Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Dialogue Between Imagination and Formal Education


After ages of producing replicas of famous artwork in class, we are now in the epoch of student-produced curricula. Are students—young and uninhibited—really more qualified to make decisions about their own educations than their teachers? The burning question is beginning to engulf classrooms across the country, and I can’t help but be a critic.

In the past, classrooms were dictated around the idea that the teacher was right and the children were minds to be molded through the intellect of their professor. In a much more progressive age, the student body is gaining more power as far as their education in art. While creativity is of more value than anything else in the art classroom, without traditional education first, It’s difficult for children to understand the processes of how to use certain materials, how to compare styles of different artists, even how to critique each other which is critical in art education. Without constructive criticism, how are students motivated to improve, to experiment, to search for innovation?

I believe that letting students run free within the confines of instructions for a project is the best way for them to learn without walking all over their teacher. Children have an inherent love of the brainchildren of their own imaginations. That much will be consistent with class after class of kids. Their understanding of art principles, however, will never be able to dialogue with this sense of imagination unless they begin learning it at a young age.


Throughout school, the curricula always forced you to take prerequisite art classes, which were often dry and instructive, only so you could reach the dynamic higher-level courses. In these courses, there was little instruction and students were set free to create essentially anything they wanted while following the broad guidelines of assignments. I dreaded the prerequisites at the time I was in them, but in retrospect, they benefited me in ways I can’t even explain, and provided me with skills I constantly use as an art student.  You can bend the rules once you learn them—pushing boundaries is the basis for successful works of art—but you can’t utilize them if you have no idea they exist. 


http://www.pinterest.com/pin/189291990560798446/

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