# Teaching > General Teaching >  Teacher Appreciation Week

## rahulaiwa9

Do you guys know that Teacher Appreciation Week is just round the corner? (7th May, 2006 to 13th May, 2006) Yeah! I know everyone is busy with their schedules, jobs and responsibilities in general. But, just think back on the days when you needed that small pat on your back or a word of encouragement and your teacher was ever ready to give it to you. So why not give your favorite teacher a surprise now by showing your appreciation on this special occasion.

And what are you planning to do?

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## Perceptor

Is this just an American thing?

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## AimusSage

I always appreciate teacher when they give me an A+. No need for a teacher appreciation week.  :Biggrin:

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## IrishCanadian

I've been a browner since the middle of highschool. My teachers are appreciated. What an odd time of year for teacher appreciation week.

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## Lily Adams

I think it should be teacher appreciation week every week. That makes me sound like a total teacher's pet, but seriously, I love teachers. I've had this amazing teacher this year, and he's completely inspired me. If you asked me a few months ago if becoming a teacher was an option in my future I would immediately say, "Are you wacky in the head?" but now I'm contemplating it because of the inspiration I've gotten from him. In most cases they're my only friends at school who obviously can see what I feel. Thank you, teachers.

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## SleepyWitch

teachers are a bunch of lazy parasites!  :Biggrin: *
nah, seriously, I appreciate teachers a lot (especially smart, good-looking ones  :Brow: )... even more seriously, yes, I think it should be teachers appreciation every week --> you have to give me presents every week  :Biggrin: 

Is teacher appreciation week an American invention? I think they've got it in Japan, too.






*j/k  :Smile:  I'm studying to become a teacher myself and have worked as a student tutor at univ for 3 years.

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## jon1jt

If American teachers want to be appreciated, they ought to be required to take the same exams that they're supposedly preparing their students for. Start with the SAT, SATII, and in some cases, AP exams. Appreciation, phooey.

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## amanda_isabel

didn't know there existed teacher appreciation week. we have teacher's day at our school, its around december 15 or so. nothing much, it;s just a series of speeches and presentations and gifts like bookmarks.

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## crazefest456

> If American teachers want to be appreciated, they ought to be required to take the same exams that they're supposedly preparing their students for. Start with the SAT, SATII, and in some cases, AP exams. Appreciation, phooey.


yes! AP exams esp.; just for fun atleast.

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## stlukesguild

Considering the fact that a teaching license requires a college degree it seems more than likely that most teachers have taken the SAT, SATII or ACT. Beyond this, with the exception of the older teachers, they will have been required to have taken the NTE (National Teachers Exam) which involves three separate tests: 1. Common Knowledge 2. Knowledge of one's field/subject of specialization 3. Pedagogy. The most recent teachers must undergo a Praxis III testing process which combines the course requirements, the NTE, a required period of being mentored, and observations over an extended period of time by an outside mentor. On top of this, teachers must meet the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) requirements that establish further requirements to be considered "qualified" to teach (requirements that I doubt certain politicians who enacted this law could meet). Teachers must also undergo criminal background checks by the state BCI (Bureau of Criminal Investigation) and the FBI. In order to maintain their license they must continually meet the requirements (which differ from state to state) demanding that they continually take further college courses (at their own expense)... all in order to maintain a job where the level of respect (at least as far as might be measured by comments of outsiders, many parents, politicians, and by the paycheck, is no where near the top of the heap.

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## aabbcc

Respect is one thing, appreciation another. Or maybe I simply do not know English well enough, but these two always differed in my mind, probably influenced by the ways of my native languages.

You can ask of me to respect any person - to allow them their personal space, address them in respectable and polite manner, take into account their differences and not to discriminate against them, and apply all general rules of decent behaviour in contact with tham. That is, in the end, something most of us were taught, that kind of behaviour is socially acceptable and expected, and makes an essential part of one's manners. Therefore, I have no problems _respecting_ professors, just like I have no problems _respecting_ any other person of any other profession, as long as that kind of relationship based on respect is mutual.
When I say "respect", I do not mean the kind of respect one has towards those who are necessarily a scale above them in social or professional hierarchy (because they are elder than you, or because they are in the position of professor and you in position of the student, and so on), but also the general respect you have got towards _any_ person.

However, _appreciation_ is another thing, and in my mind it was always something that cannot be asked. Respect is given, appreciation deserved - that is pretty much how it was formulated in my head.
You cannot ask of me to _appreciate_ somebody. I am not going to play a little linguist and analyse the word (it does remind me of _prezzo_, though), but the word has got something to do with values, and with acknowledging a value of something/somebody. That is something you cannot ask of me to do _a priori_, and just assume value in anybody and therefore appreciate whole wide world - appreciation comes _a posteriori_ (unlike respect), if it comes at all. It does not have to come, it depends both on subject and object, that is, on the qualities of another person and how much they meet your standards or values. And the same goes in reverse from their perspective, of course.

I do not think that I ought to appreciate my professors _a priori_, by the sole fact that here they are, all with university degrees and most of them also with magistral/doctoral theses behind them, above us and thus deserve our appreciation. Hell, no - not _a priori_.
I have seen both sides of the medal - apart from having had good professors, both as experts and as persons, I also had professors who simply failed to be good person. Professors who proposed immoral offers to their students (have I mentioned I am a minor, and so are most of the students in the school? So, double negative points here.). Professors who did not always have the most objective standards for giving a final grade; who insulted their students, and who did not desire to help them when they needed it because they did not want to lose their time on explaining things to class - who understood, they understood, who did not - their problem, was pretty much the policy of some professors. Professors who did not want to hear anything which opposed their personal opinion and who asked of you to basically repeat their words and their opinions, not to think with your own head. Professors who simply abused their position, failed to do what they were expected to do.
And all of those, my friends, were people with _degrees_, people with scientific papers behind them, people often with reputation, and people whom you tell me to _appreciate_ for the sole sake of them being in situation of being my professors, a little fact they or I could have very little effect on?!

I can respect them - at times hardly, but I can. I will not lower myself to their level. Even though the relationship of respect was not always mutual with their students, I still have to (and wish to) address them politely and remain in accordance with my basic manners.
But I cannot appreciate them - never. As I said, appreciation is deserved and depends on a little more than somebody's formal education or hardship of their profession.

I also had wonderful professors, whose influence went far over their field and for whom I can literally say that they contributed not only to my education, but to my upbringing. Most of my professors were somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, but prevailing on the "good" side (God I speak like a five-year old  :Biggrin:  I know that a word is not black and white, but...), but I will not deceive myself nor lie to myself and others nor glorify teachers' profession as such and promote universal appreciation for everybody in that position, because I will always keep in mind those 'other' professors. Not everyone in that position is automatically deserving of appreciation. Nobody, after all, is automatically deserving of appreciation.

So, respect - yes, appreciation - depending on the individual professor.

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## jon1jt

> Considering the fact that a teaching license requires a college degree it seems more than likely that most teachers have taken the SAT, SATII or ACT. Beyond this, with the exception of the older teachers, they will have been required to have taken the NTE (National Teachers Exam) which involves three separate tests: 1. Common Knowledge 2. Knowledge of one's field/subject of specialization 3. Pedagogy. The most recent teachers must undergo a Praxis III testing process which combines the course requirements, the NTE, a required period of being mentored, and observations over an extended period of time by an outside mentor. On top of this, teachers must meet the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) requirements that establish further requirements to be considered "qualified" to teach (requirements that I doubt certain politicians who enacted this law could meet). Teachers must also undergo criminal background checks by the state BCI (Bureau of Criminal Investigation) and the FBI. In order to maintain their license they must continually meet the requirements (which differ from state to state) demanding that they continually take further college courses (at their own expense)... all in order to maintain a job where the level of respect (at least as far as might be measured by comments of outsiders, many parents, politicians, and by the paycheck, is no where near the top of the heap.


James Madison said in The Federalist that "parchment barriers" could not stop a tyranny of the majority. Similarly, the NTE, PRAXIS (which I passed...it's a joke), observations, college degree, and tenure are grossly inadequate to ensure that teachers have the intellect and skill for the profession. Colleges today accept low SAT scores and some have even done away with the standardized test and writing sample altogether. They'd rather consider "extracurricular activities" such as working in a homeless shelter. At best class observations remove the worst of the worst teachers in the first three years, but once they gain tenure the observation is meaningless. And teachers make sure to politic along the way to get the good observation. And take a look at how many questions on the Praxis you can get wrong and still receive a passing score. 

C'mon, gimme a break, the system is a disaster. Standards are dumbing down in the same measure teachers are dumbing down their content. Teachers need to be called out for their incompetence and having them take SAT/AP exams is one measure to determine just that

Wasn't it your majesty that said, To thine own self, be true? Teachers ought to start practicing it.

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## crazefest456

And alot of teachers (in my school) don't need teacher certification or any classes on teaching for that matter, because they have masters or phds on the subject. That's even worse because some of them are very intelligent but are just bad at teaching.
But I agree with Anastasija that appreciation should be individualized.

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## jon1jt

> And alot of teachers (in my school) don't need teacher certification or any classes on teaching for that matter, because they have masters or phds on the subject. That's even worse because some of them are very intelligent but are just bad at teaching.
> But I agree with Anastasija that appreciation should be individualized.


Oh yeah as far as appreciation I agree with that. And you're right, a degree means nothing unless you have the intellect AND skill, and I'm saying the education system is a sham on both counts. 

They build their metropolis of Masters in Education and doctoral-wanna-be programs to bestow upon themselves the title of educational expert. I feel sorry for the working parents sending their children to public school who think that all is well on the inside. All they know is that their kid's teacher is "so nice!" and they make the class fun.  :Rolleyes: 
.

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## crazefest456

> I feel sorry for the working parents sending their children to public school who think that all is well on the inside. All they know is that their kid's teacher is "so nice!" and they make the class fun. 
> .


*ehm* private schools have that problem too...
oh well, I guess the really, really good teachers (3 or 4 in my life) have made it all worth it. I know, a bad teacher can really ruin your life, or your way of thinking. For 3 or 4 years, I was fooled into thinking that I can never ever be good at math and that I could never write for the life of me...and I proved them wrong.

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## jon1jt

> *ehm* private schools have that problem too...
> oh well, I guess the really, really good teachers (3 or 4 in my life) have made it all worth it. I know, a bad teacher can really ruin your life, or your way of thinking. For 3 or 4 years, I was fooled into thinking that I can never ever be good at math and that I could never write for the life of me...and I proved them wrong.


Public, private, they fall in the same **** pile, with a few exceptions.

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## stlukesguild

James Madison said in The Federalist that "parchment barriers" could not stop a tyranny of the majority. Similarly, the NTE, PRAXIS (which I passed...it's a joke), observations, college degree, and tenure are grossly inadequate to ensure that teachers have the intellect and skill for the profession. 

