Showing only Notes + Links tagged education
PROFESSOR OLAFUR ELIASSON.
Artist Olafur Eliasson’s forthcoming professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste will be an experiment in art education
Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin, 2008
In April 2009, the Berlin-based Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will begin his professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste (UdK). This might not sound like ground-breaking news, but for an art school that has endured much recent criticism in the German press for botching its relationships with professors and being woefully behind the times when it comes to hiring local talent, it’s a significant move forward.
Granted, it took almost three years to negotiate a compromise between the structure of the traditional German art academy and Eliasson’s vision for his teaching position. Following the German art education model, Eliasson will take on 15 to 20 ‘spatially motivated people’ from the pool of UdK applicants for the five-year duration of their studies, in addition to a few exchange students and – he hopes – three PhD candidates. But rather than commuting to the University’s studios, Eliasson will teach them in a 550-square-metre space located literally on top of his own studio.
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Though Eliasson admires artists who never went to art school, he nevertheless thinks that art education is increasingly important. ‘The world is just so fucked up that it seems desperately to need art around. I think the participants will take away from the school the potential of being productive participants in the world. And I think this requires a sense of responsibility and precision. I hope they’ll learn to be a part of the world or “with the world”.
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/open_studio/
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foreign exchange to Berlin anyone?
Yes, please.
I started watching The Up Series a few days ago with some friends and so far I’m through 21 Up. This series is more addictive than reality TV, in spite of being way less junky. Also, it’s available for streaming from Netflix.
The Up Series is a series of documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. The children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child’s social class predetermines their future. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material from as many of the fourteen as he can get to participate. Filming for the next installment in the series, 56 Up, is expected in late 2011 or early 2012. (via Up Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The lore around the class is such that incoming students are often desperate to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience. As one student told me, they “arrive with pre-nostalgia.”
Sarah Thornton — Seven Days in the Art World, 45
I’ve always just thought of it as “high expectations”, but “pre-nostalgia” is a wonderful and apt term.
Group crits are such an established part of the curriculum in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Europe and elsewhere, that only a few teachers reject them. Dave Hickey, an art critic who describes his pedagogic style as “Uncle Buck—Hey, smoke this,” is one of the few. “My one rule,” he says in his freewheeling southwestern drawl, “is that I do not do group crits. They are social occasions that reinforce the norm. They impose a standardized discourse. They privilege unfinished, incompetent art.” He tells his students, “If you’re not sick, don’t call the doctor.” Hickey is not alone in thinking that there is undue pressure on artists to verbalize. Many believe that artists shouldn’t be obliged to explain their work. As Hickey declares, “I don’t care about an artist’s intentions. I care if the work looks like it might have some consequences.
Sarah Thornton —Seven Days in the Art World, p. 54
My sister is reading Seven Days in the Art World, the best-selling quick read by Sarah Thornton, so I picked it up and read Chapter Two, “The Crit”. It only delves shallowly into interesting topics, but seems like a light and sweet overview for people that want to know a little about a lot.
To clarify: this is interesting to think about, but I’m not necessarily sure I agree. See this quote by Albert Brooks about having too much of other people’s opinions.
I’m not convinced that the purpose of a crit is to create good artwork (though it might be a side effect) or that a good crit is most valuable for the person being critiqued. The artist being critiqued is, in my experience, no way obliged to act on the class’s feedback. However, learning how to talk about what’s in front of me is important for me as an artist and being able to engage in a conversation that includes the artist is important for the group-at-large
The Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.
They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.
“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.
Margaret Edson, Smith College Commencement Speech, 2008We bring nothing into the classroom — perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom — some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.
Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It’s as if we were never there. There’s nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.
Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.
Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, “I know how to add two numbers, but I’m not going to tell you.” And they laugh and shout, “No!” That’s so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?
Bringing nothing, producing nothing, expecting nothing, withholding nothing — what does that remind you of? Is this a bizarre occurrence that will go into The Journal of Irreproducible Results? Or is it something that happens every day, all the time, all over the world, and is based not on gain and fame, but on love.
Corrupted files for sale to students to buy extra time. →
Hilarious. When else is somebody looking to buy something that doesn’t work?
(via tba)
I’m Going to Harvard. Will You Sponsor Me? - NYTimes.comIn the photo, the young person’s eyes are brown and kind-looking. She is in need of financial help. A new Web site that brings together the charitable minded and those in need has posted the details of her request.
