I Am For An Education
By Jan Estep
I am for an education that says “yes”—yes to learning, yes to art, yes to life.
I am for an education that helps students become aware of our own aesthetic, conceptual, and emotional gestures, to discover who we actually are.
I am for an education that helps students to be mindful of our conditioning and habitual reactions so that we are free to choose, rather than simply react.
I am for an education that encourages students to explore a wide range of options, which does not pigeonhole us prematurely as “this” or “that” kind of artist, “this” or “that” kind of person.
I am for an education that teaches students to consume dogmas, chew them up, and spit them out when they’re no longer useful.
I am for an education that realizes sometimes you have to wade through piss and shit to get to the other side of an idea.
I am for an education that cries when it needs too, rants when it needs to, breaks down when it needs to, whatever is necessary to unlock the doors of comprehension.
I am for an education that realizes sometimes you have to investigate your thoughts and intentions to get to the other side of a feeling.
I am for an education that holes up in the library for days and weeks at a time, to walk back out into the sunlight with one’s belly full of knowledge.
I am for an education that does not oppose book smarts against street smarts, but welcomes both as useful sources of information.
I am for an education that recognizes the full-on complexity of intuition and instinct.
I am for an education that teaches us to have faith in our own experience.
I am for an education that does not hide behind the vagueness of art or the open-endedness of these issues.
I am for an education that creates a critical, supportive community where students can take risks, try on different voices, and dig down deep to see what lies beneath the surface.
I am for an education that embraces failure as an opportunity to learn and to grow.
I am for an education that allows students to fall flat on our faces, and does not judge us personally for doing so.
I am for an education of mistakes, false starts, and wrong turns, that admits we don’t always know what we need from the outset.
I am for an education that embraces uncertainty.
I am for an education that teaches us that no matter what we can always begin again.
I am for an education that honors all aspects of being human.
I am for an education that does not place beauty above all else or technique above all else or concept above all else.
I am for an education that refuses to create camps of “us” versus “them.”
I am for an education that defies easy categorization and black-and-white scenarios.
I am for an education that avoids the language of right and wrong, good and bad.
I am for an education that fosters judgment but is not judgmental.
I am for an educator who does not defend her aesthetic ideology at the expense of her students.
I am for an educator who does not defend her ego at the expense of her students.
I am for an educator who realizes she doesn’t know it all.
I am for an education that does not pit the head against the heart, the mind against the body, thought against feeling, reason against emotion.
I am for an education that does not pit convention against freedom, tradition against experimentation, form against content.
I am for an education that does not bury its head in the sand.
I am for an education that confronts the real-life implications of its teachings and the real-life situations of its students.
I am for an education that understands learners have histories and prejudices and fears and limitations, and that creates a safe place to bring these forth.
I am for an education that champions the mind but does not over-intellectualize.
I am for an education that does not hide behind theory in an effort to make itself seem more important or serious or academic or scholarly.
I am for an education that supports the body but does not deny the intellect.
I am for an education that does not hide behind craft in an effort to shut out thinking.
I am for an education that values truth.
I am for an education that is vulnerable but not defensive, and that fosters students who are vulnerable but not defensive.
I am for an education that blurs the lines between art and life, learning and being.
I am for an education that is fluid and flexible, adaptable to each person’ unique condition.
I am for an education that doesn’t pretend to know all the answers or falsely asserts that we can predict the future.
I am for an education that acknowledges the fact that things always change.
I am for an education that is socially relevant, personally relevant, politically relevant.
I am for an education that does something other than regurgitate official knowledge, sanctioned attitudes, and worn-out platitudes.
I am for an education that does not create “problems” that only it can “solve,” bolstering its value by pseudo-posturing.
I am for an education that makes a stink when necessary, but does not overdramatize just for something to do.
I am for an education that is fair and reasonable and just, and that creates students who are fair and reasonable and just.
I am for an education that is not afraid of ethics and ambiguity.
I am for an education that shows students how to be critical without turning that criticality on ourselves till we no longer enjoy making art.
I am for an education of confidence and self-compassion.
I am for an education that assumes students are capable, far more capable than we realize.
I am for an education that gives constructive criticism without destroying a person’s self-respect.