I took the NTE under the Praxis II system (no mentoring requirement). The test was given in three parts. The first, General Knowledge, was absurd. The difficulty is administering a test which actually tests something as abstract as "General Knowledge" or the "general knowledge" required for one to be an adequate teacher. The test expected me to be able to recognize a Gothic Cathedral, the fact that Peter Paul and Mary were folk singers, know the distance from the earth to the sun, the speed of light, and be able to know what creatures might have been living during the Paleolithic age. Unquestionably, one might know all of these things and be an idiot... or conversely know none of them and still be quite intelligent and educated. Why are Peter, Paul, and Mary "general knowledge"? What if I had never heard of them but was aware of classical music, opera, and jazz? of course the difficulty is that neither educators nor the government have been able to come up with any standard as to what constitutes the knowledge base required of a teacher. A potential lawyer and doctor know exactly what is expected of them... what they need to know... before going into their state exams. How does one prepare for something as vague as "general knowledge".

The second part of the NTE... at least for secondary teachers and subject area specialists... is a test of their knowledge of their specialization. This may or may not have been a joke. I completed the 2 1/2 hour test in 15 minutes. But then again, I had a bachelor's degree and post-graduate work in the field... had worked as a TA and RA in the field (art history). The test could certainly stand to be much more challenging... but again the test is constructed without having established any clearly understood standards so that prospective teachers can honestly prepare for what is expected. Of course, in theory, one should be able to discern who is or is not a viable candidate for the field based upon his or her college record. These (in theory) should be far more in-depth and stretch over an extended period of time. The real problem, however, is grade inflation at the post-secondary school level. Grade inflation may actually be blamed for the decline of standards in the public elementary and secondary schools (rather than the reverse... but more on that later).

The only test that offered any real challenge was that on pedagogy... which demanded that one develop at least a working knowledge of various educational and disciplinary theories, various sociological and psychological theories, and the history of education and education laws. Of course... this is all in the abstract. There is a world of difference between these abstract theories and being able to effectively utilize them... or throw them all out of the window when they don't apply. Perhaps a longer period of observations and student teaching equivalent to a medical residency would be far more effective... but how does one justify such an intensive series of requirements when the compensation level is so low? Can we honestly expect students to be attracted to the field if they are expected to put in the level of study demanded of a doctor or lawyer or scientist... and yet may expect a starting salary below $30,000? There is always the reality that you get what you pay for.

E.D. Hirsch and any number of other educators have noted that as universities have become more and more run like business with profits as the number one concern the standards have dropped. The scores needed to gain admittance have dropped in order to guarantee more students will be eligible, and the grading system has been inflated, in order to guarantee more students remain. A classical distribution of grades should follow the bell curve with the vast majority of all students earning a C (which stands for "average"). Only a small portion will fall far from this... earning either "A"s or "F"s. This is not reality today. It seems many of our universities are like Lake Woebegone, where all the children are "above average". I earned my undergraduate degree from a private school. The course load was incredible: 22 credit hours the first semester, 21 the second. To earn an "A" demanded the greatest effort. When I returned to school at a state university to earn my teaching license 12 credit hours was considered full-time and permission from the school and professors was required for anything over that. An "A" was virtually nothing. I was informed that an obscene percentage of incoming students were required to take remedial courses in mathematics, reading comprehension, and writing. 

Declining standards at the university level are often blamed on the public schools, but the reverse is true. How long do you think things would be allowed to carry on the way they are if the universities returned to their high standards? If they demanded higher scores on the SATs, at least 3 years of mathematics, 3 years of science, proficiency in at least one foreign language, and a series of tests on reading comprehension and a required essay proving writing ability what would happen? What would happen when all those children of suburban parents suddenly find they do not make the cut and cannot get into college? How long would we allow this to go on without doing everything in our power to raise the expectations in the public schools so that students are properly prepared?

Of course teaching has its share of incompetents. Even being brilliant in "book learning" in no way guarantees that one will make a marvelous teacher. A doctor can certainly get by without needing to have much in the way of interpersonal skills... not so a teacher. On the other hand, there are certainly those who have the interpersonal skills and yet are incompetent or less than knowledgeable in the very fields that they teach. Teachers are probably the ones who despise he incompetents most of all as we are aware that they are being paid the same as the rest of us... yet not doing the job properly... and they make the rest of us look bad. Many states, including my own, have done away with "tenure"... or permanent licensure. In defense of the unions that often are accused of protecting the incompetent, it must be noted that working conditions in education prior to the unions were absolutely deplorable... largely due to the fact that it was a field long dominated by women. Until as recently as the mid 1970s a teacher could be let go if she became pregnant (even if she was married) and administrators were free to let experienced teachers go in order to replace them with younger and cheaper inexperienced teachers. It also should be noted that the very system is set up in an adversarial manner. The administration is held responsible for attendance, the suspension rate, graduation, and the percentage of students passing proficiencies. They are thus pressured to keep students in class regardless of how disruptive they are and to pass them regardless of their inability to do the work. Teachers are then put in a position of attempting to teach classrooms with students who continually disrupt the lessons and with students who are years behind their grade level academically... and the only numbers the public sees are the pass fail rates and the proficiencies. 

At best class observations remove the worst of the worst teachers in the first three years, but once they gain tenure the observation is meaningless. And teachers make sure to politic along the way to get the good observation. And take a look at how many questions on the Praxis you can get wrong and still receive a passing score.

On the other hand... how difficult is it to strip the license from the worst doctors... lawyers... to say nothing of incompetent politicians. Again, I am all for increased standards. It would only improve the status and respect of the profession as a whole. On the other hand... I am realistic. I doubt that such increases can be implemented if we still insist upon paying teachers far beneath what is paid to other professionals. We can all dream about teachers and doctors and lawyers going into the field solely because they feel a calling to the noble profession and all it represents to humanity... but that's not being real. is it?

C'mon, gimme a break, the system is a disaster. Standards are dumbing down in the same measure teachers are dumbing down their content. Teachers need to be called out for their incompetence and having them take SAT/AP exams is one measure to determine just that.

Are teachers dumbing down the content? I didn't know that it was left up to the individual teacher to establish the content area standards, expectations, and curriculum. These are established locally by the boards of education and in each state by the state boards of education and various interested political and business interests. The federal government has never implemented a series of national standards/expectations so these vary from state to state and vary in interpretation among the thousands of local school districts. On paper NCLB attempted to establish standards... but it left these up to each state to create... and has since watered down the expectations as it becomes obvious that as schools have been required to implement further tests and pre-tests and post-tests and to offer further services such as tutoring and special classes... yet with no increase in support or funding... even in the suburban school districts the expected standards cannot be met... not without further support and funding... and the federal government is not willing to shell out more money for something like education when they have more important concerns... such as funding a war in the Middle-East in order to maintain the flow of oil. The reality is that public education is not of the highest concern for most of those in a position of wealth and power because they can easily afford to send their own children to the best private schools. In actuality, the system as it stands helps to maintain the _status quo_. Students born into the poorest families and communities are given the worst educational experience... and then we wonder why they don't just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

So how does one fix this system? Privatization? This looks good on paper. After all, the elite private schools far out-perform the public schools. But then again... how many of the elite private schools will even accept students with the various problems and special needs facing students in the large poverty ridden urban schools... or poor rural schools? A privatized, for-profit school system will undoubtedly lead to an even greater gap between the rich and the poor as the wealthy will be able to afford schools with the greatest resources and the best teachers, while the poor will be left with the worst... or no schooling at all.

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## stlukesguild

Public, private, they fall in the same **** pile, with a few exceptions.

Yeah... we're all just a bunch of ignorant, illiterates out to milk the system for what it's worth and torture a few kids along the way. We should abolish education as whole and run whole heartedly into Rousseau's concept of the self-taught child. :Rolleyes:   :Eek2:

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## HotKarl

Great posts St. Luke's.

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## jon1jt

STLUKESGUILD:

I agree with most of what you had to say. Let me start with your last point about privatization, which is a classic argument to turn off all discussion about the education problem. It's true that the wealthy will be able to afford the best schools, but that's the case right now. Wealthy kids go to private school or they attend public school in a high-priced neighborhood, where the teacher pay scale is usually much better. I think you underestimate privatization because the assumption that most start with is that government will have no role. Government could play a significant role, like offering scholarships, work study programs, summer/winter internships,---giving kids a real "civics lesson" or artistic experience. You're an art teacher, just look at how effectively government has contributed to the Arts---The National Endowment, etc. There's so much possibility, if only people demanded more. And if students on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder perform, the top schools will want them, and maybe offer scholarships themselves to attract the brightest and the best. the disruptive students will end up in clusters of the worst schools, or no school, which is where they belong anyway. To coddle a student who has no respect for his/her teachers doesn't deserve to be there. There should be zero tolerance for this sort of student, but instead the system insists that they remain in class even though in the teacher's professional judgment the student is destroying the classroom dynamic. One of the special functions of special education programs is to aid and abet these derelicts. When you consider how insidious it is that teachers are forced to contend with those type of students day in and day out reflects how broken the system really is. It's like one of my friends who works as a high school social studies teacher said: "We (teachers) are forced to cut deals with the derelicts or be ruled by them." And cutting deals means creating incentives to just keep them under control. 

I agree with you about the below average pay of teachers, which makes it very difficult to attract sharp candidates. I'm not against tenure, I'm against teachers who slide through the probationary period because administrators fail to do their job.

If you didn't learn about your subject in college then you're a moron and shouldn't be teaching in the first place. Yet, morons manage to wiggle their way through the teacher exam. I propose mandating up to getting rid of the exam altogether and measuring intellect based on four essay exams and two mock lessons. The first part would be graded by a diverse committee of experts in their individual fields who would grade for grammar and writing and general and content knowledge. The second part of the teachers exam could consist of two 10-15-minute lessons. Now some will say that this is impossible because the system lacks the resources. But I say redirect the money being dumped into those GARBAGE Teacher Education programs (undergrad) and charge a general fee of say $1000 for candidates to sit for the exam and another $1000 for the mock lesson section. The stringent requirements will deter the worst kind of candidates because they will be aware that they face a more difficult time manipulating a real committee with no financial obligation to them, whereas teacher colleges have a financial stake in retaining students. I'd love to know how many students actually "fail out" of teacher programs, undergrad and grad. I bet it's less than 1&#37;. 

There's no innovation that goes into hiring the best and brightest teachers because most parents, whether they want to admit it or not, view education first as a baby sitting agency. What do parents want their kids to do when they grow up? Enter medicine, law, computers/IT, maybe law enforcement. Before September 11th, even police officers was one of those "noble professions" attracting the same low brow types the teaching profession is stuck with.

I've said this before in another thread, but it's worth repeating: all parents, teachers or people interested in becoming a teacher ought to read Neil Postman's The End of Education.





> FROM THE END OF EDUCATION:
> We could improve the quality of teaching 
> overnight, as it were, if math teachers were 
> assigned to teach art, art teachers science, 
> science teachers English. My reasoning is as 
> follows: Most teachers, especially high school and 
> college teachers, teach subjects they were good at 
> in school. They found the subject both easy and 
> pleasurable. As a result, they are not likely to 
> ...

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## Sweets America

Jon, I am not sure I agree with the quote you posted, from the end of education. I think the interesting thing for teachers who love their subject is actually to try to explain it to the students who don't understand it at all, and to try to raise the interest of those who find the subject boring at first sight. Of course, good students are pleasant to teach to, but those who are not good at the subject must be very interesting for the teacher too! It's a challenge to the teacher and such a reward when he sees that he has made students interested or that he has helped them to improve. What is nice with beaing a teacher is that you can communicate your passion.
Of course I have known teachers who only cared about the good students, but all teachers are not like that.

