and could represent the culture of ancient China. This might differ from Brazil.

When comparing different countries from our group, I found the Ghanaian education arts system to be most similar to the Australian education arts system. In Australia, students are required a certain amount of hours for arts education for certain levels and grades of school. Likewise, Ghana has requirements for how many arts courses are required for each level of schooling. From comparing, I found both of these countries believe that the arts are important to education. A student’s creativity is important and needs to grow. It was also mentioned that the arts are used to teach other subjects. This is also true in Ghana. Ghana is trying to integrate art into their curriculum to help the students’ creativity grow while learning. This arts integration is also present in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has an arts education system that is very similar to the United States, putting a lot of focus onto integrating arts into curriculum. This is also starting to be more present in Ghana.
 * Brittney Steinwascher:**

I think that like the rest of my group I was really surprised at how similar India and China are when it comes to arts education. They both are very achievement driven, goal oriented schools. India and China both give their students early arts education, but then it is phased out in favor of a heavy academic curriculum. I think that both India and China expect academic excellence from their students, and in my opinion their schools systems are both much more high pressure than the United States.I think that India's and China's cultures play a major role in the lack of arts in schools. India and China have emerged in recent years as really powerful countries, and are trying to compete with countries like the United States. China and India are trying to prepare their students for success, and they are pushing their students to be very strong academically so that they will be able to be successful. I also think that really all of the schools in all of the countries we researched seem to place more of an emphasis on math, science, language arts, and social studies; while art tends to fade into the background.This theme really seems to be universal, and not only a problem that the United States had. It also surprised me how much Puerto Rico's schools are modeled after the United States; I figured that they would be somewhat similar but I thought that Puerto Rico would incorporate more of their own culture in the educational system, especially the arts. I also found that Brazil and Ghana both have high illiteracy rates, with both having more rural populations then most of the other countries that makes sense; although Ghana's is much higher than Brazil's.
 * Kaitlin Newth:**

I noticed a strong comparison between Indian and Chinese schools in their regards to the arts. The two countries are very close in proximity, so this could have to do with the culture in the region. Both school systems focus on science and math as their main subject areas. The arts constantly suffer when budget cuts have to be made. These school systems do not see the importance of the arts, like some other areas of the world do. They strictly focus on memorization, instead of exploration and creativity. Students are required to memorize facts and are not given time to complete art projects. Students do not have time to dance and sing during school, like the students in Jamaica do. These children are given direct instruction and are required to learn the material. Students in other parts of the world are not as math and science oriented, so they are given more freedom to express their creativity. Indian and Chinese schools see high importance in the sciences, as well as in technology. Technology can be thought of as an art form, so in this way, the students are getting exposure to art. Students all over the world are given different educational experiences and each student must make the best of the environment that they are in, whether it be one with a heavy art-influence, or one with a heavy academic-influence.
 * Katelyn McCormick:**

Rakhee Bajaj:
The only difference that I found between __//India//__ and __//China//__ was that the society does support art a little, though, not as much as required as it is the financial situation of the country that forces the majority government schools to opt it out. Unlike __//India//__, __//Australia//__ have still kept their culture alive through art. Even though India has also made their best attempts at doing the same, they have not been extremely successful at it as a lot of culture has been lost over time. It was surprising to see the dedication and the efforts taken by the country in order to spread art in the country and keep the tradition of learning art alive. India does not categorize art into dance, drama, music, media art and visual art and therefore students are supposed choose their favorite category and pursue it in school. I liked how unlike India, Australian schools have five different art classes mandatory and the fact that they put so much emphasis on the particular field. It was refreshing to see that art was mandatory in the different school years and students had to complete a certain number of hours of art. There is no such rule set by the education system in India that leads to people disregarding art as an unnecessary waste of time. I was very surprised to see that a country as underdeveloped as //__Brazil__// also makes an effort to give art the importance it deserves. It is good to see that the schools in this country do their best to promote art with the little funding that they receive and that they do not cut the art subjects out in times of economic crunches, as seen in India. I believe that __//India//__ could learn a great deal from Brazil and realize that financial crunches are not a reason to cut the arts out of the curriculum as one may require very little in order to let students create and let their imagination flourish. Unlike India, Brazil has kept the art courses compulsory even in their high schools and has students practice them as much as possible.