I am for an education that helps students learn the hard lessons of patience, trust, and acceptance.
I am for an education that rewards perseverance, courage, honesty, and passion.
I am for an education that recognizes that learning is a life-long process.
I am for an education that emboldens its students.
I am for an educator who disappears, who is no longer needed by her students.
I am for an education that cultivates learners who are independent and free, trusting our innate capacity to teach ourselves.
I am for an education that works for the benefit of learners, not to perpetuate the status quo or itself.
I am for an education that doesn’t assume that one model fits all.
I am for an education that does not promote a narrow definition of success.
I am for an education that does not make false promises, of a career or a job or fame, or that measures a person’s worth by how much money we earn or what we can tick off on our resumes.
I am for an education that does not bow down to cynicism and greed.
I am for an education that expects you to show up, wholly, and engage the moment.
I am for an education that wants you to care.
I am for an education that takes its cues from the forms of everyday life, that breathes and pulses, constricts and surges, and is heavy and light and abstract and tangible as life itself.
I am for an education that wants its learners to grow strong in every way we can.
I am for an education that cultivates a life of the mind in communion with the play of the body, that is discursive and experiential, verbal and visual, tactile and cerebral.
I am for an education of making and doing, pushing and pulling, tasting and hearing, writing and reading, thinking and dreaming.
I am for an education found in between the pages of a book or in the arms of a lover or in the bite of an apple or in the eyes of a dog.
I am for an education that shouts and cries, whispers and laughs, holds dissertations and fosters creativity.
I am for an education that dribbles down one’s chin and skins one’s shin.
I am for an education that takes one’s breath away.
I am for an education that exhausts the body.
I am for an education that taxes the brain.
I am for an education that entertains paradox and welcomes contradiction.
I am for an education that seeks integration and resists compartmentalization.
I am for an education of the here and now.
I am for an education that gets under the skin, into the blood, and courses through the mind/body before seeping out the pores again.
I am for an education that rewires the neurons.
I am for an education that a learner inhales deeply.
I am for an educator who does the best that she can, wherever she is, in the time that she has, with all that she’s got.
I am for an education that is bold and kind, that creates a space of great affection but is brutally honest.
I am for an education that protects the classroom as a sacred space of sharing, but extends and expands beyond those walls.
I am for an education that takes many forms, and occupies many contexts.
I am for an education that is solitary, when appropriate, and communal, when appropriate.
I am for an education that gets passed on from person to person.
I am for an education that heeds no bounds.
I am for an education that always wants more learners.
I am for an education that is realistic, pragmatic, and grounded, yet is also aspirational.
I am for an education that admits the consequences of our actions.
I am for an education that is smart, not pretentious; friendly, not divisive; generous, not restricted.
I am for an education of possibility.
I am for an education of change.
I am for an education that moves us.
I am for an education that saves lives.
I am for an education based on love, not fear.
I am for an education.
Copyright Jan Estep 2011
After comments to Art and Design (Mis)Education, Quodlibetica/Art of This, September 18, 2011.
These are a few subjective observations arising from our discussion. They are by no means exhaustive.
Often people spoke about “the institution” as a monolithic entity, as if “art school” was a singular, identifiable thing that needed to be fixed or changed into a better kind of thing. “Art school” doesn’t know what art is. “Art school” promises more than it can deliver. “Art school” needs to teach skills. While this kind of thinking speaks to the power dominant institutions have to set norms and conventions and monopolize resources, it also oversimplifies the situation and doesn’t address the relationship of the individual to and within the institution. In our brief discussion, we didn’t have time to get to this internal relationship. Also, despite the power of the Institution, there’s no single bogeyman here. The oversimplification overlooks that fact that art schools are not all alike, and certainly not all artists and students need the same thing.
Another commenter suggested that “Art schools” need to understand what art does and how it affects the world. A clearer sense of this in the culture would help secure the relevance of art more broadly, beyond art students and artists.
There was a strong sense that the educators in the group are deeply committed to teaching and to our students’ potential and growth, and that we struggle against larger currents in our organizations and in the culture that impede learning.