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## jon1jt

> Jon, I am not sure I agree with the quote you posted, from the end of education. I think the interesting thing for teachers who love their subject is actually to try to explain it to the students who don't understand it at all, and to try to raise the interest of those who find the subject boring at first sight. Of course, good students are pleasant to teach to, but those who are not good at the subject must be very interesting for the teacher too! It's a challenge to the teacher and such a reward when he sees that he has made students interested or that he has helped them to improve. What is nice with beaing a teacher is that you can communicate your passion.
> Of course I have known teachers who only cared about the good students, but all teachers are not like that.



Oh but "explaining" is _the_ problem with teaching, Sweets. We have lost our sense of discovery for learning, the textbook killed the simple joy of reading. We see the teacher as all-knowing, and certainly as far as it goes they do have more knowledge, but learning is more than knowledge per se, it's about pressing up against the forms of love, beauty, courage. And to accomplish that teachers must liberate minds, not sculpt them into what they see fit. Fascist Germany tried that...and failed.  :Wink:

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## bluelightstar

I teach 3 AP English classes, 2 Honors English IV classes, and a World Literature class. In the first five classes, I easily have some of our school's best students - students who are eager to read, to learn, and to analyze. 

However, my lesson comes in the World Literature class, an elective where many of the students are in there to "fill up a schedule." Now, World Lit is an elective course that only lasts a semester, so it's fairly difficult to engage students at first. And I didn't have any "cream of the crop" students either. Initially, I was so frustrated and wanted to throw all of them out. Why bother with a bunch of students who don't want to learn about World Literature and couldn't care less about college in the first place? 

However, it's my job to stick it out. And I did. And for the first nine or ten weeks, I think the class had a consensus hatred of me! But they taught me that if you care about them and if you pressure them, they can all learn - or rather they all become eager to learn. That's far more than I learned in college or from any teacher test. And I don't think taking the AP English test or the SAT Subject Test in Literature would have helped either me or them. Teachers need to be appreciated because of what we do for so little. Yes, we get our nice summers "off" and these "long" vacations for Christmas and Thanksgiving. But go out and ask a teacher what he or she is doing during this period - oftentimes, it's grading, lesson plans, or professional development.

And about that World Literature class, at the beginning, I think 2 of the students had plans to attend a four year college. But after I did a sub-unit on college admissions (because we don't have a stellar Senior counselor), 23 out of the 27 have applied to a four year college or university. 

Teachers who care the most are often weeded out or discouraged by ridiculous measures of what makes a good teacher. Here's a clue for the politicians - a good teacher is not measured by how many students can perform well on a test of what is essentially memorization needed for graduation.

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## stlukesguild

STLUKESGUILD:

I agree with most of what you had to say. Let me start with your last point about privatization, which is a classic argument to turn off all discussion about the education problem. It's true that the wealthy will be able to afford the best schools, but that's the case right now. Wealthy kids go to private school or they attend public school in a high-priced neighborhood, where the teacher pay scale is usually much better. I think you underestimate privatization because the assumption that most start with is that government will have no role. Government could play a significant role, like offering scholarships, work study programs, summer/winter internships,---giving kids a real "civics lesson" or artistic experience. You're an art teacher, just look at how effectively government has contributed to the Arts---The National Endowment, etc. There's so much possibility, if only people demanded more.

Jon... your argument for what private schools could be is just as much of an abstraction... an ideal to be hoped for... as any concept of what public schools could or should be. Currently here in Ohio we are one of the testing grounds for the so-called "charter schools". These are privately owned and operated schools in which the parents receive federal and state funding (vouchers... based upon the per pupil dollars that otherwise would have gone into the public schools). The results have been atrocious as of now. The charter schools initially pick and choose students avoiding those with any special needs (cognitive, learning, and behavioral disabilities). After ADM week (when the governments audits the schools and allocates the money based upon the per pupil ratios) the charter schools begin kicking out the most difficult students who find their way back into the public schools (that do not have this option). The public schools must then educate these students while the money has already gone to the charter schools. In spite of the advantages that the charter schools have with their ability to refuse the "worst" students, to hire teachers for far less that the public schools, to avoid any government consequences for not employing only "highly qualified teachers" as measured by the NCLB act, and for not meeting the required AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) as measured by proficiencies... the charter schools have nevertheless registered consistently below the public schools. Students often are returned having fallen a year further behind. Often there is little or no exposure to art, music, physical education, or anything outside of a core curriculum. 

The problem with privatization is of course the funding. How do we adequately fund schools for the poor when the current system of enforced funding through property taxes does not work equitably? Parents of children living in wealthier districts are adamantly against the notion of having part of their tax dollars used to teach other people's children... thus taking away from their own children's schools. This very issue is what caused the "white flight" in most large American cities. This was not primarily an issue of racism but rather of economics as parents of students from good neighborhoods that paid the lion's share of the taxes found that a large portion of their tax dollars to be used in the schools were being diverted to the poorer schools... or worse, their children were being bused to these poorer schools, while parents of children from these schools were bused into the schools that their tax dollars had built. 

Currently, according to IRS records, 30% of the eligible US population pays no taxes due to the fact that they fall beneath the federal poverty rate. Where is the money to come for to pay for this immense population to attend school if we switch over to a privatized, pay-as-you-go system? The rich will have no problem. Perhaps the middle class parents will be able to afford to school their children upon the money they save if the public school portion of property taxes is removed from their tax burden. Even then, it would be a challenge. The tax dollars paid by parents with school age children does not alone fund the schools. Tax dollars of singles, of those who are married without children, and of the older property owners whose children have already attended school are all part of the equation. But what of the poor? In most cases they don't pay property taxes now. They rent or lease. You have suggested scholarships and internships... but the sheer number of children that are currently dependent upon tax dollars from others would make the very idea of abolishing private schools unworkable... unless we can convince the vast population of the middle class, the wealthy, and the business sector that the education of the poor on their dollar is somehow to their advantage. A hard sell, at the least, I would imagine.

And if students on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder perform, the top schools will want them, and maybe offer scholarships themselves to attract the brightest and the best.

Surely, wishful thinking. The private schools will only be willing to offer a free ride to students if they imagine something in it for them. They already have the "best and the brightest" from that sector of the population that can pay. What do they need the "best" from poor urban or rural America for? OK... perhaps they'll take a few for public relations... in order to look like they're doing their civic duty... and certainly they'll want the best football and basketball players. Don't all the Catholic schools now have teams that are almost completely made up of kids from the inner-city... are most probably aren't even Catholic?

The disruptive students will end up in clusters of the worst schools, or no school, which is where they belong anyway. To coddle a student who has no respect for his/her teachers doesn't deserve to be there. There should be zero tolerance for this sort of student, but instead the system insists that they remain in class even though in the teacher's professional judgment the student is destroying the classroom dynamic. One of the special functions of special education programs is to aid and abet these derelicts. When you consider how insidious it is that teachers are forced to contend with those type of students day in and day out reflects how broken the system really is. It's like one of my friends who works as a high school social studies teacher said: "We (teachers) are forced to cut deals with the derelicts or be ruled by them." And cutting deals means creating incentives to just keep them under control.

The problem here... is that these students that you are willing to write off with a wave of the hand as "derelicts" are still children. Yes, hey certainly have their problems. Among the teaching staff we don't pull any punches; we refer to them (among ourselves) as "F***ed Up". I completely despise the federal government's asinine law requiring every student be placed in the "least restrictive environment". It is unfair to them and it is more unfair to the students who honestly do want to learn. But still they are children. Whatever behavioral issues they are bringing to school is the result, mostly, of their environment: poverty, malnutrition, lack of pre-natal care, poor parenting, sexually/physically/psychologically abusive parents, alcohol fetal syndrome, drug abuse in the home, etc... etc... The vast majority of my students (over 95%) live in a single parent home. Of that over 90% of these homes are headed by a woman... often not even the mother, but the grandmother, aunt, or even older sister. I have students who pass prostitutes, gangs dealing drugs, and crack-heads everyday on the way to work. I have students who regularly watch their parents using drugs or having sex with strangers. I have students who know somebody who has been killed in street violence or have needed to duck themselves during a drive-by shooting. Is it any wonder they are messed up? So we should just write them all off figuring they won't amount to anything anyway?

I agree with you about the below average pay of teachers, which makes it very difficult to attract sharp candidates. I'm not against tenure, I'm against teachers who slide through the probationary period because administrators fail to do their job.

If you didn't learn about your subject in college then you're a moron and shouldn't be teaching in the first place. Yet, morons manage to wiggle their way through the teacher exam. I propose mandating up to getting rid of the exam altogether and measuring intellect based on four essay exams and two mock lessons. The first part would be graded by a diverse committee of experts in their individual fields who would grade for grammar and writing and general and content knowledge. The second part of the teachers exam could consist of two 10-15-minute lessons. Now some will say that this is impossible because the system lacks the resources. But I say redirect the money being dumped into those GARBAGE Teacher Education programs (undergrad) and charge a general fee of say $1000 for candidates to sit for the exam and another $1000 for the mock lesson section. The stringent requirements will deter the worst kind of candidates because they will be aware that they face a more difficult time manipulating a real committee with no financial obligation to them, whereas teacher colleges have a financial stake in retaining students. I'd love to know how many students actually "fail out" of teacher programs, undergrad and grad. I bet it's less than 1%.

Certainly I have have no problem with what you say here. Most of the college education courses are indeed a joke. The colleges and universities, however, love them as they are a major cash cow. All that must be provided is an empty room (which they can overcrowd), a PhD. candidate (which they can underpay... without benefits) who has never been in the classroom alone with 30 kids, and a bunch of xeroxed hand-outs. In spite of having 175 semester credit hours in my field, a degree, and years experience in teaching college students as a TA... I was required to go through all the education courses and also take a number of art history classes (which I could have taught) and studio art classes (which I could have taught). Every 5 years I must renew my license and take further useless classes with "teachers" who have never been un the classroom (paid for by me :Flare: ). Certainly... make it more challenging... make it a true profession (as in "professional")... but then the teachers must be treated as professionals. 

There's no innovation that goes into hiring the best and brightest teachers because most parents, whether they want to admit it or not, view education first as a baby sitting agency. What do parents want their kids to do when they grow up? Enter medicine, law, computers/IT, maybe law enforcement. Before September 11th, even police officers was one of those "noble professions" attracting the same low brow types the teaching profession is stuck with.

Unfortunately... much of this is true. There is a great deal of continued pressure to extend the school days and the school year... because schools essentially are a form of free day care. The GPAs of students who major in education is commonly known to be well below that of many other fields... largely because the field is not taken seriously enough and because the demands (as far as college requirements) are far less than other fields. But again... to increase the expectations one must also assume that one increases the rewards. As for the police... in many ways the demands are even less. In many communities a police officer needs no college background. On the other hand... the salary is often not bad... often higher than teaching, certainly higher than can be expected by a social worker... in spite of the demands of a college degree. While it might be argued that this pay is warranted by the dangers involved this is certainly not true of most police departments. Officers in many suburban and rural districts have never needed to draw or fire a weapon outside of training. The military, however, is paid far less than civilian police officers... even those who currently are facing daily danger in Iraq.

