“Making the best banana cue is a skill, but showing it on film and preserving it for our future generations to learn is culture,” was how Dr. Anthony Juan Jr. (Dr. Anton to his colleagues in the arts community) captured the imagination of the scientists-participants to the recent 17th Conference of the Science Council of Asia (SCA), at the Philippine International Convention Centre, which tackled science, technology and innovation.
Dr. Juan, who talked about “The Body and the Wound: Some Reflections on the Meaning of Research and the Human Being”, floated the idea of offering the creation and development of subjects that merge sciences with the arts and humanities.
There have been studies abroad linking the correlation between arts and effective learning.
“It has been proven by the Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium, a philanthropic organization involved in the support of brain research, who in 2008 assembled scientists from seven different universities to study whether the use of the arts across the curricula affect areas of learning other than the arts. The report attributed more interest and more engagement in the learning process on the part of learners of math and reading.
“The STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] scores improved. The arts, especially the performance arts, engage the students in immediacy and attention-boosting, because communication is electric as is encodification and decodification, cognition and working memory, critical reading and analysis and expression and embodiment of ideas,” Dr. Juan reported.
“I have worked on these syllabi with various departments and ministries of culture and education here and abroad. In one class, imagine the challenge and excitement of the class: Turn a polynomial equation into a dance or a movement piece! The whole class buzzes, as the students start assigning the symbols in repeated, variated, contrasted movements! They have just learned stylistics, movement and polynomial equation!”
He also cited views of the 20th-century eminent psychologist from Harvard University, Dr. Jerome Kagan, who says, that “arts contribute amazingly well to learning because they regularly combine the three major tools that the mind uses to acquire, store and communicate knowledge: motor skills, perceptual representation and language.”
Dr. Juan pointed out that there are actually many courses from the humanities and the sciences that can be merged, such as: “Three Dimensional Animation and the Concept of Isolation in Robotics; Genetic Engineering and Frankenstein; Frankenstein and Imperialism; Darwin and Realism; Impressionism and the Concepts of Time as Duration; Migration and Performance Ethnology as Methods of Research; The Refugee Crisis, Documentary Theatre and Methods in Peace Studies and Humane Development; Yugen and the Essential Physics in Stage Movement—and so many other comparative studies and interdisciplinary gestalts.”
His proposition has actually been done before, when he formulated the Arts Across the Curriculum for the Department of Education that was intended for a group of faculty who took their Masters Degree in Education and the Arts at the Philippine Women’s University.
The syllabi was used in some special schools in the country and proved that the use of the method has motivated the students to study. He also used the same syllabi in special target schools in New York City and in the Prison Schools for the Juveniles, where it worked there, as well.
What is needed to develop and achieve these learning impacts are the sense of imagination and the sense of being alive.
“Visionaries and fools merge in the infinity of the mind. But visionaries look for the plan for humanity. And fools look for human deprecation and destruction,” he said.
Listening to Dr. Juan, one is reminded of the American author and playwright, James Baldwin. A respected artist whose strong sense of social justice also manifested in his artistic works.
Dr. Juan has taught at the University of the Philippines for over 30 years and is now a faculty at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, US. Multiawarded locally and internationally for his contribution in the arts, Dr. Juan received recognitions from the French government twice: the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1992 and the Chevalier de l’Ordre National de Merit in 2002.
He is currently working on “Richard III” and handling workshops for marginalized sectors in Manila. He is also preparing for a film on refugees in Rome for 2018, in cooperation with various institutes with the mission of social justice.
The 17th Conference of the SCA was jointly organized by the Department of Science and Technology-National Research Council of the Philippines, the SCA and the Science Council of Japan.
Image credits: Henry de Leon, STII-DOST