Curricula is defined as a course of study, yet we always connect that course to what happens in the four walls of a classroom or the requirements for a diploma or degree. As teachers, we so often complain about why the students are not learning. But what we are really complaining about is that the student is not learning what we, the teachers, intend him/her to learn. What about what he learns as he walks through the halls between classes? What about what she learns when she reflects on her mother and father’s relationship? What about what they begin to think when they watch a black man take the presidential oath of office? What about what she or he learns when playing a video game? Taking a sibling to the park? Reading a comic? Hanging out at the library? Shopping in their neighborhood?
William H. Johnson
While those in education tend to now acknowledge that students are not coming to us tabula rasa, how many are really supporting the inclusion of this other knowledge, these other sources of learning within their expectations and methodologies in school?
As an art educator, it just makes sense. Often, usually for classroom management reasons, it is suggested to make the projects about the students and their lives. Yet, I have begun to realize, how could one teach art in any other way? Students learn more when things are made to be meaningful, don’t they? Yet we teach ideas, methods, content, and disciplines so fragmented, so removed, or so practical, that we do a disservice to those who we expect to be learning. A few days ago, I spoke with a colleague about math education. He described to me how different cultures conceive of math – in concepts, uses, and methods, and how it affects the teaching of math and in turn the learning of it. He feels that Vygotsky makes so much sense, yet it is so far from possible in the United States because of how we approach the field from step one.
I feel almost like an underground teacher, working in the arts. I feel like there is so little oversight, so few expectations of my work as a teacher, and so low of demands from an art curriculum. I know others are addressing this. One way is that CPS is drafting an art curriculum, which admittedly makes me extremely nervous. When I see the struggles that my colleagues in other fields endure, with expected approaches, assigned curriculum plans, and the like, I thank my lucky stars that art doesn’t really matter (ahem). Because the day that people realize what it can do, it might be dangerous….
Art is personal. Always. Art is public. Usually. We are always fascinated with these aspects of artwork and artmaking. When someone like Joseph Cornell is looked at, his biography is just as talked about as the work itself. (There are so many examples of this: van Gogh being a prime one. I would guess that students can often relate portions of his biography before identifying one of his paintings.)
Cornell is famous for his reclusion, his methods, his relationship with his mother and brother. While one can be involved with his work without knowing all this, being aware of it changes his work in our eyes. Here is someone who lived a very solitary life and made artwork that was extremely personal, [almost] obsessive, and never really had any desire to share it with others. So when he did, and when the world received his work later, we as viewers felt like we were peering into something so quiet, so personal, so private. I could discuss many artists who play with these boundaries of personal and public. 
Photographers like Diane Arbus and her images of personalities within communities that exist in the margins of what many consider the mainstream.
Or Sally Mann, who creates stunning portraits of her family around their home in rural Virginia. Both artists are received with much controversy in the public, because of the personal nature of the images they share.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres created some lasting images and experiences through his installations, which connected extremely personal issues (again regarded as controversial due to the subject matter and public placing). While ambiguous, a narrative emerges, even if the actual narrative of Gonzalez-Torres losing his partner to AIDS does not become clear to each passerby.
As an artist, I have always been focused on portraits. While I reflect on why that is, I feel like the main reason has something to do with this interest I have in people’s stories. I am always one of those who, at a family party or the like, will be sitting with someone (usually older) listening to stories about years ago. It is something I have always found intriguing, the experiences of others, and imagine the effects they have had on the person, the world, others, me. So in my artwork, I have always sought to capture others stories. I think the closest to successful that I have come with that has been my Adherence series (see the images here).
Yet with my recent collaboration, this collection of stories has become realized with another goal – creating art in a meaningful way for others as well as myself. Art can feel like such a selfish thing at times, and I have struggled – like so many artists, I am sure – with the transition from something personal into something public.
With project treehouse, we have attempted to tiptoe around on that border between personal and public, self and other, by creating interactive pieces that demand as much from the viewer/passerby as from us, the “artists.” Diminishing our role, we are looking at the community’s in creating the piece, in answering the question(s), in determining for themselves and ourselves what exactly is meaningful and why.
The goal of our first major project and here we are was to approach the neighborhood of Bridgeport, as part of the Bridgeport WPA and version>09 projects, with our interests and work in education and curriculum. While we work within our professional and academic lives to determine what is worthwhile, what is meaningful, and what is our role in it, we wanted to also bring that mode of questioning into the public space.
What does the work of these artists, and that which I have attempted myself, imply for my work as a curricularist? One thing is certain, art must have a central role in my work. The readings that I have done over the last few months has shown me that I could approach this in a few ways: one having the influences of the arts on me as a researcher and educator be central and explicit – making connections between that which I work with and that which has affected me until that point, as the authors collected in Reflections from the Heart of Educational Inquiry (2000). Another approach would be using artwork as the actual source within the research. How could I use the artwork of my students, the artwork produced within our culture, as evidence of what we determine as worthwhile?
My students often answer my call, to share their own personal with a private space. In the image above, the student created a self-portrait out of a poem that reflected on her identity. While it is more difficult to ask students to create something original, out of themselves and not a recreation of something I have given them – while it is more ambiguous whether there is success, learning, rigor, or achievement – I find more reassurance that it is indeed more meaningful for all of us involved.
We learn more from every experience of our day, than from what a teacher (or set of teachers) presents to us within the walls of a classroom. We learn to navigate our neighborhoods, our people, our friends, and our family along with countless other things. That navigation, that exploration becomes more meaningful to us because it is just that – more meaningful. Yet art has a role in this, if only because it offers a chance for the walls of the classroom to be broken down, allowing these different kinds of knowledge to come together and offering a chance for the student to themselves create a currere, a path for their own learning.
For more of my reflections on the public/private implications for art and curriculum, see the following previous posts:
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