News source:Ministry of Education Global Information Network>

Since the launch of the Ministry of Education's "Cross-disciplinary Aesthetic Education Excellence Pilot Program" in 2014, it has continued to encourage schools to start from the local area and develop curriculum by integrating cross-disciplinary and diverse issues. Coinciding with the month of May, the season of gratitude, Yuren Elementary School in Yunlin County uses a cross-domain aesthetics course that combines local culture to lead students to rediscover the hometown that accompanies our daily lives. They use art as a medium for emotional and cultural expression, and learn to be grateful and establish connections with their hometown.

The Yuren Elementary School district in Yunlin County includes two villages, Gancuo Village and Ganxi Village. Most of the parents in the district are mainly engaged in agriculture. The area was once rich in citrus fruits. Starting from the "Gancuo" community that students are familiar with, a series of courses are planned to guide students to explore the history and culture of "Gancuo" in depth through visiting local culture and experiencing local industries. The course spans art, technology, humanities and natural sciences. For example, students can learn about food culture through making jam, use digital tools to make community documentaries, visit the historic Yongfu Drum Factory to learn about the drum-making process, and recycle plastic bottles to create craft mosaic collages. These activities connect the community's memories and reshape the past with not only skills and creativity, but also care and action for the land and culture.

This series of "Aftertaste" cross-domain courses includes four major themes: "The first step to aftertaste", "Aftertaste starts from the heart", "Aftertaste in the name of 'Gan'", and "The sound of drums of aftertaste". The course starts with the "First Step Back to Gansu". Children use Google Map to collect local attractions and folk culture, build an understanding of cultural landscapes, and then transform into video YouTubers to personally visit the community, record the streets and scenery with their cameras, and edit them into introductory videos to upload to the Internet to practice cultural marketing. During the creative process, students learned how to write storyboards, operate editing software, and more importantly, tell stories through images, allowing students to see the beauty of their hometown and express their emotional connection with the land.

The second theme, "Return to Gan from the Heart", takes the Tianzhu Temple, the religious center of Gancuo, as the starting point. The children actually visited the temple and observed traditional crafts such as stone carving, wood carving, paper-cutting and pottery. They then returned to the classroom and used discarded plastic bottles as materials to create environmentally friendly mosaic paper-cutting with a new style. Then, in the activity “Recalling the Sweetness in the Name of ‘Gan’”, students transformed themselves into little scientists in the kitchen, picking roselle on campus and selecting citrus fruits produced in neighboring areas to make jam, experiencing food preservation techniques and recalling the early industrial characteristics of Gancuo. When the handmade jam is finished, what wafts out is not only the sweet and sour taste of the jam, but also the lingering sweet feeling interwoven by the land and time.

Finally, the activity “Sweet Drum Sounds” was centered around drumming. Students visited the local Yongfu Drum Factory to learn about traditional drum-making techniques, and then went to Tainan’s Ten Drums Cultural and Creative Park to watch drum performances and personally experience drum music creation. Drumming is one of the courses that Yuren Elementary School has been cultivating for a long time. After the students returned to school, they rehearsed under the guidance of the music teacher and performed war drums at school celebrations and award ceremonies, paying tribute to the land and the community with the rhythm of music. Through the joint efforts of the school and the community, the children not only see the beauty of their hometown, but also learn to express their gratitude and appreciation for this land through actions.

The Ministry of Education stated that the Cross-disciplinary Aesthetic Education Excellence Pilot Program encourages schools to focus on local areas and deepen students' identification and emotions with the land through cross-domain connections between art, culture and technology. We hope that the school will continue to explore local characteristics in its curriculum so that students will not only be learners, but also practitioners and creators of future culture.

In the future, the Ministry of Education will continue to work with schools at all levels and local teams to promote diverse and innovative aesthetic courses, making education an important bridge connecting people and the land, emotions and actions. Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Aesthetic Education Excellence Pilot Program website (https://www.inarts.world/) to view and learn more about the exciting aesthetic education courses.