Although the article deals with important aspects of student-teacher conversation about the work, I found it frustrating in its failure to address the importance of keeping students from dwelling in their comfort zones and challenging them to take risks so that learning takes precedence over product in the classroom. Throughout the narrative, the teacher is working with a student to decide between a concept that features a generalized over-head view of a crowd in a stadium and a face-on representation of the same group of people. When the teacher asks which sketch would best express his idea, the student advocates for his bird's-eye representation by saying, "It's just that i like to draw more like this, like stadiums and structures than people's faces." The teacher didn't press the student much further, but in a later interview with the researcher, the student said the following:
"She was asking me which sketch I like better. And I guess I said the one with the faces because it brought more people's faces.. And I said since we were all, like, in one stadium, we didn't know each other, that's why I didn't put faces cause I can't put each one's face, so there was nothing really. But then, I wasn't good at that kind of thing. I like drawing, like, structures and overhead views and stuff, so that's why I did this one." (emphasis mine)
The teacher ended up allowing the student to work in a more generalized way because she recognized this was "the way he liked to draw," but I find it very strange that she did very little to probe the student further on the reasons why exactly he liked working this way. Based on his later interview (and some common dialogues that artists must fight concerning fear) it seemed fairly obvious that his decision making came out of his product-motivated beliefs about his own abilities rather than even addressing the question posed by the teacher: Which idea better conveys the idea?
As I've been discussing already here and pondering quite extensively as I move about my day to day life, I find a primary problem with this way of teaching and working in its dependence upon product rather than process. Throughout the article, interviews with students and the focus on the teacher's interaction zones in on the issue of requirements. The teacher provided various methods of creating certain expressions, the how of the assignment, if you will, but most comments made by students revolved around what the teacher asked them to complete. Furthermore, the crux of the article seems to fall on the ways that teachers and students negotiate technicalities of how the project can be fulfilled. The question is not how the student can improve, learn, or move out of previous patterns, but rather how the student is able to move inside the boundaries already set by the teacher to create an object they feel comfortable with at the end of the unit.
The problem that I see here is that there is an important requirement missing that should supersede the entire class. Based on the format presented in this single assignment, it appears that the class is built around a structure in which the teacher dictates a a series of certain parameters and the students must navigate their way within this perimeter to manufacture a "successful" product. Although this structure makes sense in terms of class organization, it stifles a more important goal: challenge and learning. Although the class may be technically abiding by the rules, it ignores a more important rule the teacher should be following: never allow fear to keep students from learning how to best communicate what they have to say.
If this teacher had questioned the student further (and dare I suggest she employ some insight as a thinking adult) she probably would have discovered that the student made a choice based on past experience that told him that he has produced something successful before and therefore could do it again, rather than the motivation of how to most effectively communicate his message. I find it interesting too, that she didn't seem to notice he didn't even answer her question at all-- She asked which idea better conveyed his idea and he responded with a defense of the way he liked to work. It is as if she asked, "How do you feel about war?" and he responded with, "Well, I just love the color purple."
The problem with the way people are taught about art is that it often perpetuates the idea that realistic art automatically means good art (a notion that naturally develops in the upper elementary grades and often serves to squelch the natural creativity of children and causes many people to quit making art altogether). Many people who draw on the identity of "artist" throughout school rely on old schemas of making that have gotten them praise and attention before and fear risking the demolition of assurance of their success, and therefore never push through to learning how to really say things that are meaningful. The problem, I think, is that art has become about earning kudos and shallow searches for identity rather than communication. As artists, we want to find our identity in our image as "art-maker" rather that allowing our art-making to flow out of who we are outside of the studio. Maybe this is why some self-portraits of artists in their studios seem so prosaic and circular. Maybe this is why it frustrates me so much when "art-people" dress quite abnormally in order to express a creativity that is not really present in their artworks.
Imagine this: Visual communication is the same as writing a novel or giving a speech. Do you give a speech just so that you can call yourself a "Speaker"? Or do you speak because you have something to say? How many people do you know who go around proud of their ability to emit sound from their vocal chords that actually sound like words? Or is it more important that they actually communicate ideas worth listening to? (I suppose there is one stage that the ability to form words is quite a novelty, but last I recall, that ends at about age two or three). And then there are those people who talk just to hear the sound of their own voice-- they are a little annoying, aren't they? So then why do we encourage people to make art that only proves that they have mastered eye-hand coordination? Perhaps the person who speaks for the love of their own voice is the vocal equivalent of "art for art's sake."
I wonder what would happen if we began to teach students that art has this incredible capacity to provide the means by which we can say deeply meaningful things to one another. And I wonder what would happen if we stopped trying not to step on toes so much and start giving students the power to push through their fears to speak in the best "words" possible. We don't avoid helping students write better sentences for the sake of their handwriting, do we? When we ask students to increase their vocabulary, we don't allow them to excuse themselves, saying, "No thank you, I'd rather just keep using these same five words because I know they sound really good in my voice." That would be absurd, yet we allow students to settle for small visual vocabularies for the sake of their feelings.
When we challenge students to push through their comfort zones, we aren't asking them to change what they have to say, we are just asking them to communicate in a way that other people can understand them. I've heard many people say they have decided not to study art formally because it will "destroy their natural creativity." They claim that an institution will somehow keep them from saying whatever it is that they want to say. And, I suppose, as long as teachers keep pussy-footing around "what students like to do," this will be true. Students will never gain the benefit of the criticism that hones their ability to speak powerfully.
The problem I see with the example in this reading is the failure of the teacher to give this student the power to really speak. Instead of finding out that the student just was afraid of the failure he may when he tried to draw faces and giving him the tools to learn it, the teacher let him stay in an old comfort zone. As teachers, our jobs are not to let kids keep doing what they already know they can do-- that is just a waste of time. If we are creating classrooms where we are more concerned with having enough finished masterpieces to hang up at the year-end art show than we are passionate about sending brave, risk-taking students out into the world, we are doing a service to no one. Not all of the students who pass through our classrooms are going to go on to become artists, but each one will be valuable members of society with important things to say, and it is up to us to instill in them the value of pushing through obstacles to lead their most meaningful lives. We do no favors by allowing them to settle for mediocrity for the sake a few minutes of pride stuck to their parent's refrigerators.
The power of the art classroom is only maintained by the transcendence of deep and concentrated thought over a shallow dependence upon end result. When students are allowed to do "what they like to do," instead of challenged to more effectively say what they want to say, we communicate that they are powerless, incapable of doing what they ultimately want to do in the world. But we will never endow our students with this power until we give them freedom to explore, make mistakes, and make discoveries without regard to the "cleanliness" of their product. No matter the "museum quality" a work of art is, no product will be more valuable and long-lasting than the lessons in self-discovery and risk that take place throughout a process of true searching and risk.
Until we do the hard work of digging into our own fears and experiences, we can expect the arts to continue to become marginalized white-noise-- speaking simply for the pleasure of the sound of its own self-soothing voice, rather than for the sake of the healing words art speaks to both the viewer and the maker.
--Hafeli, Mary. "Negotiating 'Fit' in Student Art Work: Classroom Conversations." Studies in Art Education; A Journal of Issues and Research, 2000, 41 (2), 130-145
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