“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
― John Dewey
John Dewey believed that curriculum in schools is not a fixed thing, that it is ever changing to reflect the time is a part of. What made curriculum successful 100 years ago is not going to be the same thing today. Curriculum should reflect the interests, lives and culture of the students who are learning from it. Visual culture has a huge part in this type of education, especially when learning about art. Art encompasses everything from what is in our museums and galleries to what is on our streets, in our homes, and on our screens.
What kind of lessons can we teach to students who are influenced by so many things outside of their school? We can take what they know and integrate it with what they are learning. We can start with their own histories, cultures and interests and compare and contrast them to the lives, cultures and interests of those they don't know. Art is the ultimate and universal tool to communicate thoughts, ideas and messages that can influence and change the lives of others around you. It is important to first teach understanding of our world, and other people, and then to teach creative ways to connect to the world, and then build upon those as the changes come. "This means that art curriculum includes social, psychological, historical, material and other types of information about and analysis of great works of popular and fine art and artists as well as students’ own artistic production. In other words, contemporary art curriculum is a creative process that is the realization of a social consciousness concerning art making and viewing (Boughton & Freedman)."
For our first lesson, my teaching partner and I are using a book that our students are currently reading "The Kindness Club" by Courtney Sheinmel. In it, a student starts a club focused on being kind to others, and makes a birthday party for another girl who recently lost her mother. For our lesson, we are going to discuss several things, including why is it important to be kind, how we can show kindness to others, and then create visual representations of these acts of kindness. We are going to discuss how visual art sends a message to others, so we are not just celebrating kindness for ourselves, but sharing the art with others to spread that message of kindness. We are also going to discuss how public art is part of our visual culture, and how art on the street that is accessible to everyone is sometimes a better way to share art than keeping it locked up in a museum or a gallery. We hope to incorporate all of these lessons in our teaching, while also creating artwork. We want to combine meaning and personal story with art making. "In art as in all school subjects, education should be as meaningful and authentic as possible. As a result, curriculum should include opportunities for student self-directed learning as well as teacher directed learning (Boughton & Freedman)." In this way, the students will not only be learning from us, but learning from each other and from themselves.
References
Boughton, D., & Freedman, K. (n.d.). Elementary art education: A practical approach to teaching visual culture. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.