AEAH 4760 Global
Aesthetics
Final Project
Tori Wheelis
Multication
Global Aesthetics is an idea that
has come about in the Information Age, when the Internet has made it possible
for people thousands of miles away into the same room, and countries and
cultures are clashing and melding while doing business with each other. Students
these days are constantly in contact with different cultures, traditions, and
identities. Students who come through the art classroom are at a point in their
lives when they are forming and honing their personal identity, their own
perceptions and knowledge of the world around them.
This personal culture they are
participating in is made up of their own pieces of all the other cultures they
come into contact with, like their “age; gender and sexuality; social and
economic class…exceptionality…geographic location…religion; political status;
language; ethnicity…and racial designation (Ballengee-Morris &Stuhr,
2001).” Education is constantly changing and morphing, and to sufficiently serve
student’s needs, incorporating the idea of global aesthetics and its role in
global culture is key.
Aesthetics can be defined as “philosophy
of art (Barrett, 2007)” (among with many other things). And if philosophy
includes the methods of “rational inquiry, critical thinking” and “logical
thinking (Barrett, 2007),” then aesthetics should include these same methods of
thinking related to art. Global aesthetics, by definition, is rational inquiry
into the aesthetics of different and various cultures, and critical thinking as
to their influence, relevance, importance, and the role they play into every
day life.
Art teachers are in a unique and powerful
place of being able to address these issues of globalization directly and in
multiple ways. Culture is made up of what we do and what we value, and that is
evidenced by the images, clothing, entertainment, and other things we
participate in and value (Ballengee-Morris &Stuhr, 2001). Art can
specifically address these everyday evidences of our culture and its impact on
others, as well as other culture’s impact on ours.
Stressing the valuable insights and
perspectives of different cultures and using the medium of culture and global
aesthetics will lead student’s through their own personal identity and come to
accept and value other’s. This can lead to or be learned by collaboration,
interdisciplinary projects, and projects focused on social reconstruction or
social justice (Ballengee-Morris &Stuhr, 2001). Using these mediums and
forms of learning and stressing the globalization of our cultures and others
will propel students through navigating the world they live in and through
becoming forward, flexible, and creative thinkers.
It is not just traditional aesthetics
that should be looked into and celebrated, though. All cultures of today are
growing and changing, and each one has their own contemporary aesthetic. Many
of these are influenced by traditional aesthetics, but it is important to
realize and educate students in the knowledge that cultures have contemporary
art. They do not just “freeze (Hassan)” and are in no way “universal,
unchanging (Hassan)” or limited. Traditional art forms hold importance, but are
not the end all of cultural aesthetics. It is important to understand this so
that students in the future do not think that a country’s, or even a continent,
such as Africa’s, aesthetics, can be summed up by a few examples of work from
years ago (Hassan).
Social issues, poverty, homelessness, the
sex trade, politics, social justice, advertisements, the effect of the media,
fair trade, animal rights, consumerism, cultural identities, cultural clashes, genocide,
diplomacy, and history are just some of the issues and cultures that show up
when contemporary global aesthetics is brought into a classroom. When art
philosophy is applied to it, and students are confronted with inquiring into
social issues and cultural identities, art education can be brought to a whole
new level of creativity, problem solving, and growing students into future
artists or responsible community members.
How can this be done in an art classroom?
It is not always easy, considering “narrow views about art and the role of
education (Darts, 2011)” have gotten teachers “who have had the courage to
include social issues and other non-school board sanctioned materials or
activities within their curricula (Darts, 2008).” But every one agrees that
teachers do not merely serve the public, they “actively [create] one (Darts,
2011),” meaning that whatever traits and skills are taught in the classrooms of
the US are the traits and skills that will be evident and used among the
nation’s youth.
It is important to train young, creative,
well-versed, emotionally stable, responsible, compassionate, capable, and
problem-solving individuals, and including ideas such as social justice and
helping students learn their own cultural identities (and conversely, their own
personal identities) is a good step along the way to doing so. Having an art
education system that values collaboration, problem solving, abstract, creative
thinking, and the use of art in a positive, influential, and valuable way will
produce artists and students who can easily collaborate, problem solve, think
creatively and abstractly, and who will use art or whatever medium they choose
to enact positive change and hopefully have influence and add value in the
world.