This is not one of those arrangements where donors can sponsor a needy child or a sorghum farmer in the developing world. The person asking for help is a 21-year-old neurobiology major at Harvard, and she is requesting a loan from Harvard alumni.
“This summer I plan to take the MCATs, and I currently cannot afford the registration fees or the adequate preparation materials that are necessary to pass the exam,” wrote the young woman, who maintained her anonymity to shield her financial situation from those not afforded access to the Web site of Unithrive.org. “Thus a loan from Unithrive would help me out a lot.”
Unithrive, which made its debut last month, matches alumni lenders and cash-strapped students, who post photographs and biographical information and can request up to $2,000. The loans are interest-free and payable within five years of graduation.
The nonprofit site is the brainchild of three recent Harvard graduates, who hope it can help ease the crisis in paying for college, especially if it is one day rolled out to other colleges that cannot afford to be as generous as their alma mater, which already awards scholarships to all students with demonstrated need.
Liz Coleman, President of Bennington College, is so smart that it’s scary! Her TED Talk on “The New Liberal Arts,” presented earlier this year, is finally online.
Even Dutch high schools have better design - Core77
The importance of good design in American K-12 schools is grossly underrated. Design isn’t just aesthetics, it affects how you feel, work, and interact within a space! Dutch design superstars Remy & Veenhuizen designed this interesting “reef bench” rooftop seating fixture for a Dutch high school. The intent is to “give students their own escape area.” An idea unheard of in the USA.
Excellent, we need more of this.
Teaching is the rare profession where the customer isn’t always right and needs to be told so appropriately.John Maeda
Notes on the Creative Process, Selfishness, Thinking Wrong, and the Education System
A relatively unedited excerpt from my notebook, 5/19/09.
Artists and designers, by the nature of their craft, are selfish. And that selfishness is necessary. Time spent dreaming, playing, napping, or lost in thought is essential to creativity.
The fact of the matter is that creative minds never really take vacations (Anne Pundyk), but always being in engaged in that serious play (Paula Scher) is what creates great ideas.
To do things the right way, the way you’re told, while not asking why, is relatively easy. I think that I struggle to think right, to just do what I’m told, to just get it over with, but to me those right ways are not right.
“Maybe it’s wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people.” (Paul McHugh — from Brain Gain by Margaret Talbot — The New Yorker)
In public high schools today, thinking creatively, thinking wrong, means getting an F. Mediocre efficiency is prized and while actual effectiveness is naively ignored. In this flawed system, creativity is somewhat of a disability.
Geoffrey Canada @ The New Yorker Summit (via Kottke)Geoffrey Canada outlined the four factors he uses to achieve success with his organization in educating kids in Harlem.
- We have to tackle everything at the same time. Small programs touching unconnected parts of kids lives aren’t that effective.
- They start working with kids from birth and stay with them until they graduate from college. If they don’t let them get behind, later superhero-type interventions (which don’t often work) are not needed.
- Scale is important. If you work with lots of kids, their collective action reinforces itself with little further effort.
- Accountability and evaluation is needed. Canada said that if bad teachers aren’t teaching the kids, they should be fired.
Decades of research have demonstrated that the cortex is astonishingly plastic at a young age and that many important traits and habits seem to solidify before the age of 4. (This isn’t to discount the power of plasticity in the adult brain - it just takes a lot more work to make it happen.) When combined with the brilliant work of James Heckman, this research led policymakers to realize that investing in pre-K education had an incredibly high-rate of return. Here’s a chart, demonstrating the “rate-of-return” of various public investments.
For more about the problem and how states are cutting back on early education read the full post: Investing in the Developing Brain : The Frontal Cortex.
The libraries are usually located in older buildings with high ceilings, but the shelves in the libraries can’t be built higher than kids can reach. This means there is a space between the top shelf and the ceiling, an up-to-six-foot band around the room just begging for something special. That something turned out to be murals. And the results can now be seen in schools all over New York City, including five brand new ones in the Bronx which feature murals by Rafael Esquer, Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, Stefan Sagmeister and Yuko Shimizu, and Charles Wilkin. (via New Work: Murals for The Library Initiative | New at Pentagram | Pentagram)
