"Theorizing art in education is difficult because it involves two often conflicting forms of practice - education, which seeks predicted learning outcomes; and art, which seeks the unpredictable."
(The anti-art teacher likes predicted learning since it is easier to grade)
"...art education seems under-theorized in the sense that curriculum is often a succesion of isolated, skill-based activities rather than being based on rich conceptual frameworks."
(The anti-art teacher likes isolated, skill-based crafts, because it is neat and tidy busy work that is easy to grade)
"Visual culture creates, as well as reflects, personal and social freedoms, and as result, consideration of its character and impact is critical to a democratic education."
(There is no choice, voice and for sure no democracy in the anti-art teachers art room!)
While working in direct contact with middle school students and seeing how they respond to art activities first hand, I feel I am in the perfect situation to start connecting the dots and making sense of what our chosen authors are theorizing about. While working with the anti-art teacher I have witnessed her/his art lessons to be "monological". According to Kerry Freedman's theory, this term refers to mediated quasi-interaction, usually from books, TV, or the web, yet the anti art teacher's lessons are one-way transmissions of information that do not demand a reflective response. As a teacher in training, this is a problem since a school, a classroom and, most definitely, an art room are some of the few structured, dialogical environments for students to help decode and make meaning out of their monological experiences. As I have been thinking of ways to create a dialogical relationship with the students I have been thinking how each student has different backgrounds, influences, cultures and possibly different 'mediums' for learning. Suddenly the students become pre-teen walking, talking works of art. And my job is to try to 'interpret' and understand them within their historical and present day context. I began to think of ways of teaching and ways of how to better understand their pre-teen minds and I thought it was interesting how I could substitute the word, "pre-teen student" in place of the word "Art" for most of Terry Barrett's, Principles for Interpreting Art.
Try it yourself....
"All art is in part about the world in which it emerged."
"All art is part of other art."
"To interpret a work of Art is to respond to it."
"Artworks attract multiple interpretations and it is not the goal of interpretation to arrive at single, grand, unified, composite interpretations."
Before I can teach pre-teens how to interprete art and visual culture I need to first be able to 'read' my pre-teens. They too have hidden codes that are, "open to some and closed to others because of culture, age, gender and familiarity with current and past events..." (Barrett: Interpreting Visual Culture)
Even though the art teachers have teamed up with Social Studies to plan their lessons for a integrated curriculum, it seems to me they have missed the point. The lessons are the same each year and are based on the traditional arts and crafts made within a chosen country. There is no questioning, no room for greater interpretation or comparison. Freedman would not approve, since number 5 of, "foundations of teaching visual culture" is: Cultural Response, not cultural copy crafts. Upon inquiry into wether the anti-art teachers had tried lessons with the Big Idea concept, Both teachers said, "No, the students cant grasp those kind of ideas."
The anti-art teachers are not to blame, they simply have not been reformed yet. The new Art ministry does not go door to door with the "Art for the 21st century bible". And no one has turned them on to the transmedial experience. And Semali, has not told them that... "the authority of teachers and the certainty of what was learned in the classroom and regarded as stable have begun to slip and slide. With the introduction of computers, the Internet, and a plethora of ways to access academic resources that come with these technologies, knowledge is being democratized.
The anti-art teachers are not to blame, they simply have not been reformed yet. The new Art ministry does not go door to door with the "Art for the 21st century bible". And no one has turned them on to the transmedial experience. And Semali, has not told them that... "the authority of teachers and the certainty of what was learned in the classroom and regarded as stable have begun to slip and slide. With the introduction of computers, the Internet, and a plethora of ways to access academic resources that come with these technologies, knowledge is being democratized.
The existence of multimedia calls for multiple forms of literacy, forms that can represent the world of ideas, emotions, and events with multiple symbols."
(from the article, Tansmediation as a Metaphor...)
I guess I will find out for myself when I barrow from Dewey, Postmodernists and transmediation to construct my own art curriculum with the aesthetic of conceptual/performance Art.
After all, "Great works of art are often considered great because they go beyond expectations." Freedman, told me so.