With all of these things in mind, I
created the beginning of a project I hope will continue to grow and flourish on
these ideas and principles. It is a blog that I plan to use for various classroom
functions, but with the purpose of introducing my students to the idea of
contemporary multicultural education, and then building on that. I have dubbed
it Multication, because my goal would be to show my students multiple
perspectives, cultures, and skills. It would have many functions.
I have included several examples of basic
classroom functions it could be used for. Parents are an example of a big
beneficiary of this blog. Since I plan on incorporating collaboration and ideas
of social justice into my classroom, this could mean large class projects that
would need parental consent and updates. It would be useful to have all of the
information in one place, so an email chain with possible mis-deliveries or
mistakes could be eliminated.
All the information for class project
details, or pictures of the finished things, or updates on what is going on in
the classroom could be posted, and could allow for discussion, feedback, and
collaboration. Parents could easily keep up with their children’s artwork, or
get together to work together on class supply needs or carpooling to projects
(for example, a high school class might get an opportunity to paint a mural on
a school wall on a Saturday, which would require transportation, etc.).
Especially since my students might be tackling heavy issues, parents would want
to stay informed, and this blog would make it easy to.
Having instructions for projects in one
place is also useful, so if students choose to work at home (or have to), they
can stop in one place for ideas and for the requirements. I can use the blog to
have online lessons, or discussions. If I was at a school where I had to give
homework, I could have them do turn in their work on or through the blog. It
could also be a secondary source of information where I can post things if I
run out of time or am not allowed to directly cover it in a classroom.
My goal with this blog would be to
enhance and streamline my student’s education, and to help incorporate a
multicultural experience into their daily lives. If I made my blog interesting
enough to capture their attention outside of school at least once or twice a
week, and constantly posted new websites, videos, and events, eventually a
sense of culture and the seemingly implicit need of all teenagers to watch any
online video they see (from my experience working with high-schoolers in a dorm
setting) would allow my students to experience other cultures and ideas in a
variety of ways, and continue to think about the activities and discussions had
in class.
The examples in my sample blog are a
sample turn-in assignment, where students turn in their discoveries in a short,
online assignment. I also have a discussion board where students will post
through comments and reply to each other. I focused on one thing as a sample of
a very short online lesson/post including videos and a short summary of
Japanese Taiko. I spend a little bit of time in my summary detailing how Taiko
has changed and become something different from the traditional Taiko in
America, but how it still celebrate Japanese tradition.
If I wanted to I could start an in-class
discussion over the interesting interaction Taiko had with America and how
American culture influenced it but also has been influenced by Taiko. I could
also have a discussion over the idea of traditions changing but still
celebrating the old tradition, and how this can apply specifically to the US
and then to other nations.
This class and, subsequently, this
project, has helped shape my opinion of what an art teacher should be striving
to teach and what an art class should be about. I always thought teachers
helped shape their students into citizens, but I never thought about the actual
application and the fact that my own education will be out of date by the time
I begin teaching. I also never really thought deeply about how our culture and
globalization is an important part of art and how much they actually interact,
nor did I think about the real life applications of art and how it is changing
to keep up with our culture and globalization. I am hoping to spread these
ideas and realizations with this blog, even if I don’t immediately get a job
and I hope that someone walks away from seeing my blog feeling a little
different about their view of art and the role of art in our society and our
classrooms today.
Works Cited
Ballengee-Morris,
C., & Stuhr, P. (2001). Multicultural art and visual cultural education
in a changing world. Art Education, July 2001, 6-13.
Barrett,
T. (2008) Why is that art? Aesthetics and criticism of contemporary art. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Darts,
D. (2011). Invisible culture:Taking art education to the streets. Art Education,
September 2011, 49-53.
Hassan,
S. M. (1995). The modernist experience in african art: Visual expression of the
self and cross-cultural aesthetics. Journal of Contemporary African Art.
72(2),
215-233.
No comments:
Post a Comment