Alongside this faith in education, I detected a lot of general unhappiness and dissatisfaction in the room: That getting an undergraduate degree in art does not guarantee a job in the field, much less a life-long, personal commitment to art-making. That in some instances an art education doesn’t seem to equip students well for life on their own after school. And also that an art education is so expensive. We acknowledged that it wasn’t only artists who were feeling this insecurity, but given art’s marginal position in society, artists typically experience it. For those who have been educated outside the United States there was criticism that students have to pay for their education, and anger at the financial debt education demands. A lot of people seemed upset by this debt and again, it’s clear that it’s not only artists who suffer this.
Given the economic reality of the situation (for artists, writers, humanities majors, and others), there was a discussion about what constitutes success, both as an artist and as a person? In terms of art, many people urged a wider set of models so that success was not only defined as either selling your art or getting a tenure-track job. Making your way as a commercially viable artist or as an educator works for some people, but what are the other options? And, can we uncouple the definition of success from money, fame, and how you pay your bills?
It became clear that there are differences between a BFA program or undergraduate art schooling and an MFA program or graduate art schooling, and the expectations that each level engenders. Neither is necessary to be an artist, nor are they sufficient, so it really depends on what you want and need from your training. And then, if you enroll, on the specific teaching you encounter once you are there. On this point some people acknowledged the impact good teaching versus bad teaching has on one’s development.
There was interest in alternative structures for art schools: perhaps one that ran more like an artist residency, where self-directed and self-motivated students attend primarily to have loads of free time and a place to create, with some minimal structure and community interaction to hang on. Perhaps a more interactive program that embedded students/artists into the community so there were fewer walls between artists, teachers, curators, designers, scientists, and publics of all sorts. Perhaps a more intimate situation where teachers and students formed working teams. Of course, no single one of these would work for all people or all artists.
One of the panelists, who had not attended art school, stressed that it really is a matter of a person’s willingness to just do it: to decide to be an artist, and to do what it takes to become one, and then to continue as one. If you don’t have the personal conviction at this level, no amount of teaching or school is going to help you accomplish it. There has to be a personal commitment.
Another panelist told a moving story of her disenchantment with teaching in an MFA program, and from the dream of making it as an artist. To the fist point she argued that MFA programs are unethical, since they promise success in the art world for getting a (very expensive) degree from their institution. (On a side note, for-profit colleges like University of Phoenix are coming under similar attack for making grandiose promises to their students to get them to enroll and take out student loans.) To the second point, she described the nepotism, sexism, racism, and ageism of the official art world at the highest levels. The pain of her realization was palpable, and obviously quitting teaching and her former art practice were for her the right choice. But in response to her first charge, a number of educators in the group spoke up for the value of education and how it impacts lives in positive ways. Again, not all schools are the same, and not all programs ask students to go into debt to attend them or falsely assert that they can guarantee their graduates jobs or careers. Regarding her second charge, the call for more models of success was in part a response to this, as was the suggestion to take one’s creative energy and skill and apply them to one’s life rather than at the exclusive service of one’s art.
It is clear that finding one’s way in the world is not easy for artists, how to make a living, how to find a public, how to acquire skills, how to find time and energy to create, how to sustain yourself on every level. Some of the frustration I sensed was tied to the fact that there are no obvious trajectories laid out for us; there are no guarantees or easy answers. It takes more than a degree, or talent, and that is incredibly frustrating. You want to pursue the thing that you love but you just don’t know how to make it all work. In the arts, many of us take a hybrid path (as one audience member put it). Given the numbers, most of us will not walk into a gallery relationship that takes care of us; most of us will not get a teaching job that gives some security; and that means the bulk of the responsibility falls on the individual. So what do we do? How do we sustain ourselves as artists? And how do we stop the real practicalities of living from eating up all our time and energy?
We came back a couple of times to the idea that school’s primary function is to teach students how to learn, that this is a skill that we can take with us into our lives beyond school: the ability to articulate problems and then to solve them, knowing how to ask questions and seek information and guidance to help answer them; feeling confident in one’s ability to teach oneself, from being able to adapt to new technologies as they develop in one’s field to being able to carve a life out for oneself amidst so much uncertainty.
Many of us at the end of the night felt that we had only scratched the surface and there was much more to be explored together.
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