Being that it is summer I am have the time to think a little more abstractly about things and I have been toying around conceptually with what I am doing here. a friend of mine works in the online education field and linked me into his web sites. I had a read through and drummed up some questions and ideas. Below are my notes, below that is my response.
- What kind of certification do courses need to practically benefit students?
- What is important to students in the future in regards to thinking skills and technical skills?
- How does one engage students?
- The current system of education is outdated in places but it is such a system that it cannot be completely uprooted.
- Teach students skills that allow them to apply techniques to the required courses.
- Educational gaming.
The united states has the AP system which is designed to allow students complete college courses before they actually enter college. That aside I am certain that every state has its course of study and and universities have their own standard requirements. There is a push towards STEM which makes me a little sad because it further reinforces the idea that the arts are for flakes and rich people and is a totally superfluous endeavor. On all these accounts I am in complete disagreement. One doesn’t need to have the goal of being an artist in order to study art. How many people learn to dance; swing, line latin, whatever in order to have fun and exercise? How many people play baseball for fun, how many children and adults are playing catch in the back yard? Is it because everyone is working towards a career as a big leaguer? I suggest no. By this same argument studying the arts doesn’t have to mean one wants to become an artist. The arts can be used to to better understand oneself and how to better understand other people and the human condition. A further support of this lies in a comment I heard a director make “A good film allows people to understand the point of view of the character” we all want to know what it is like to be a hero, or a cancer survivor or even a bad guy. I am getting a little off topic here but to bring it back it is not these skills that are explicitly looked for in a high school or university education.
Think skills are the underlying methods by which we attain technical skills. A science teacher friend of mine said “Teach the students how to ask a question, and they will learn the methods so that they can answer that question”. Teaching art skills or really thinking skills will never directly pay off because it is difficult to test, and I am not entirely opposed to testing to be honest, it can be an effective sorting mechanism. So what we need to teach students is effective thinking skills and show them how they can be applied to acquire or use the technical skills that make money. To go on with the hackneyed axiom “The world is changing very quickly and the skills we teach students today may not be applicable tomorrow” but there is a lot of truth to it. Definitely communicating and sharing is the direction things have been moving in the last ten years. So my argument is that making connections is quite an important thinking skill to have. when one sees an object or a technology or even thinks an idea, the mind should be looking for way aforementioned thing is connected to its environment and other things. In my own teaching practices there are several units where connection between ideas is required. A partner teacher of mine wrote a unit in which she requires students to look at one specific tradition in the visual arts and then connect it to one tradition from modernism on. That kind of thought process can be executed in any discipline.
Educational gaming: Although I do not know much about it, I believe this is one strong way to develop students’ minds through a medium they are already familiar with. fortunately/unfortunately my parents never got hip to the video game concept and unlike many of my peers my gaming experience is limited to Atari and Nintendo. But so many people engage in gaming and truthfully I am quite encouraged by the amount of art I see being put into gaming these days. Games now have designers that create whole worlds and story lines and the world of gaming creates communities that ten years ago did not exist. I’ve had a couple of silly ideas like online Cadaver Esquis and brainstorming and association. A new thought I had sprung from the new google Artwork catalog. My idea is to start communities where people curate their own exhibits. Look to curators and gallerists to create challenges based on how they put exhibits together and then allow the players to fulfill those requirements. In fact it does not even need to be limited to just visual arts. For example take a concept and look for items from a variety of disciplines that highlight that concept.
Well, I don’t know exactly how to end this entry because there wasn’t really a point to prove to begin with. It’s a journal exercise of sorts from which I examined a web sight and recorded my thoughts. Hopefully it drums ideas for those of you who took the time to read it. As always I am open to your thoughts idea, questions and comments.
