The intention here is for me to step back and take an overview of drama education as it stands in English at present. I want to give an idea of its place in the curriculum, and then use this as the context for exploring the main ideas of theory and practice that underpin its pedagogy. Behind this exploration is the insistent and persistent question of the aims of drama education.

Steel pan, pan, steelband, used interchangeably in this paper to designate a collection or ensemble of pans, began humbly enough, as the main musical accompaniment for poorer revellers on Carnival days in Trinidad and Tobago. Pan’s acceptance in academia as a legitimate area of study bespeaks therefore a coming of age and a celebration of national consciousness and confidence. It bespeaks, too, the acceptance of music itself, and of the Carnival arts, as worthy of academic study.

Music in the formal education system in Jamaica today offers multicultural variety. Students may choose to study in the tradition of instrumental European music by taking the series of music examinations set by Britain, and/or study Caribbean folk and popular music and Africa America Jazz traditions. Studying this variety of musical genres would not have been possible in the formal system up to the mid-1970s, since only European music was taught.

Music education is one of those terms that is used in a variety of contexts and has therefore acquired a range of meanings; for the purpose of this discussion I shall take the term to refer to those musical studies and activities in schools that are available to all children and constitute part of liberal or general education. It is readily apparent from a survey of educational systems that in most countries, music features as a component of students’ education at some stage of their compulsory schooling.

Museums as we know them today are a recent phenomenon that reflects the democratization of culture in modern times. Although the history of the modern museum rightly begins in 1793 with the establishment of the Louvre Museum in Paris during the French Revolution, to make the royal collections and other confiscated items available for public viewing, museums in general were passive receptacles of collections that were in effect seen by only a privileged few.

No single theme in arts education is evident in the articles in this issue of the Caribbean Journal of Education, but many of the contributors have examined or made reference to recent changes, devel­opments, and future challenges. As this issue comes at the beginning of a new millennium and is the first issue of CJE to be exclusively devoted to the arts, it is not unexpected that contributors have taken the opportunity to reflect and critically examine arts education in Caribbean and other societies.

This paper seeks to examine trends in the perfonnance of Jamaican can­didates in mathematics at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. This will be done through an examination of perfonnance in the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSA T), the Caribbean Secondary Educa­tion Certificate (CSEC) Examination, and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), respectively. The views expressed in this paper are my own, and are not necessarily those of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC). 

Do we have a culture of cruelty? To answer that question, one of the first things we would need to know is what we mean by a culture. I use the word culture as some anthropologists have used it, to mean a system of meaning. It is a system whereby we give meaning to our daily lives and we express that meaning symbolically. Let me give you an example. There is nothing particular about eating. Described as a physi­cal act, eating is simply masticating-you put food in your mouth, you masticate, you swallow, and that is eating.

The question was posed recently by a group of teachers in the secon­dary schools: "Why are today's teenagers so difficult to cope with? Why can't they confonn as we did in our time?" This is a question, I am sure, that teachers all over the country are asking. But in order to begin to answer this question we have first to recognize that children today live and interact in a societty that is totally different from the one in which we were raised.