Artistic education and intercultural competencies: a proposal for promoting cultural diversity in primary schooling in chile

Abstract

This paper addresses the development of intercultural competencies by means of Artistic Education, in order to foster abilities and attitudes tending towards a greater appraisal and promotion of cultural diversity in primary schooling in Chile. UNESCO recommends fostering schooling on the basis of cross-cutting intercultural competencies such as aesthetic experience and artistic expression as these engender dialog, reflection, sensitivity and empathy toward sexual, ethnic and cultural diversity that depicts current society. A UNESCO perspective is relevant in countries like Chile, whose educational system shows deep social inequalities and negative figures of discrimination against sexual minorities as well as ethnic and cultural diversity. Therefore, we consider that promoting the role of Artistic Education is key to cancel out inequality, discrimination and social exclusion from a critical, divergent and creative perspective. We propose some recommendations for using artistic languages based on contemporary art, which aim at building well-balanced between-group relationships among students. As a result, dialog, sensitivity to diversity and greater empathy toward dissimilarity are fostered.