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RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

This RSA Animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benj...

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And yet schools' teaching methods start at the tip of the pyramid and go down.

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Experiment

"Revisit your favorite or a memorable School Art Project from your K-12 years. Conduct research and/or reflect on the goals and objectives of the project."

With that goal I present to you "The Curtain", which was made in 8th grade back in 2008 (Don't ask me the month). It is Acrylic paint on 16in by 20in paper.

This piece is memorable due to the fact it was this very piece that declared paint not to be "my medium". It was no wonder that even though I started out absolutely thrilled with this piece, I hated it by the time I turned it in.

The goal of this project had was to teach us two dimensional depth, colored shading and values, and the difference between working from an actual still life verses simply a photograph. (We had just finished our still life unit for the year.) More than likely there were more things we were supposed to learn but the teacher never actually told us what they were.

Steps.

Find, bring in, and have teacher approve of a photograph.

Make a grid on both the photo and your paper.

"Transfer" the image square by square onto your paper.

Aprove sketch with teacher and erase your grid.(But NOT the image!)

Grab materials and paint your piece to look EXACTLY like your photograph. (I got points off on this due to obvious reason if you actually look at the work shown above.)

Critic Day!!!

"Fix" the "flaws" pointed out in step number 6.

Turn it in.

So after fighting with the medium I had been told to use, having the piece degraded to the worth of trash by the actual owner of the cat, getting points taken off for my "inability to follow instructions" (Sorry that the paint didn't want to do what I wanted it to), and getting into a heated debate over the title with my teacher (Why should I care that the main thing in the piece is the cat! I liked my curtain much better and it was also depicted in the work, thank you very much! After that she stopped letting me actually title my work. Putting on the tag what she thought the title should be instead of what I had told her it was.), it was picked to be one of twelve pieces (per grade level) to be put into a show that displayed the best pieces of each grade to the community. 

And yet paint still wasn't "my medium".

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Sound familiar to anyone?

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If this quote is true then why has School Art become so project oriented? Sure teachers have to worry about class size, time, material availability, expectations, and other things (I'm not saying they don't or that those things hold no weight) but in the end what's the real deciding factor? What makes it OK in the adult mind to tell a kid that has worked really hard on a project that it was only worth a number (and a low one at that)? What gives an art teacher the ability to tell someone that they are doing something wrong? Yes, the piece may have ended up looking more like a Picasso then the Turner that was originally desired, but aren't they both well known artists of their movements? As long as the kid has learned what they were supposed to learn from basically breaching copyright laws (but THAT is a different rant all together...) shouldn't they be aloud to feel pride in their work? And as if that isn't enough the teacher turns around and sets their students on each other! Using the excuse of a "critic day" they force children to show their unfinished work to the class (Often having them all together so that they can "compare" the work) and proceed to allow their other kids to point out every little flaw in it. Completely killing the student's confidence in their project and halting any feelings of accomplishment the student may have in the name of "constructive criticism". And now I've veered completely off topic so, coming back to the quote: "Art is an experience not an object". School art seems to no longer follow that idea, instead striving for the object over the experience.  Why is that? Class size, budgeting, and space shall more then likely always be a problem. But expectation? Tell me one art movement that was started without any resistance from those outside of it. In order to thrive students need the ability to not only know the "basics" but also to experiment and explore. So why then have we lost that resilience to society that all of the past great artists have been known for, just because we tack on the occupation of being a teacher?

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Any thoughts on this? I kind of agree on it myself but I also think it depends. If we change the way we teach today, but it remains irrelevant to the way children learn today, then we are still robbing our children of tomorrow. So in that way it may have just been better to remain teaching the way we had, taking into consideration how effective each method is of course.

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In class this week we drew portraits, tore them apart, mixed them up into a new portrait, and then did it again. Among the fact that it was fun and easy twist on the usual school art self portrait it also helps to teach kids not to stress over their work. Mistakes that were obvious when the portraits were whole made the pieces more interesting after they had been torn apart and reassembled. 

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25 Clever Classroom Tips For Elementary School Teachers

I thought these were great ideas. Hadn't really thought of some of those problems until I read this.

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Visit Original Link

Homework due 10/1/14

Type: Beautiful

Object: Me          

Sound: London Bridges

link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn_hsTZFxFM

Because: I am constantly either humming or singing this song. I didn't realize why everyone around me got annoyed when I did until I made this.

Type: Meaningful

Object: My senior year high school year book

Sound: Pomp and circumstance graduation walking march

Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw-_Ew5bVxs

Because: It is the traditional music for celebrating the end of the school year.

Type: valuable

Object: My sketch book

sound: someone drawing

Link: http://www.freesound.org/people/Yuval/sounds/185601/

Because: I am constantly using my sketch book.

Type: Art

Object: Comic book

Sound: Vampire Knight Still Doll piano cover

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzLZQF-fh7E

Because: It's the opening to one of my favorite shows that is based off of a comic.

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Michelangelo had a chisel not a wand.

Dr.Bey

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Do prodigies actually exist?

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When a child is "Self-orriented" in an art classroom it is best to look at the work they are doing, find the common theme between all the pieces, and connect that theme to the projects you want them to do.