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## stlukesguild

However, it's my job to stick it out. And I did. And for the first nine or ten weeks, I think the class had a consensus hatred of me! But they taught me that if you care about them and if you pressure them, they can all learn - or rather they all become eager to learn. That's far more than I learned in college or from any teacher test. And I don't think taking the AP English test or the SAT Subject Test in Literature would have helped either me or them.

This is one of the biggest challenges for a teacher... and a central reason that some teachers fail to reach their students... or succeed. If a student realizes that you don't like him or her... you don't care about him or her... or worse yet... you don't even know who he or she is... they are not going to respond to you. The worst teachers in my school don't know who the students are... the students will tell me this. "Why should I listen to Mrs. X? She doesn't even know our names." I have nearly 500 students and I can identify nearly each and every one. When dealing with the few whom I don't know I quickly refer to my seating charts and get the students name before addressing him/her. Students need to know that you care enough to know who they are. They also need to know you care enough that you want to see them succeed. You need to find the moments when the "worst" are doing something right and give them positive feedback. In many cases it may be the only positive words they hear. My students know I care enough about them that I can joke with them. I can make little remarks that they'll not take seriously. I can tell the student who is slacking off on a project that his drawing is as ugly as my dogs butt... and he won't be offended, but will know that I'm saying this because I know he or she can do much better... and he or she will want to prove this to me by redoubled effort. I can put my hands on students that need to be redirected back to their seats or away from a possible conflict. I can do all of this because I take the time to know the students... to know which ones I cannot use certain comments with... to learn which ones I need to keep under constant supervision... to know which ones don't work well together, and which ones do. Often, this involves learning a bit about the student's home experiences. I have one student who is very difficult. This student needs to respond to almost any comment directed at him... real or imagined. This student is often hostile toward other. This student is spending his second year in first grade... and is still behind his grade level. He would seemingly be one of those that jon suggests are "derelicts". Of course this student also witnessed his own mother being shot and killed in front of him by a "boyfriend" and then was left in the home with her body for three days until he was finally discovered. Children with such traumatic experiences are not a rarity, unfortunately.

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## aabbcc

> (...) The first, General Knowledge, was absurd. The difficulty is administering a test which actually tests something as abstract as "General Knowledge" or the "general knowledge" required for one to be an adequate teacher. The test expected me to be able to recognize a Gothic Cathedral, the fact that Peter Paul and Mary were folk singers, know the distance from the earth to the sun, the speed of light, and be able to know what creatures might have been living during the Paleolithic age. Unquestionably, one might know all of these things and be an idiot... or conversely know none of them and still be quite intelligent and educated. Why are Peter, Paul, and Mary "general knowledge"? What if I had never heard of them but was aware of classical music, opera, and jazz? (...)


The so-called _cultura generale tests_ are something I have mixed feelings about.

What you mention about classical music, opera and jazz being part of general knowledge is true and important, however you must keep in mind that most of what these include belongs to the field of _high culture_, consumed predominately by people who are _in_ the field and have academic competence in them (a schooled musician and an amateur who never went past pop music literally do not _hear_ classical music the same way!) and considered an example of the field and as such passed onto the younger generations in schools - in regular schools on the level of information (Beethoven composed _Moonlight sonata_), in specialised schools on the level above that (let us listen to _Moonlight sonata_ and analise it from the point of view of musical theory - but you can ask that only of somebody who studied solfeggio, harmony, history of music, etc, not of regular student!); but those who usually end up being consumers of "high culture" are the latter ones, not the mass of people who once heard those information on the level of information and then forgot about them throughout the years. Same could go for literature, or theatre, or visual arts.
But does it automatically mean that only the "top of the cream", the canon of the fields, 'prescribed' by the 'elite' which consumes it, belongs to general knowledge? Yes - only if you automatically suppose that people taking that exam are that elite referred to and if you by "general knowledge" consider "general knowledge on _specific_ parts of some fields, as in dictated by their formal canon considered the academic top of them"; otherwise, you probably do have to lower your standards a bit and make them more "popular", in literal sense of that word, right?

In one hand, I realise that many questions on those tests are absurd. When I was given examples of entrance exams for Zagreb's university of philosophy and humanities, I could not believe what an average 18-year-old taking those exams is, according to the people who made that test, expected to know - in which of the following movies Robert De Niro did not have any role (multiple choice), who was the headmaster of the ballet of Croatian National Theatre, what were oil/gas prices in some month of the previous year (!), which journalist for some daily paper collaborates from Vatican, who won a medal in some discipline in the last Olympic Games or who is the current prime minister of country X... all of which, and many more, being things you were never _taught_, regardless of which school you attended. But hey, it is _cultura generale_, if you want to go to university, prove that you are an "intellectual", eh?  :Rage:  

In addition to that, there are parts of cultura generale exam which do, in a way, consist of something you were taught - but if, and usually only if, you attended lycée, a kind of high school which is strictly preparatory for university - which philosopher believed we lived in _the best of possible worlds_, what are the meanings of some random Latin sententiae, what is literal translation of the word Oedipus (?! I attend _classical_ lycée - though now in Italy - and I bet that the majority of students in my schools do not know that, let alone somebody who never studied Greek), which of the following philosophers does not belong to classical German idealism, which work of philosophy was used for in the plot of Eco's _Il nome della rosa_, whose is the concept of existence preceeding essence, which of the following authors was not awarded Nobel Prize in literature, what was family relationship between Ezav and Yaakov (Bible - not to mention that not all students had RE in schools, which is an elective subject anyway!), what is an antiparticle of electron, who discovered radium, what is the product of annihilation of electron and positron, which of the following planets has got a period of rotation (day) larger than period of revolution (year), what is the name of the most famous Norwegian fyord, what is the capital of Philippines, what is (as in what kind of musical work) Korsakov's _Sheherazade_, whose words are _exegi monumentum aere perennius_, what is intifada, who projected Villa Rotonda, which of the following techniques was used by Pollock and such stuff (I actually took all those examples written now from papers which were used in one seminar trying to prepare students for that exam) - all mixed in one exam.
You could argue that this is not an exam from general knowledge, but rather from trivia, couldn't you? Well, regardless of that, this is what is awaiting in July my friends from my former school and thousands of other high school graduates in the country as a part of their entrance exam in many universities.

Ask yourselves realistically - do you know answers to all the questions above? Imagine being given a hundred such questions in an entrance exam for universitry, and imagine being a high school graduate - say honestly, how well would you do? And given the total unpredictability of what kind of questions are going to be involved, it is to conclude that you simply cannot prepare yourselves for that kind of exam. Are you going to attempt to memorise encyclopaedia, read all the newspapers from the last couple of years to know all of sports events, political happenings in the country and the world, and attend mini-course of Latin and Greek, if you haven't studied them in school (because another part of the test is linguistic, which includes word origins, sententiae and affixes)? Of course not. You are going to rely on luck, on not being _totally_clueless about those things, and on probability that there will be more people with worse knowledge than you.

On the other hand, regardless the absurdity of asking high school or university graduates such questions, I do agree that one should not be what we used to call when I lived in Croatia _fah-idiot_, i.e. a specialist for one field which is clueless about anything other than that specific one's field. Even though I love being taught Physics by a professor who knows a lot about the field and is able to explain it well, I also appreciate a lot that the same professor knows stuff about theatre and literature, chats with us about the concept of epic theatre and comments world events and the situation in the stocks - somehow these little details are that which makes him more... I don't know, _complete_, in a way. Not that there are not tons of trivia from various fields he would not know, but he does diplay certain general knowledge and ability to have a discussion (not merely a chat, a _discussion_) about something other than Lorentz' transformations or particle accelerators. The sole fact that he views world from broader perspective and is not limited to his field almost automatically means that he will teach _better_. Likewise, the sole fact that he keeps himself informed of the current situation of the world means that he is more likely to be a pleasurable companian to talk to, and that he is going to be able to put things in even broader perspective.

So it is a mixed thing, really. And why I brought all it up... Professors, again. Whilst I cannot approve such trivia to be a measure of anyone's knowledge (it truly is possible to know trivia and be an idiot), I likewise cannot approve being stuck in one's field and not knowing much about others. I am going to study Literature and History of Art, yet I _would_ be able to explain Einstein's ideas to somebody - not on the level one physicist would be able to, with all the complex mathematics included - but on some basic level, even some calculations included, I _could_ do it. I also do not intend to study history at university, yet if we started chatting about Ottoman Empire and its influence on the world at the time, I _would_ know, at least in basic terms, what is it about - where the aforementioned country was, what was generally its 'power status' in the world and how did it change with time (from superpower to sick man on Bospor), roughly what time span it existed in, etc. 

So, if you take into account that I am 17 years old, I do not really think that expecting the same of my professors, who are at average over double my age, with degrees and much more life and other experience behind them, is much of a big deal - I actually _assume_ that kind of knowledge from them - not trivia information, but a more complex and more complete view of the world, which includes both a perspective on sciences, arts and history/politics. If they are to teach, they have to have broader perspective of the world than average, right? Especially if you think that their role in students' lives is not merely education, but also something of a contribution to kids' _upbringing_, to say so - you must demonstrate yourself as an expert _and_ a generally knowledgeable person. Not that one necessarily views their role to be that, but as schools have a tendency of turning into teenagers' day-care...  :Rolleyes:  It is hard to neglect _any_ importance of that nowadays.




> It also should be noted that the very system is set up in an adversarial manner. The administration is held responsible for attendance, the suspension rate, graduation, and the percentage of students passing proficiencies. They are thus pressured to keep students in class regardless of how disruptive they are and to pass them regardless of their inability to do the work. Teachers are then put in a position of attempting to teach classrooms with students who continually disrupt the lessons and with students who are years behind their grade level academically... and the only numbers the public sees are the pass fail rates and the proficiencies.


You bring up two important things here, so I will go one by one.
In my view, the very "standardisation" of knowledge, to say so - or vain attempts to do so - are probably half the reason why educational systems fail. They usually happen to be a crown of an overall tendency of the system to glorify _quantity_ before quality, _form_ before content. I have a friend abroad who was given zero points on some essay thing because she had a couple of words too much...?! An example through which you can see how the entire system functions - form before content. Standardised questions, usually multiple choice or straight-forward answers - those exams are, after all, the easiest to correct. No need to think, pure automatisation. :Biggrin:  

However, one thing one must always keep in mind is that *memorisation in its pure form is the lowest level of knowledge - the level of pure reproduction of what was read or heard; what about higher levels of knowledge, which are not tested in standardised exams?* What about broad picture, putting into context, applying known on the level of unknown; what about critical thinking, entertaining idea without accepting it (love your signature, btw  :Smile: ), what about _synthesis_ of knowledge? You will not find those in standardised exams, or in typical exams given by schools - or you will, in very low percentage.
Is it professors' fault? No, it is the system; what professors do is prepare students for what system expects from them - therefore, in order for their students to succeed when their knowledge is measured by such and such criteria, they must adjust their entire approach to the field and teaching that way, otherwise students, even if they will have better understanding of what they are taught, will fail on exams due to lack of memorised facts and similar.
And, as said in the quote above, what public sees and judges students and schools by are results of tests. Which do not examine that which should be examined to see the real knowledge, but which just stick to the level of _concrete_ and _individual_.

