Thoughts on Teaching, Art, Resistance, and History [May 23, 2005]

These themes have been the most important things in my life for the past 8 months or so, and I believe that’s not just because they’re the themes of our program but because of the universal nature they possess. What I mean by this is that the ideas involved in teaching history and in making art are ideas that can apply to any part of life. Crucial to realizing this was the time we spent addressing the problems of history not only from our own perspective but also that of the complacent teenager (our intended audience). Remembering our own high school experiences and in turn recognizing the pitfalls of modern education allowed us to come to conclusions about what tactics are effective in teaching, not only to the high school demographic, but to any age at all. It is this same complacency that we associate with the teenager that plagues much of the population of our country and the world. If you simply take the high school dynamic and expand it, it is easy to see why idealism is mocked and change vilified.

In school we’re taught that to learn is to memorize; the argument, the question, the discussion, all take a backseat to the FACT, which in infallible. In the world outside of educational institutions we’re presented with FACTS in the news, in advertising, always we are shown a thousand things to recognize, to liken to something we’ve already seen. This practice of recognition disengages the brain. Something unique should be something that you cannot recognize, that engages your brain in order to formulate an idea about that thing. Now, uniqueness is taken, largely, as an unfamiliar spin on a familiar object, a new way of masking a tired thing.

A Tangential Musing: the title “Teacher” is no longer a title that is descriptive of that which bears it. The title “instructor” or “faculty” is more appropriate because it does not elicit that he who bears the name will be expected to teach. In high school (aside of my chorus and photo teachers), the teacher was more of a guide and reference for memorization than an active being who would truly teach. I desire that the role of teacher means he’d receive and respect every question asked of him, and would take his teaching moments from discussions of those questions.

Art is a thing with limitless possibilities when it comes to teaching and resistance. The age old practices of the educational institutions aren’t effective for teaching because they do not address the learning desires of the student. No matter what, you won’t learn unless you want to. This is where art has a tricky quality. In schools, art and politics or social issues are incongruous. Art, in truth, can be one of the most effective ways of teaching the unenthusiastic. While a student may not be interested in the subject matter of the textbook, if you change the context of the information and present it as a piece of art, you eliminate the tired textbook and make the material fresh and fascinating again. It’s important to be constantly searching for and experimenting with new ways of presenting the same old material. Teaching using art succeeds not only in disrupting the familiarity of the lecture, the textbook, but also in explicitly demonstrating to the student the possibilities for communication through art, thus perpetuating a creative approach to information and encouraging the importance of art.

For me, resistance is vital. For as long as I can remember, and even before (so my mother tells me) I’ve been particularly sensitive to my surroundings and only in the last two or three years have I been able to begin to articulate those feelings. Finally figuring out exactly what it was that had bothered me led me to the next logical step, which was resistance, or imagining how those things that bother me might be changed or eliminated completely. Finding out about the injustices in our world is always a sobering experience as well as an exciting one. These experiences excite me because they offer me something on which I can focus my thoughts and my art, which in turn gives me (and hopefully others) hope. If I can imagine a world where an injustice cannot exist, then I can give someone a new way of thinking about that problem, and that gives me hope. To quote Professor Knowinstuff: “An element of resistance must always be present for hope to truly be present.” If you ask me, the pterodactyl was on to something.