The Tolerant Classroom: Challenges in Fostering Multi-ethnic Tolerance in Visual Arts Education

Unity and tolerance are imperious in the development of educational policy in multi-ethnic Malaysia. Efforts are taken cautiously to implement an educational policy which would include and acknowledge the diverse cultural values in the curriculum. Visual Arts Education is conceded as a unifying tool in education and for life-long understanding and tolerance of ethnic diversity. This qualitative case study on a Visual Arts Education teacher with seventeen years of experience teaching the subject in a national school investigates factors which impede educators in the process of fostering multi-ethnic tolerance in the arts classroom. Some of these factors which become the challenges for Visual Arts Education teachers in fostering multi-ethnic tolerance in the classrooms are the nonchalant attitude towards visual arts education, ethno-centric grouping and the time fringe in completing the syllabus.