So what is going on is basically that smart kids are dumbed because of the ideals that "everybody must pass", that school should lower its standards so that the very academically poorest students can do it, and that the entire system is oriented towards sub-average, at best towards low average, so even the top questions on standardised exams, those questions which should separate average from those above, are made on the level of average, requiring pretty much those same skills. All these lead to inflation of high GPAs, good test scores and kids ever less qualified to stay behind those results. 

Another thing brought up is the obsession with 'standardisation' which happens at the level of administration. Everything is so 'standardised' that it becomes laughable and schools start to resemble a hyper-organised place, unfortunately in completely wrong way.
Why sheltering kids so much? I never understood why in some countries professors are not allowed to kick out students who create problems, and why there is so much pressure towards compulsory attendance, to the point of phoning home (!) in some schools when students are not present in school... it does resemble a kindergarten, sort of. You cannot expel a kid out, even if he/she misbehaves, because he/she is too small to take care of him/herself, something might happen, you are the responsible one, etc... All logical when child is 5 years old, but when 'child' is 16-17 years old, it does become sort of laughable, and there is a potential problem of class turning into tragicomedy dictated by students more than professor. Instead, why not simply kicking out those who impede other students learning and professor doing their job?

Also, the overall behaviour towards kids as if they were in day care is pretty much shocking for me. But, look at the funny phenomenon - people often _become_ what you treat them to be like. Naturally, if the whole school adopts a view that kids should be sheltered, absolutely under supervision in every moment, treated as children even when far past the age in which it works, and if in addition to all that the whole teaching process and the work taught is presented that way, not being up to some decent standards but to standards so low that they are laughable to the students themselves, and if so much work is put and free time cut from to work on the assignments on that ridiculous content of curriculum, then why be surprised when kids actually do become children incompetent of thinking for themselves or taking care of themselves, and why be surprised with schemes of behaviour typical for earlier stage of development of the child, if you constantly approach kids as if they were children?

Unfortunately, what most of the western society - whose past generations have grown up glorifying tv stars, icons of pop-culture, eating fast food, reading chic-lit as literary top of reading in free time, in the era which was characterised by great technological innovations but greater dumbing of people due to that, which produced such a lifestyle in which "intellectual" has nearly become a synonim for "snobbish" or "elitist", and working hours such that parents could no longer spend quality time with their children, thus starting to expect schools to provide for 'day care' in addition to regular learning - does not realise is that young people of the ages 16 or 17 are _not_ meant to be 'children', have same kind of activities children have, learn the same way ("modern pedagogy", eh  :Rolleyes:  with their "creative learning" which often basically dumbs kids down at higher stages of learning - what is appropriate for 7-year-olds is not the same which is appropriate for 14-year-olds, and so on), and that they should be approached more like young adults than like children. Just glueing them into that artificial hyper-organised scheme of school system, which does not function well anyway, and disregarding that detail, their supposed greater maturity, is simply bad - for them, but also for professors. Children become precisely what you expect them to. And are, as such, mirror of society - which makes you wonder a bit about some things...


@ Jon - It is way too long to post it here, but you might be interested in this link: http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
It is a text about an idea of diestablishing school as institution, not that I agree with it, but it has a couple of clever points raised.

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## stlukesguild

Anastasija,

Personally I don't feel that it is standardization that is the problem... but rather the manner in which such is taught and tested. We have been discussing "higher order thinking skills" for years in the field: analysis, synthesis, comparison, etc... These are all well and good. The development of these skills are certainly needed in any well-rounded education. the problem, however, is that without having first developed a body of facts, higher order thinking skills are an impossible abstraction. One cannot compare or analyze something if one lacks the essential facts about what one intends to discuss. The problem has been that for some time now educators have been afraid of establishing a clear body of facts or core knowledge that should be taught/learned at each grade level... largely out of a fear of appearing "elitist". To suggest that Huckleberry Finn, Beethoven, Michelangelo, the American system of government, Darwin's theory of Evolution, etc... are essential facts and not so Tomi Morrison's _Beloved_, Brittany Spears, Navajo pottery, the system of government of certain African tribes, and Chinese herbal medicine is to seen as suggesting that some ideas, or achievements are more important than others. In other words... educators operate under the assumption that there is or can be no "shared body of knowledge". 

As a result our curriculum for what should be taught are left intentionally vague. This makes fair and logical testing an impossibility... whether we are speaking of testing students or testing potential college students or potential teachers. If I am taking a class on Western Art history and am studying a unit on painters of the Netherlandish Reniassance I am presented with a clear notion of what facts are relevant... what artists and concepts I will need to know. I can be fairly assured that Michelangelo, Jackson Pollack, Existentialism, Post-Modernism, etc... will not show up on the test. Van Eyck, Van Der Weyden, Breughel, Bosch, the Duke of Alba and the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, the Reformation, the innovation of oil painting, etc... all of these, on the other hand, are a good bet. The teacher may choose any number of these facts at random for testing and if I have truly prepared myself... have learned my subject well... I will do fine. The test, in other words, is "aligned" with the curriculum. The student has a clear picture of what is expected of him or her and if he or she has mastered the material there should be no surprises upon the test.

This, however, is not what is happening in our schools. The Federal government (and I am speaking of the US) has abdicated authority passing it on to the governing bodies of the states. This would be fine if the states then established clear expectations. However, due to the belief that we cannot expect any shared body of knowledge, the "standards" established are so vague or broad as to be meaningless. Individual school districts then attempt to interpret these "standards" to the best of their abilities... and teachers attempt to interpret this entire mess to the best of their abilities... but it is all a guessing game... because as you have suggested, much of what is presented on the standardized tests is but trivia. Any of the facts tested could indeed be a valid subject for testing... but only if the student was prepared for it... only if that subject was presented as as something that must be learned... only if the student might be fairly expected to have learned that fact. But the tests are not aligned with what is being taught. In my own field, for example, of art education I am expected to teach the students about the developments of art history using exemplary examples of artists drawn from a variety of cultures, societies, eras, etc... Can you have a more open-ended... meaningless "standard"? How can you fairly test for whether the students have "mastered" this? In the limited time I have I may have elected to teach Rembrandt, Picasso, Van Gogh, Aboriginal painting, Grant Wood's _American Gothic_, Impressionism, and German Expressionist portraits. My students may have a marvelously in-depth mastery of these topics... but if they are tested upon Matisse, Raphael, Native American ceramics, Leonardo's _Mona Lisa_, Abstract Expressionism, and Mannerist portraits they will come out looking as if they know nothing of art history. The same applies to the college admissions tests and the so-called "general knowledge" tests required of teachers.

The fact is that we can and should be establishing a standard of "common knowledge". For any culture there are certain ideas, events, achievements and persons that are more important than others... that play a central role in the development of that culture. There is nothing wrong with the idea that at a given age students should be expected to learn about Beethoven, Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, the American Revolution, the "separation of powers" (again I am speaking here of the US... obviously there would and should be different figures in other cultures), the elemental table, how electricity works, etc... The fear... with the notion that there can be no true "body of common knowledge" is that to establish such facts as required or expected of all students is a form of indoctrination. Personally, I don't accept this. The fact that my formal studies of world literature during the Renaissance focused upon Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Shakespeare in no way prevented me from learning about Cavalcanti, Ariosto, Ronsard, du Bellay, Spencer, Marlowe, Cervantes, Rabelais, San Juan de la Cruz, or Michel de Montaigne. Neither was I ever prevented from even questioning what I was taught or even preferring one of the writers I learned later on my own. If anything, this basis of common knowledge provided a jumping off point... a starting point against which to explore and even discuss other artists. If I wish to discuss Novalis, for example, with someone having never read any of his literature I might begin with comparing him with William Blake. As such, I am assuming that a working knowledge of Blake is part of the common knowledge base of anyone having taken the prerequisite World Literature courses. 

Essentially, without a concept of what knowledge is indispensable or necessary for one to be truly considered "educated" in a given culture, everything that is being taught is nothing more than trivia. The batting averages of the Boston Red Sox, the songs by 50-Cent that made the Billboard Charts, the films by Tim Burton employing Johnny Depp, the narrative of the _Lord of the Rings_ or the Harry Potter books, the first Rap song, the psychedelic posters designed by Peter Max... all of these are facts. Beethoven, Thomas Jefferson, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, the American Revolution, the "separation of powers", the elemental table, how electricity works, etc... these are also facts. Without a concept of a "core body of common knowledge" all of these facts are of equal value... none of them amounting to anything more than mere trivia. If we are to converse with each other we must assume a certain body of common knowledge. Without this much of what we can say or express to each other falls meaningless.

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## jon1jt

> Anastasija,
> 
> Personally I don't feel that it is standardization that is the problem... but rather the manner in which such is taught and tested. We have been discussing "higher order thinking skills" for years in the field: analysis, synthesis, comparison, etc... These are all well and good. The development of these skills are certainly needed in any well-rounded education. the problem, however, is that without having first developed a body of facts, higher order thinking skills are an impossible abstraction. One cannot compare or analyze something if one lacks the essential facts about what one intends to discuss. The problem has been that for some time now educators have been afraid of establishing a clear body of facts or core knowledge that should be taught/learned at each grade level... largely out of a fear of appearing "elitist". To suggest that Huckleberry Finn, Beethoven, Michelangelo, the American system of government, Darwin's theory of Evolution, etc... are essential facts and not so Tomi Morrison's _Beloved_, Brittany Spears, Navajo pottery, the system of government of certain African tribes, and Chinese herbal medicine is to seen as suggesting that some ideas, or achievements are more important than others. In other words... educators operate under the assumption that there is or can be no "shared body of knowledge". As a result our curriculum for what should be taught are left intentionally vague.


I agree entirely with what you say, and it's for exactly the reason that the system has no backbone when it comes to taking a stance on what is history and is not, what are good books and what are not. I walked away from a tenure high school position the year they gave it to me. That's not the only reason, it's obvious the "derelicts" became sickening to deal with, even though I got along with most and thought they were genuinely good kids that just didn't belond in that school. Yeah, as you say they're "children too" with real problems at home. But more often I found that to be an excuse. Kids are very keen at picking up signals from adults on how to avoid being held accountable---i.e. doing work. They see an opening, an escape from responsibility, and the system allows it, facilitates, perpetuates it. I worked with a handful of students who routinely came to class unprepared and repeatedly badgered their teachers why they had to be there when they didn't want to be. Good question! And then the last marking period or two they would kick into schmoozing gear, copying homework, asking for extra credit assignments, failing tests with a 40 instead of a 25, and when you tell the student there is no such thing as an extra credit assignment that will lift their low F to a D, they call in the dogs---school psychologist, social worker, maybe DYFS. So there I am compelled to give the kid a list of ALL THE WORK HE/SHE DIDN'T DO FROM DAY ONE in an effort to...guess what? MAKE IT UP! And so there's the kid who actually earned a C+ asking me how is it that so-and-so passed the class. And if they don't call in the dogs, they will use the rule book against you. I had a student whose parent I sent a "progress report" indicating that their daughter was failing for the term convene a meeting with the school principal for the express purpose of indicating that they never received the progress report even though I have a yellow copy in my faculty folder! So now the principal asks to see all the student's grades and absences, and god forbid you don't have it all thoroughly documented! The parent pulls that the progress report must have been lost in the mail. Oh bull****. But my attendence book only shows her daughter out 20 times when the school record shows her out 28 days. The discrepancy has a simple answer: I stopped logging in your daughter's absences when she called me a M-F'r and threw the desk across the room after I kicked her out of the room the 30th time. So the school passes her with a final grade of D-! and then the principal calls a teacher meeting later on indicating that all students failing at the midpoint of a term require both progress report and a PHONE CALL home indicating same. Oh sure, more work for the teacher.  :Rolleyes: 

And this gets me to a larger point, what the hell are you doing working in that system? A paycheck? To change the world? To make a difference? Yeah yeah. You have all this post-grad work and college teaching experience under your belt. I'm not surprised, I've read your posts here and your grasp of Art History is incredible and your love for the Classics genuine. Why on earth you would settle for a public teaching job is beyond me. Go ahead, give me the typical answer: great benefits, decent salary, summers off, good vacation time to work on my own art.  :Rolleyes:  I'd rather starve than to be a member of such a thankless, cranky profession.

