Arts and Cultural Education in Suriname: Reflecting Cultural Diversity from Primary to Higher Education

The population of Suriname constitutes a mix of various cultural groups, and this mixture has an impact on both the culture and society. Arts and cultural education plays a major role in the sharing of knowledge and in processing different events and traditions in our society. The Surinamese education system is based on the Dutch education system due to our colonial past. In this paper, which is based on information from the field of education, I describe the current situation of arts and cultural education in order to illustrate a gap in the arts and cultural education after primary school. I propose that a major factor influencing this phenomenon is the lack of uniform guidelines in the development of school curricula. Ultimately, the establishment and implementation of uniform guidelines will lead to a constructive alignment of arts and cultural education from primary through to higher education. This will result in a completely new learning approach to arts and cultural education in Suriname.