Workshop in Indonesian Culture
for Teachers, Parents, and Children
This
new workshop has grown out of the Center's successful World
Music in the Schools program in San Diego, and provides the
ultimate cross-cultural experience for any children who participate,
as well as for their teachers and/or parents. Teachers without students
in tow can also take part in the two-week workshop, with the goal
of developing their own multicultural understanding.
For
the adults, there will be special lectures and discussions on such
subjects as traditional teaching methods in the Balinese arts and
public education in Indonesia. We plan field trips to visit, for
instance, a bootstrap project in the most poverty-stricken area
on the island, where villagers are being guided to build their own
schoolhouses, select the best educated person in the village to
be the teacher, and to introduce education on a grassroots level
where it did not exist before. This particular project has already
produced some quite remarkable results.
The
American children will be able to study the performing arts in tandem
with Balinese children who are learning English, and will experience
first hand on a peer level the similarities and differences in behavior
between Balinese and American children. Their main teachers, Nyoman
Sumandhi and his wife Putu, have many years of experience in teaching
both Balinese and American children. They will be assisted, as they
were last year in San Diego, by Alex Khalil and his wife Kaori Okado,
both professionally proficient in Balinese performing arts and the
mainstays of the ongoing San Diego cross-cultural schools program.
In some cases children and adults will learn together; in others
they may learn separately.
The
location in Bali, at the Flower
Mountain Center in Payangan, is safe and comfortable, with familiar
food as well as the opportunity to try new things in a supportive
context. All participants will be taken on tour to various interesting
cultural sites on the island, and movies, games, swimming and other
forms of recreation will be provided. We anticipate that all of
the participants will find this workshop to be exhilarating, and
that it will provide a life-changing experience in one of the world's
most beautiful and artistically creative environments.
Many
of the pictures on this page (click for links to larger images)
are from the Sumandhis' teaching sessions with children in San Diego
in the spring of 2000. For more pictures and insights, click on
the link Gamelan Puspa Warsa.
Dates and Cost: Depart Los Angeles July 23, program
July 25-August 6, return Los Angeles August 7 or later. Cost $1,995
(one parent or teacher) or $3,395 (one parent/teacher and one child)
from Los Angeles or depart from New York (add $190) or from Dallas
or Chicago (add $220). College credit and some partial subsidies
may be available.
