Post #4....the Art of meaning making

First I will apologize for this post since it will be short. I am running on fumes and may crash and burn at any moment.
I never knew how exhausting a small group of six graders could be, especially when their are six, out of 24, that need constant redirection, tailored instruction and personal attention. However it is my belief that if the teacher would have set the room up differently and would allow for group learning, these six would benefit from what John Dewey titled, "The Educational Situation". In his article he explores how the construction of meaning was not only. "Activated by the prior experience the child brought to the situation; it was also the result of the child's interactions with the social and material conditions in which he or she worked." The art room, that I am teaching in, is void of any group democratic input, or personalization of space. There are no representations of visual culture or any kind of modern, contemporary art to view. It is more like a workshop where students come to work individually with little to no interaction. If the students had some choices, or even their art displayed in the room, they may feel more comfortable to explore and take risks.
Eisner and Freedman both speak of learning within a community and building a space and a curriculum that incorporates visual culture with an understanding and engagement of cross cultural, interdisciplinary and extra-disciplinary contexts. While Freedman says that this will ..."allow information from inside and outside of school to be connected to school subjects", It will also allow the students to be connected to one another and to the environment they create together. The six graders I speak of have no reference points, no back ground, expect for the correlation's between social studies and art from different countries on posters, they have no visual text to read that relates to them or their daily life. "Although the purposes of public school art education have socioculutral roots, children have been represented in curriculum as though they are without attributes of culture, Such a conception of individualism supports the idea of a fictional free self -expression in school (an inherently social institution) through the teaching of art (a product of cultural communities). The focus on this conception of "natural" individualism in curriculum has resulted in the neglect of both cultural similarities and differences." Freedman, (75).