Thanks Marc, I would say that explains a lot, and I mean that as a compliment. In addition to Illich and Friere, I would add Ranciere's "The Ignorant Schoolmaster." We homeschool four children with a fifth on the way, so teaching, art making, and writing are increasingly intertwined in my life. I myself have had a largely positive experience with "institutional" education, probably because some of the institutions I attended were very experimental, and even within the less experimental institutions, some of the teachers I had were radically experimental. I admire Beuys and Cage as experimental educators, and Black Mountain College (very near here) continues to inform my pedagogical aspirations. Perhaps my favorite pedagogical texts are Paul Klee's Bauhaus notebooks: "The Thinking Eye" and "The Nature of Nature," just because they are so rigorously exhaustive.
More than any craft (including artmaking, including writing) teaching is a bottomless pit. You could devote an entire life to mastering the craft and you would still have barely begun to scratch the surface. But we scratch on. Best, Curt >Hi Curt & all, > >As someone who mainly comes from a self-education position, or rather >from a place where I come from a very poor and violent working class >family - which spent most of the time either being put in social care, >whether this be in borstals and prison, plus family members vanishing >because of the failures of 70's social (un)care systems. Just think of >'Cathy Come Home' by Ken Loach - >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Come_Home and may get some idea of my >own personal history. Moving on from that I wish to mention that, for me >education is one of the most important aspects of human development and >a human right. > >Because I was not fortunate when younger to be able to experience a >decent education, I had to discover various sneaky ways in finding >information that the terrible school I was at, was not teaching me. My >passion to discover what was going in the world beyond the chaos of my >everyday circumstance was strong - even obsessed, whether it was in >science, politics, technology, history, philosophy or art, I would bunk >school regularly and spend an awful lot of my time in the Essex Library, >which thankfully was in Southend-on-Sea, a town 50 miles from London. >Some examples of what I read from the age of 12 and 13 and (of course) >onwards, were books such as the The Mass Psychology of Fascism by >Wilhelm Reich, The Divided Self by R. D. Laing, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot >and D. H. Lawrence. Carl Jung, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, Herbert >Read - especially Education Through Art and The Paradox of Anarchism, >loads of art books. I am not saying that I understood these >publications, but I am saying that it encouraged me to learn more and I >have not stopped since. > >So, when I think of education I do not immediately think of official >education as in universities or colleges. For I am a strong advocate of >self-education, which also involves one being self critical as well. >There is larger and broader context where individuals have the choice to >explore life, art and all the other equally important subjects outside >institution environments as well. One of my personal worries in respect >of UK culture, which may be also the same regarding USA, although >influenced through different historical, political situations is that, >my own class - as in, working class has turned into a mass of gibbering >X Factor driven bimbos. Of course, this is not a universal issue, but >the consumer orientated mediation of our cultures via neo liberal >agendas have not helped. > >I personally do not think that individuals themselves should deny any >official forms of education. For there are some good educators here and >there who are decent and authentic in appreciating how to learn >themselves, and are active in the process of engaging with students in >ways that attempt in spirit, to transcend beyond the bland and >over-efficient trappings of slack management structures that manner are >dealing with. Not just this, economics is factor in the real world and >gaining degrees and learning via institutional means gets you a job. > From that, if you are artist you get some proper money to fund your own >projects on your own terms etc... > >The irony of learning outside of my school environment at that age was >that, at 14 I was asked to go to college at weekends by the Essex >council. Which was strange because all the other students were on >average 17-20 years of age. I was told to go back to school or they >would put me in a Borstal, so I did in the end. > > From this experience ideas around education have also been informed by >writers such as 'Deschooling Society' by Ivan Illich, and other works >such "Pedagogy of the Oppressed' by Paulo Friere. Yet, in contrast to >all of this art (whatever medium) as a from of creative expression has >always been my main agenda and always will be :-) > >wishing you well. > >marc _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
