Parker Palmer talks about "we are who we teach" which I find pertinent to my own work and teaching. Having started out my educational pursuits and personal passions in the field of art, this permeates everything I do in my teaching. Creativity is the source of my teaching and I cannot separate it from my work as a teacher educator. But often, I find this conflicts with the current expectations of teachers to standardize and generalize experiences in the classroom. Today in class with my students we were discussing how even art class has become standardized. A student raised the point that their child is given "directions" on how to do their art. Is this art? And more importantly, is this learning and creating, two skills we deem crucial, at least in theory.
In many art classes today children are expected to reproduce, not create, a product which the teacher deems worthy of duplication, but this is not art and definitely does not support creativity in children. But I guess my question is, has even the field of art education fallen prey to a standardized curriculum? Is this how art education "stays alive"? And if so, what is the point when art is the one means of escaping high stakes testing, measurement and standardization? But I think this comes to a more fundamental question about what is teaching and learning. Is learning just the mere absorption of what the teachers tells you or is it something more. And so I would like to pose the question, how do you define teaching and learning?
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