**Brittani Lince:**
There were many differences between the countries in the amount of the arts that were required in education. __Australia__ valued them the most and required them to be taught from preschool to at least 10th grade. __Brazil__ also required them to be taught throughout most of the grades but many students don't make it past 6th grade. The __United States__ requires that students take art classes until about 8th grade. __India__ requires art classes until high school and __China__ stops art classes in the curriculum after primary school, which I found to be very surprising. __Australia__, __Brazil__, and the __United States__ place a high value on the arts but __China__ and __India__ do not. The arts are viewed as a hobby, not a possible career. However, although the arts are important in the __United States__ and __Brazil__, sometimes there is not enough money to fund these programs so they are the first to be cut, especially in __Brazil__. __Australia__, on the other hand, seems to have an abundance of courses for children to choose from.

Out of all the countries listed in our group, Australia seems to have the highest priority of arts education in the school systems. This is very different from Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican education system takes after the United States education system, where they place little emphasis on the arts. In Puerto Rico, students are only required to take four arts courses in their entire K-12 education, and they may only be one or two types of art, typically visual art and/or vocal art. In Australia, all students are exposed to five types of art: dance, drama, media arts, music, and visual arts. This shows a much higher emphasis on arts education in Australia than that of Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, students will take a computers class where they learn the basic technical skills of using computers, while in Australia students would use computers to take a media arts class and learn more creative skills. All of this boils down to culture. As stated in my “Compare” section, it is Puerto Rican culture to give its students a technical background so they can get a job in an industrial country. This is different from Australian culture, where it is important for its students to graduate with a higher understanding of their creative process. I found it very surprising at how few countries place importance on the arts in the education system. I myself have been in an American education system for all my life, and have never really enjoyed the arts. Maybe if I had attended school in Australia, I might the higher priority of arts education may have spurred my interest in the arts as a whole.
 * Chris Schwartz: **

I was surprised that some countries like //__India__//, //__Brazil__// have such differences between private schools and public schools. In //__China__//, private schools are just the same as public schools. Only few private schools with better equipments and environment require much higher tuition fees. And not like Brazil, public schools in China still require payments of tuition fees. Unlike //__China__//, government in some countries like //__Brazil__// and //__Puerto Rica__// do pay some attention to arts education. In Brazil, the law mandates arts education in both elementary and high schools. And usually the art classes run from about 50 minutes to an hour and a half per week. In Puerto Rica, The government even created an institution which sponsors and funds artistic activities and programs called the “Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena”. In China, the government didn’t set any law or institution to help with the development of arts education. Unlike __//China//__, arts education in __//Australia//__ is treated as an important part in the education system. This may because of the cultural differences. People in Australia go to galleries and performing arts two times more than they go to football games. Art in Australia stretches back at least 50,000 years to the ancient works of the Aboriginals. The cultural environment makes the society pay a lot of attention to arts education.
 * Ruixiang Huang:**

When comparing different countries from our group, I found the Ghanaian education arts system is not similar to the Chinese, Indian, or Brazilian arts education systems. The Chinese, Indian and Brazilian educational systems do not value the arts, and do not put much emphasis on it. They seem to believe that arts education is not important to the student. In Ghana, arts are highly valued, especially in education. It is believed that a student who receives arts education will become a more creative person and these creative people are needed in the society to help it grow and solve problems.
 * Brittney Steinwascher:**

When contrasting all of the countries, I think that Ghana is probably the most different from the rest of the countries. They require arts throughout all stages of the educational experience. Students are given a large variety of arts classes to take, that includes learning bead-working and basket-making. I found that Australia and China are quite different. In China the arts are not taught at all after elementary school and in Australia the arts are still required in middle school and for two years in high school. China is also very different from Brazil. In China students are working really hard and competing to get into the best high schools, in Brazil most students do not make it to high school, in fact only 1 in 3 makes it past the sixth grade. Although India and China are very similar, I definitely think that Chinese students have a lot more pressure than Indian students. I think that a lot of that could have to do with their different cultures and political structures. China is a communist nation and the government had a lot more control over the people's lives. Whereas India is a democracy, so I think that is possibly why students do not have quite as many pressures.
 * Kaitlin Newth:**

When I was contrasting the countries, I found that China and Jamaica are very different. Chinese schools do not have a strong focus on the arts, since they are focusing more on science and math instruction. Jamaican schools do focus on the arts, but mostly just music. It seems that the Chinese schools are more strict about the academic instruction, while the Jamaican schools are more laid back. This could be because of the cultural differences between the two countries. Jamaica as a whole is a more laid back country compared with China. If Chinese students were to attend Jamaican schools, they would be surprised at the amount of music incorporated into their day. They would not feel as pressured as they do now in their math and science-focused schools. I think that a mix between the two schools would provide a solid academic environment, with a mix of cultural reggae-influenced instruction.
 * Katelyn McCormick:**