Hi Curt, Sorry for the slow response, much happening lately with projects etc...
>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. I agree, if I lose the will to learn I 'will' die inside - I'm sure... Much of the knowledge or data/noise I have aquired through the years, that stuff which is collected and lodged deep in my cranium is, taking years to unfold. It's great to find out that you are home-teaching your children, and four of them. Wow, that's a responsibility which I personally am glad is not part of my current, life experience. Although, one of my sister's has children and I regularly try to introduce them to special more creative experiences with art and similar activities, in contrast to the blandness they are continuously bombarded with - the complexity and pathos of it all, hurts. Anyway, this subject could go many different ways, so I'll rest it here... Also, respect due that you are near the Black Mountain College and doing things there. I remember watching your collaborative live, networked twin-broadcast, from the college itself for Double Blind (Love), with Annie Abrahams - http://aabrahams.wordpress.com/tag/curt-cloninger/. >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. Classics that I have read repeatedly for years :-) Wishing you well. marc > 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 > > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