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## aabbcc

stlukesguild,

Thank you for explaining this.  :Smile:  
It seems that our educational systems have, essentially, different problem - one does not have a standardised body of knowledge, the other has got, but assumes of everyone a body of knowledge created according to one school type, plus adds to it things that were never studied, but are expected to be known, thus resulting in standardised, but nevertheless too broad area.
Professors are not free to teach anything they wish, each class is prescribed by national curriculum, so in every lycée in the country in first year of art history students study exactly the same things - there can be some minor differences that invidual professor can make, but it is essentially a same thing. There exist multiple textbooks, but they all must present the same thing. So, in a way, what is a problem over here is _precisely_ standardisation, because due to enormous field of what is "supposed to be known" students end up learning too much facts; and if they wish to apply for better universities, they also must master an enormous body of knowledge supposed for lycées (which are basically an equivalent of elite schools, and smaller percentage of students attends them), so it ends up learning trivia, because that is what most exams test.

Whilst your system has a problem with being vague, here problems tend to be about not being vague or free enough - pretty much everything is prescribed, so it is the standardisation that is killing any space for anything other than which is standardised. That which is 'prescribed' is usually too much to be able to be taught - you study less classes a week by a program which is intended for more classes a week, etc. All in all one huge mess, but obviously, as I realise now, for different reasons than which are problem in the US.
The best example, from when I lived in Croatia, would be a subject called "Croatian". It included in se national and world literature, as well as linguistics and history of the language, and there were separated textbooks for that. However, at hardly any school I know linguistics was studied - there was not enough time, so it ended up pretty much on, "next week you have got a test from language, learn the first 70 pages of the textbook by heart" - without that having been studied actually. Furthermore, the amount of required readings was unbelieveable, especially when you combine them with numerous excerpts from other works, presented in textbooks, which were _also_ a subject to testing. Books were chosen without any regard to the age of the student, solely based on history of literature, so we found ourselves being 14 and being hit by _Iliad_, _Odyssey_ or some very old works written in Croatian dialects whom nobody understood anyway, being expected to master it all at home (we never read books in the class, we had dates by which we had to read certain book, and they usually involved test - you could never assume what was going to be on the test, sometimes even questions like "what colour was Anna Karenina's dress in some part of the book"; and the discussion of works would usually be _after_ the test  :Rolleyes:  Now, if there is any logic in there...), and the program was made for more classes a week than we could have, so you ended up in one of two extremes - you either had a professor who focused only partially on the program, i.e. excluded some things, thus risking their students in the future on some standardised exam do not know some things, either who drilled the entire program, so who can do it - fine, who not - their problem (that is pretty much the policy behind many professors' work).

Pretty much the entire system worked that way. Professors were nervous due to being behind from some imaginary point they should have hit already, there were years in which in some subjects we did not come to the end of textbook because we simply had no time, some openly protested the system by studying what they wanted to (then they brought standardised exams to measure the quality of education, so they had to teach the national curriculum regardless of their wishes - thankfully, I was not the generation affected by that, and soon I was out of country anyway).
There was a consensus on what to be taught which nobody could really fulfill.
The most absurd things would happen in Art and Music classes, because there was so little time dedicated to those, yet, our Art textbook was of same size as our Croatian textbook, and tests were equally trivial, and our Music textbooks regularly included things that were understood only by students who attended musical schools. If you got an ambitious professor in those subjects, it was the worst option of all.

Those are potential dangerous things when there is a standardised body of knowledge, but when it is too broad. Here in Italy it is not as drastic as it was in Croatia, but the problem is still around those lines.

However, the good thing in the whole story is that one type of liberty which lacks (e.g. in what to teach) is substituted by another type of liberty - in how to behave towards students. Here you can normally expel students out and such stuff. :Biggrin:

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## stlukesguild

Jon... I understand your reluctance to cut the students a break. As they grow older it is far more difficult to accept the notion that the students are only children. On the other hand, you were teaching high-school students while mine range from Pre-K through Middle-School. The age doesn't justify poor behavior. We still must hold the child accountable for unacceptable behavior... but at the same time I can see the environmental influences that have impacted this behavior... and at the younger age these influences are far more powerful than the child's ability to think or make decisions for him or herself concerning what he or she wants to gain from his or her education. 

I completely understand your frustration with students and parents who play the system. The same is expected of us. There are always one or two parents who will try to argue about a child's grade at the end of the grading period. They will swear that they were never contacted and never informed. Luckily all of our records are now on computer so I can easily pull up a copy of the interim report that was sent... and which could be accessed by the parent in the office or even on-line. A strong principal will support the teacher... questioning why the parent never became involved until too late... why they didn't attend any parent-teacher conferences... why they didn't come to school when their child kept getting detentions and suspensions... why they didn't question the fact that their child never had any homework or needed to study for tests. Of course the weak ones will cower and take the parent's side and expect vast amounts of documentation and calls to the parents (this in spite of a subject area specialist... art/music/PE teacher... seeing 500 or more students per week. 

What am I doing to change the system? I can only affect what I can in my own classroom. I have toyed with the idea of going on to something higher in the field... curriculum design, etc... But I don't know that I am motivated enough to want to put forth such an effort. There are other things that are more important to me... first and foremost being my own artistic efforts. There are certainly aspects about the American political system that I find greatly flawed... and would change if I could... or rather if I could without sacrificing my greater interests. Certainly, I could do far more to change the system... or I could walk away from it in disgust... but either of these options would certainly have a more than adverse affect upon my ability to continue my own artistic efforts. Personally... I don't let the politics of the school... or of American education as a whole... get to me. I am able to watch it with something of a sense of humor... absurd certainly. But once my 6 1/2 hours, 185 days a year are done I am free to focus upon what is important to me. I have two-weeks now and 11 in summer when I can do nothing but read, listen to my music, and make art. Perhaps I'll eventually aim for teaching art at the college level... not that Post-Secondary art education isn't every bit as f***ed up as the public schools... just in a different way. Indeed, beyond the pay (which is OK), the hours and the time off, and the benefits (which are more than OK), I honestly find that being around children creating art... and children's art keeps me far closer to the true reason for making art than would would teaching a lot of college kids getting caught up in intellectual mind games, the latest critical theories, and mental masturbation.

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## stlukesguild

Anastasija... again I doubt that standardization in itself is the problem. Yes... it limits the teacher from freely deciding that he or she would rather teach Toni Morrison than Cervantes, Peter Max than Leonardo, or 50-Cent instead of Mozart... but it doesn't stop the student from seeking out whatever interests him or her on his or her own time. Again, my shelves are crowded with books by authors I was never exposed to during my formal education... with musicians/composers I never heard during my formal schooling... and I know of hundreds (if not thousands) of artists whose work I admire... but which I was never required to learn in school. 

Of course, there must be a logical development to the presentation of the facts in a standardized education. What is taught must be age appropriate... and build upon prior knowledge. One doesn't start with Dante and James Joyce. On the other hand, I believe it is possible to introduce children to examples of great literature early on. How it is taught, however, would differ from how it would be taught to an older student or in the colleges or universities. This is fine; Dante is different to me no than he was when I was 20.

I agree that it is possible to overload students with too many facts... the problem in the US is usually the opposite. Educational theory is pushing for demonstrations of "higher order thinking skills" without the facts needed to make them anything more than an empty abstraction. It is rather like trying to learn a foreign language simply by studying conjugation, syntax, noun-verb agreement, etc... and never actually reading anything... or listening to the language in use. Personally, I would prefer being pushed... challenged to learn more than I though possible... than the opposite. American schools have long been far too influenced by the romantic notions of education rooted in Rousseau... and picked up by Dewey. Both imagined the "natural" child (like the "natural" human) to be far preferable to the "civilized" and "educated" man/child. Left to his or her own devices the child/man would make the choices that are best suited to his/her nature. Of course the reality is that as we leave the child to his or her own devices they seek out other input... mostly that of popular culture. We assume a child can't be expected to memorize Blake's _Tyger_ or a soliloquy from Shakespeare... but they have no problem memorizing entire rap albums with every M...F...er, B***h, and 'ho'. As a result we have a huge population "educated" mostly upon popular culture and commercials... who have little or no ability to question the value of that culture... the values being sold to them... the manner in which they are being manipulated.

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## jon1jt

> What am I doing to change the system? I can only affect what I can in my own classroom. I have toyed with the idea of going on to something higher in the field... curriculum design, etc... But I don't know that I am motivated enough to want to put forth such an effort. There are other things that are more important to me... first and foremost being my own artistic efforts. There are certainly aspects about the American political system that I find greatly flawed... and would change if I could... or rather if I could without sacrificing my greater interests. Certainly, I could do far more to change the system... or I could walk away from it in disgust... but either of these options would certainly have a more than adverse affect upon my ability to continue my own artistic efforts. Personally... I don't let the politics of the school... or of American education as a whole... get to me. I am able to watch it with something of a sense of humor... absurd certainly. But once my 6 1/2 hours, 185 days a year are done I am free to focus upon what is important to me. I have two-weeks now and 11 in summer when I can do nothing but read, listen to my music, and make art. Perhaps I'll eventually aim for teaching art at the college level... not that Post-Secondary art education isn't every bit as f***ed up as the public schools... just in a different way. Indeed, beyond the pay (which is OK), the hours and the time off, and the benefits (which are more than OK), I honestly find that being around children creating art... and children's art keeps me far closer to the true reason for making art than would would teaching a lot of college kids getting caught up in intellectual mind games, the latest critical theories, and mental masturbation.


I understand what you mean, and respect your decision. I just don't know how progress will ever be made to correct a system in utter disrepair when your students and others will walk away like those before them having felt their entire learning experience amounted to two or three great teachers.

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## kiz_paws

> What am I doing to change the system? I can only affect what I can in my own classroom. I have toyed with the idea of going on to something higher in the field... curriculum design, etc... But I don't know that I am motivated enough to want to put forth such an effort. There are other things that are more important to me... first and foremost being my own artistic efforts. There are certainly aspects about the American political system that I find greatly flawed... and would change if I could... or rather if I could without sacrificing my greater interests. Certainly, I could do far more to change the system... or I could walk away from it in disgust... but either of these options would certainly have a more than adverse affect upon my ability to continue my own artistic efforts. Personally... I don't let the politics of the school... or of American education as a whole... get to me. I am able to watch it with something of a sense of humor... absurd certainly. But once my 6 1/2 hours, 185 days a year are done I am free to focus upon what is important to me. I have two-weeks now and 11 in summer when I can do nothing but read, listen to my music, and make art. Perhaps I'll eventually aim for teaching art at the college level... not that Post-Secondary art education isn't every bit as f***ed up as the public schools... just in a different way. Indeed, beyond the pay (which is OK), the hours and the time off, and the benefits (which are more than OK), I honestly find that being around children creating art... and children's art keeps me far closer to the true reason for making art than would would teaching a lot of college kids getting caught up in intellectual mind games, the latest critical theories, and mental masturbation.


