VA 505

When thinking about Arts Education (visual, music, dance and drama) I am asking myself where are we. This is the only thing I seem to be asking. Perhaps I am dumbfounded at having been institutionalized and complicit in helping those constructs continue. It has taken stepping back from it all and pulling at the string attached to the ball of yarn to realize the mess that can't be untangled. Or can it? I really don't know. Having read all the rhetoric from the art educator's perspective... crying to be heard and understood. Going as far to provide scientific evidence that the Arts improve test scores. Using the only valid currency (science) to validate the only "true" markers of education, the test score. I have looked at the need for certain elements to be reintroduced into education to help round out the student and to "flex" all their learning muscles so speak. And I have looked through Roy Ascott's Telematic Embrace and my own assumption

I have made a few- necessary- connections in the past few weeks in order to locate my teaching philosophy and position as a Higher Education student. The following 3 points have become very important and influential in my developing point of view on Art Education. TED Talk: Teaching art or to think like an artist? Cindy Meyers Foley. I mentioned this in the second blog post. It is something I keep coming back to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcFRfJb2ONk&index=2&list=PLxsSUtZk_hjGXnkrwlvjFoN5yWL7Ds9g5&t=0s Groundcourse developed by Roy Ascott "within which everything can find its place and every individual his way" Lego Master Builder concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um-PlX6oPBQ I took my own teaching and workshops apart to see what I was doing wrong and what I  could do to improve the student's experience. The main shift in my strategy was to actually begin to teach students as though they were artists and not as students. I realized t

Erin, Ontario, Continuation School, has been demolished in the past 2 years. The Powell Memorandum leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. To see how one memo has effected all tiers of societies for generations and generations to come was outside my grasp. This week, I put Lewis Powell's paranoid (but unfortunately effective) memo down and I looked into the structure of United Kingdom's Grammar School system. Currently there are less than 300 Grammar Schools left in the U.K. and Northern Ireland and at times the future of these schools face extinction depending on which political part has majority seats. The Grammar school system has been around since the 16th century in the U.K. But it was during the 19th and 20th century when the Grammar School became a beacon believed to lead working class children into a better way life than their parents had been afforded by their parents. It had become attainable and encouraged by the primary school system for children who showed academic

It is interesting this searching, it has proven to me how badly we can pigeon hole ourselves. In fact this whole process of a creative generation and search for information has shown me how much creativity I was lacking in my previous searching/ researching. Last week I found an interesting link between the Goddess of memory and her posterity the 9 Muses of creativity. I would have never made the connection otherwise. After seeing this very idealized side of learning, memory, creativity and the educational institution this weeks search has left me confronted and aware of my own naivety. Leaving me to once again reflect upon my position as a student and Art educator. There is a large amount of history in this week's search, but to get to the point, there was a common thread among all the searching, the Powell Memorandum . The memo can be deducted to the question I have written below: How do you destroy and privatize a social service? 1. Defund it- take all of the governmenta

I first want to restate my initial opinion before searching the subject and related areas. ** I know that learning, memory and education have a strained, dysfunctional relationship. But how do each of the variables contribute to the equation and then how does the student react and experience it? I realize I make the classic complaints about educational institutions from a student and teacher perspective. I believe current education lacks sensitivity to the student and their interests. It doesn't inspire a want to learn deeply and kills creativity while making it almost impossible to learn. But again, I find myself here. Within an institution, trying to learn. ******* I gave myself necessary time to decant everything I watched and read. I opened up my search beyond the blind sides I had created for myself last week that proved unfruitful. As predicted it would take me into some places, that I thought I wanted to avoid for fear of getting off track and far from the path of whe

Upon discussing how we learn art and the state of art colleges that have amalgamated with universities, it was then that I was able to assess my unique situation as not only being a student but an educator in this environment. My reflection was 2 fold: 1. How am I learning what I am learning or want to learn? 2. Am I facilitating my students' learning? I thought of the initial link I made between learning and memory and found this: "Learning and memory  are closely related concepts. Learning is the acquisition of skill or knowledge, while memory is the expression of what you’ve acquired. Another difference is the speed with which the two things happen. If you acquire the new skill or knowledge slowly and laboriously, that’s learning. If acquisition occurs instantly, that’s making a memory" - American Psychology Association. To put this in my art practice, learning could be a skill, life experience, thought etc. While memory is the artistic expression  of drawing