I thought that this was very well said, stluke, you strike me as the kind of person that goes-with-the-flow and tries to not let the downside of the vocation get you crazy.

Sorry for butting into this conversation -- I am not a teacher, but I found this discussion quite interesting.  :Smile:

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## jon1jt

> I thought that this was very well said, stluke, you strike me as the kind of person that goes-with-the-flow and tries to not let the downside of the vocation get you crazy.
> 
> Sorry for butting into this conversation -- I am not a teacher, but I found this discussion quite interesting.



Well, true, it is well said, but the fact of the matter is that StLuke has sold out to a system that is using him more than he is using it. True, there's 180 actual work days, but when you consider that the vast majority of teachers actually _have_ no choice but to work a summer gig to pick up some extra dough not to fall too far behind with their bills leaves one to wonder how leisurely the profession really is. StLuke has also not considered the extent the job cuts into his off duty time during the school term. Grades, tests, plan book, parent-teacher conferences, workshops, calling parents, maybe maintaining a school website (we mustn't forget about technology in the classroom now  :Rolleyes: ) schmoozing with colleagues you have little to nothing in common with after hours, progress reports, etc. etc. etc. By the time teachers are done they're too tired to do anything constructive, least of all conjure the creative energy to "make art." Don't take my word for it, StLuke, keep a journal of all the hours that cut into your "free time" during the work week and I bet you'll find that the time you invest offsets the summer hours off. And consider that many jobs outside teaching after a couple years offer 3-4 weeks vacation and up, plus sick time. The fact is, teachers work far more hours on average, they're just doing it in a nine month period. Yet, teachers love to delude themselves about having "summers off" because it justifies the insane career choice they made years before when they were young and naive enough to believe that spending the countless hours and money to obtain the license would be worth it in the long run.  :Rolleyes: 

When asked by a high school English teacher at an academic cocktail party whether it is possible to follow one's writing passion while maintaining a full-time high school English teaching position, John Gardner, one of my favorite authors, replied that one could not possibly do so and write at the same time. Fortunately for the teacher, he took Gardner's advice seeing it as a "self-fulfilling prophecy" that he'd later resent and wisely went on to work in graphic design.  :Smile:

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## kiz_paws

Wow, that sounds so bleak -- I really feel for those teachers out there. **** You guys shed a whole new light on both sides of the story.

**** [Except one. The one who only spoke some kind of computer language yet to be discovered and told me to go to the library to read a comic when I didn't quite understand Trig .... That guy can go to heck.]

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## aabbcc

> Anastasija... again I doubt that standardization in itself is the problem.


I agree, it is not a problem _per se_. Only when combined with other factors which were combined in our case, it results to be a ground for problems. 
In itself, I believe that our curriculum was pretty damn awesome and at times when I think of this I get pretty frustrated for having had to move to be schooled in another country, with another educational system (though you could argue it was relatively close to ours - the differences were not as huge as they would have been had I moved to, say, US), another language and in the spirit of another nation with different views on the world, history, art - in the midst of my high school education, which I always believed to be excellent. What was the problem was that curriculum could simply not be put into practice with a decent quality due to lack of hours dedicated to each subject, so with more 'modern' professors it was leading to missing great parts of it, and with more 'traditional' professors it usually ended up with overloading us and expecting from us to give them in return more than they gave us in classes. So, essentially, you could argue that _that_ was the problem (as well as school system which dates from Austria-Hungary and has only went through minor changes in-between, depending on which was the current ideology in the country  :Biggrin: ), not the standardisation per se - you are right.




> Of course, there must be a logical development to the presentation of the facts in a standardized education. What is taught must be age appropriate... and build upon prior knowledge. One doesn't start with Dante and James Joyce. On the other hand, I believe it is possible to introduce children to examples of great literature early on. How it is taught, however, would differ from how it would be taught to an older student or in the colleges or universities.


And still we agree.  :Wink: 
The problem in our case was that, well, you make a change which is just too sudden upon entering lycee. In elementary/middle school (which is united in one in that system) the approach to education, and likewise to literature, is _radically_ different from the approach in the first year of high school - there are much more similarities between the way our high school functioned and university, than between elementary/middle school and our high school.
In eight grade, your last grade before going to high school, your readings for the class consisted of things such as Bach's _Jonathan Livingston the Seagull_, or Anne Frank's diary, or Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_, or Hemingway's _The Old Man and the Sea_ - to name just a few non-national works studied; in the other words, some attention was payed to our age and previous knowledge.

The next year we made a radical jump to the literature of classical antiquity (because the curriculum went historically, starting from that point), which was even more forced upon us because it was a classical school, without anyone to help us - we were expected to read the works on our own, then we would be tested on them (without being allowed to consult the works during test, of course), and only _then_ we would discuss them with professor, who usually already assumed general knowledge and went straight onto the, as we said, "higher level thinking skills", with extra literature, connections to other fields and other literature which in most cases we had not read yet (!) and overall ascending it all to one level which most students took months to get accustomed to. It was also all going too quickly, because the curriculum was dense and there was little time, so nobody actually bothered that everyone understood everything, everyone had their opinion said, or that everyone even read it (some students soon started cheating the system with sparknotes-like sites from where they could download analyses of the works studied) - they simply did not care, and they only cared about formalities such as testing and grading, and whether you could follow them or not, that was your problem - even moreso, they were very open about that being your problem, not theirs. That is what I had in mind when I said, in my first post, that some of my professors were excellent experts - but bad pedagogues.
I personally never had any problems with school, but had witnessed too many of them, which made me into thinking that you simply cannot do it that way. Of course, the other extreme of "natural child" and modern pedagogy is equally unwholesome for children, only in another way.

What was happening in our system was that it was becoming a farce, because you cannot honestly expect all your students to read works such as _Anna Karenina_ or _Combray_ for literature class if they have got another 20+ works to read in that same class that year, in which they also must do history of literature, history of language and the part of linguistics dedicated to that year. Ah, and yes, if in addition to that they have 15ish other subjects.  :Rolleyes:  So what happened was that everyone insisted on form, and very few insisted on content. Professors rushed to do everything without any regard to their students - because they had no choice, the absurd system made them to, and they had to follow it. So the quality was getting lost, overall, and it was all in terrible lack of some _sense_ - and from the outside point of view, we were having "great classical education" in which we studied "the most exemplary works of art of the epochs past" and receiving "a deep understanding of the world". From the inside point of view, we were spending hours daily in this quasi-intellectual institution which was making an irony of itself.
I cannot deny that who wanted, he/she _was_ getting all that amazing knowledge they spoke of - but those same people would be getting it anyway, in any school, in any system, in their free time. The others were just living in an illusion they knew something, whilst in reality they did not. And I went to one of the better schools in country, so the situation in others could have only been worse.

However, another thing I agree with (to end this pathetic soliloquium) is that it is important what you as a society emphasise - I must admit that our curriculum, in theory, always emphasised the tops of the fields studied so, if nothing else, at least nobody was growing up being educated on wannabe-art and pop-art, it was left for free time.  :Wink:  There was not much artificial "political correctness" in this case, or thorough analyses of essentially unimportant and meaningless "literature".




> I agree that it is possible to overload students with too many facts... the problem in the US is usually the opposite. Educational theory is pushing for demonstrations of "higher order thinking skills" without the facts needed to make them anything more than an empty abstraction.


Now, that is laughable...  :Biggrin:  Or it would be, had the situation in the education overall not been somewhat... I don't know, tragic.




> As a result we have a huge population "educated" mostly upon popular culture and commercials... who have little or no ability to question the value of that culture... the values being sold to them... the manner in which they are being manipulated.


Not that over with us it was much different, though - there was just huge difference between what was educated upon formally and what was consumed in free time. One would think that with our "great education", which meant reading classics, being obliged to attend theatres and concerts of classical music and exhibitions in galleries and travelling, we would know how to separate art from its modern kitsch. Well, most of them either did not know, either grew up in such a despise of "high art" they were educated upon (because of the completely wrong approach to it and to student) that they _deliberately chose_ modern kitsch in place of art.
So the effect was the opposite of desired. Even if _what_ was studied was alright, _how_ it was studied was probably the problem.
So still we agree  :Wink:

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## stlukesguild

Well, true, it is well said, but the fact of the matter is that StLuke has sold out to a system that is using him more than he is using it. True, there's 180 actual work days, but when you consider that the vast majority of teachers actually have no choice but to work a summer gig to pick up some extra dough not to fall too far behind with their bills leaves one to wonder how leisurely the profession really is. StLuke has also not considered the extent the job cuts into his off duty time during the school term. Grades, tests, plan book, parent-teacher conferences, workshops, calling parents, maybe maintaining a school website (we mustn't forget about technology in the classroom now ) schmoozing with colleagues you have little to nothing in common with after hours, progress reports, etc. etc. etc. By the time teachers are done they're too tired to do anything constructive, least of all conjure the creative energy to "make art." Don't take my word for it, StLuke, keep a journal of all the hours that cut into your "free time" during the work week and I bet you'll find that the time you invest offsets the summer hours off. And consider that many jobs outside teaching after a couple years offer 3-4 weeks vacation and up, plus sick time. The fact is, teachers work far more hours on average, they're just doing it in a nine month period. Yet, teachers love to delude themselves about having "summers off" because it justifies the insane career choice they made years before when they were young and naive enough to believe that spending the countless hours and money to obtain the license would be worth it in the long run.

When asked by a high school English teacher at an academic cocktail party whether it is possible to follow one's writing passion while maintaining a full-time high school English teaching position, John Gardner, one of my favorite authors, replied that one could not possibly do so and write at the same time. Fortunately for the teacher, he took Gardner's advice seeing it as a "self-fulfilling prophecy" that he'd later resent and wisely went on to work in graphic design. 

Jon...Jon... you are more of an old hippie than I had imagined. I know that all that Jack Kerouac stuff should have been a tip off, but really?... Any artist who earns his or her income in a practical profession... and not solely from his or her art... has "sold out"? I haven't heard that kind of nonsense for years. Admittedly, I used to believe it myself... when I put in my obligatory time as the starving artist/bohemian wannabe in New York immediately after art school. Unfortunately, reality intervened... and the reality was, I discovered, that I could be far more productive as an artist when I could actually afford paints and canvas, the lease on an actual studio, and didn't need to worry too much about where my next meal was coming from. The reality, for me, is that while I would not trade my starving artist experience off... in reality I spent little of that time (in spite of all the free time) actually creating art (and if the truth be told, I spent far more of it drinking or drunk :Sick: )

Your comments about teaching are certainly true... for many teachers. It is for that reason that I wouldn't teach anything but art (except perhaps music, PE or another such specialty). I work 185 days per year (with 5 of those days allotted to snow days), 6 1/2 hours per day, and have 15 sick days and 3 personal days (which accrue from year to year). I have not worked over the summer or taken on a second job since my first few years of teaching. My salary may not be that of a corporate lawyer, but it is adequate. As an art teacher, I am required to spend very little of my personal time working on school-related business. I must enter grades in the computer 4 times a year. This may certainly take a few hours... and I usually sacrifice a single evening to that labor. In spite of having 500 students the interim reports only require that I notify the parents of those students who are in danger of failing... thus I can skip over the vast majority without comment. I enter a daily effort grade for each student in my grade book based upon the established and posted goals during the class period. Final grades for each project involve a brief view of each work. I went through the long, drawn out process of basing these grades upon a rubric (as the schools wanted) but in reality, the grades varied very little from what I would have simply assigned using nothing more than my critical eye and my knowledge of what the student should of done and what his or her abilities are. After 10 years, I have little need for maintaining a lesson plan book. I have a body of lessons saved on the computer which I can use each year with certain modifications or variations. Rather than strolling in and out of school with a pile of papers, I tend to carry around the novel, art book, or book of poetry I am currently perusing. I maintain a good rapport with most of the staff (I need to, being the union representative as well) but this involves very little schmoozing after hours. When that bell has rung, I am quickly on my way. A coworker of mine who performs in the chorus of the Cleveland Orchestra (no small artistic feat itself) puts it best when he says, "I have a life... this is just my job". In spite of taking that attitude both he and I take the job seriously and do our best... during the required hours. The rest of the time is ours.

There are certainly days when I leave my job exhausted... but there are also days when my responsibilities to home or family can do the same. Outside responsibilities always make demands upon an artist's time. Of course the ideal would be to be able to do nothing but work at one's art all day... as a full-time job. Unfortunately, this is a reality for very few artists. Less than 5% of all BFA students with a degree in the visual arts are still engaged in actively making art 5 years after graduation. After 10 years the percentage falls to less than 2%. I've already beat the odds there. Of that remaining 2% less than 1% make their living solely as a working artist (not counting commercial arts fields: illustrators, graphic designers, etc...). Of that tiny percentage less than 2% do well financially. Of those who do fall into this category the vast majority were either incredibly lucky and found that there work just happened to fall into what the demands of the market were at the right moment (the art stars). The remaining portion of this equation is made up of those artists who can consistently produce the sort of work that is in constant demand: decorative art with lovely colors and "realism" of a certain sort... especially that portraying flowers, landscapes, and other traditionally "beautiful" and non-confrontational subjects. If this is an artist's preference... what he or she is drawn to... then more power to them. On the other hand... if this is not what drives you, to spend all your time creating such in order to feed the market and avoid having to work at a "real" job may be an even greater "sell out".

The reality is that the vast majority of artists have had to seek employment in a practical profession in order to support their art. Writers of far greater abilities and achievements than John Gardner have worked any number of jobs: Wallace Stevens was a lawyer and insurance executive. Kafka was also an insurance man. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Checkov, Celine, and Arthur Conan Doyle were also doctors. T.S. Eliot worked in a bank... in spite of hating the job... stating "I cannot accept one bedroom as being liberty in comparison with my present life." Thomas Hardy was an architect. A study compiled by Kenneth Damann looking at only those writers whose books were worthy enough of review in the New York Times (based upon records compiled in August 1996, from _Casanova Was a Book Lover_, John Maxwell Hamilton, p. 31) found the following breakdown of earnings for writers:
31%- employed in academia (Geoffrey Hill, John Barth, Charles Simic)
19%- employed in politics/government/activism
14.3%- employed injournalism
9.5%- employed in miscellaneous professions
9.5%- employed as full-time writers (U.S.) including translation, editing, etc...
8.3%- employed full-time writers (foreign) including translation, editing, etc...
4.8%- unknown (including independently wealthy, living off spouse/parents, etc...)
3.6%- employed in the legal profession

Personally, I've always identified with Albert Einstein's argument that being somewhat marginalized is perhaps the best position for a creative mind. Einstein stated that it was actually to his advantage that upon graduation from the Zurich Polytechnic he was not immediately admitted to a post in acdemia but instead ended working as a Technical Expert II Class (eventually being promoted to Technical Expert II Class after 7 years) in the Bern Patent Office. He later declared, "A practical profession is a salvation for a man of my type;an academic career places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications- a temptation to superficiality which only strong characters resist."

----------


## Petrarch's Love

Just wanted to say I've been enjoying reading the exchange on here. That last post of St. Luke's makes me wish I had the talent to teach art, or perhaps that I should have pursued the Art History route after all (I was teetering between that and lit. in undergrad) because of this statement:



> both he and I take the job seriously and do our best... during the required hours. The rest of the time is ours.


It suddenly occurred to me...no papers to grade! Lucky art teachers.  :Tongue:   :FRlol:

----------


## jon1jt

> Jon...Jon... you are more of an old hippie than I had imagined.


 :FRlol:  Well you weren't expecting a 'Yes-man' were you?  :Biggrin:  For those unfamiliar with the 'Yes-man' term, it simply means a company person, the man or woman who will do whatever is asked of them, even at the expense of themselves. They would give up all of their free time just to please the boss and hate themselves for it in the process, but never openly admit their frustration for fear of being looked upon differently by their peers, family, or friends. I'm not sure whether St.Luke is a yes-man yet, but I'm getting there.  :Biggrin:  




> I know that all that Jack Kerouac stuff should have been a tip off, but really?... Any artist who earns his or her income in a practical profession... and not solely from his or her art... has "sold out"?


Yep, really.  :Wink:  





> I haven't heard that kind of nonsense for years. Admittedly, I used to believe it myself... when I put in my obligatory time as the starving artist/bohemian wannabe in New York immediately after art school. Unfortunately, reality intervened... and the reality was, I discovered, that I could be far more productive as an artist when I could actually afford paints and canvas, the lease on an actual studio, and didn't need to worry too much about where my next meal was coming from. The reality, for me, is that while I would not trade my starving artist experience off... in reality I spent little of that time (in spite of all the free time) actually creating art (and if the truth be told, I spent far more of it drinking or drunk)
> 
> Your comments about teaching are certainly true... for many teachers. It is for that reason that I wouldn't teach anything but art (except perhaps music, PE or another such specialty). I work 185 days per year (with 5 of those days allotted to snow days), 6 1/2 hours per day, and have 15 sick days and 3 personal days (which accrue from year to year). I have not worked over the summer or taken on a second job since my first few years of teaching. My salary may not be that of a corporate lawyer, but it is adequate. As an art teacher, I am required to spend very little of my personal time working on school-related business. I must enter grades in the computer 4 times a year. This may certainly take a few hours... and I usually sacrifice a single evening to that labor. In spite of having 500 students the interim reports only require that I notify the parents of those students who are in danger of failing... thus I can skip over the vast majority without comment. I enter a daily effort grade for each student in my grade book based upon the established and posted goals during the class period. Final grades for each project involve a brief view of each work. I went through the long, drawn out process of basing these grades upon a rubric (as the schools wanted) but in reality, the grades varied very little from what I would have simply assigned using nothing more than my critical eye and my knowledge of what the student should of done and what his or her abilities are. After 10 years, I have little need for maintaining a lesson plan book. I have a body of lessons saved on the computer which I can use each year with certain modifications or variations. Rather than strolling in and out of school with a pile of papers, I tend to carry around the novel, art book, or book of poetry I am currently perusing. I maintain a good rapport with most of the staff (I need to, being the union representative as well) but this involves very little schmoozing after hours. When that bell has rung, I am quickly on my way. A coworker of mine who performs in the chorus of the Cleveland Orchestra (no small artistic feat itself) puts it best when he says, "I have a life... this is just my job". In spite of taking that attitude both he and I take the job seriously and do our best... during the required hours. The rest of the time is ours.
> 
> There are certainly days when I leave my job exhausted... but there are also days when my responsibilities to home or family can do the same. Outside responsibilities always make demands upon an artist's time. Of course the ideal would be to be able to do nothing but work at one's art all day... as a full-time job. Unfortunately, this is a reality for very few artists. Less than 5&#37; of all BFA students with a degree in the visual arts are still engaged in actively making art 5 years after graduation. After 10 years the percentage falls to less than 2%. I've already beat the odds there. Of that remaining 2% less than 1% make their living solely as a working artist (not counting commercial arts fields: illustrators, graphic designers, etc...). Of that tiny percentage less than 2% do well financially. Of those who do fall into this category the vast majority were either incredibly lucky and found that there work just happened to fall into what the demands of the market were at the right moment (the art stars). The remaining portion of this equation is made up of those artists who can consistently produce the sort of work that is in constant demand: decorative art with lovely colors and "realism" of a certain sort... especially that portraying flowers, landscapes, and other traditionally "beautiful" and non-confrontational subjects. If this is an artist's preference... what he or she is drawn to... then more power to them. On the other hand... if this is not what drives you, to spend all your time creating such in order to feed the market and avoid having to work at a "real" job may be an even greater "sell out".
> 
> The reality is that the vast majority of artists have had to seek employment in a practical profession in order to support their art. Writers of far greater abilities and achievements than John Gardner have worked any number of jobs: Wallace Stevens was a lawyer and insurance executive. Kafka was also an insurance man. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Checkov, Celine, and Arthur Conan Doyle were also doctors. T.S. Eliot worked in a bank... in spite of hating the job... stating "I cannot accept one bedroom as being liberty in comparison with my present life." Thomas Hardy was an architect. A study compiled by Kenneth Damann looking at only those writers whose books were worthy enough of review in the New York Times (based upon records compiled in August 1996, from _Casanova Was a Book Lover_, John Maxwell Hamilton, p. 31) found the following breakdown of earnings for writers:
> 31%- employed in academia (Geoffrey Hill, John Barth, Charles Simic)
> 19%- employed in politics/government/activism
> ...


I guess this is the point where one would expect me to say, "Touch&#233; my friend, touch&#233;." But I'll be back, I have to earn some money to feed my art life. StLuke, I betcha I have more free time during a given week to do my art than you...I've already spent six hours today on it. Um, I suppose this is the case because I didn't sell out.  :Sick:  


PETRARCH: From StLuke's point of view, all half-serious artists should become art and gym teachers.  :Rolleyes:   :Smile:

----------


## stlukesguild

For those unfamiliar with the 'Yes-man' term, it simply means a company person, the man or woman who will do whatever is asked of them, even at the expense of themselves. They would give up all of their free time just to please the boss and hate themselves for it in the process, but never openly admit their frustration for fear of being looked upon differently by their peers, family, or friends. I'm not sure whether St.Luke is a yes-man yet, but I'm getting there.

One of the largest advantages of being the art teacher is that almost no one knows the least bit about what you do or what makes good or bad art. On the negative side we are often not afforded the same level of respect as the classroom teacher... although we are usually the one they turn to to make the school look good. Some student work on the wall looks 100% better than any number of math tests. :FRlol:  





Because most classroom teachers and administrators have so little idea of art they largely see us some sort of experts in an esoteric field and thus largely leave us go on our own way. Every now and then an administrator will come up with some absurd idea involving the assistance of the art department in improving proficiency scores in math or reading and they'll ask us to participate in some off the wall manner. Usually I can just say "Yeah, sure. No problem." and then completely forget about it as it will almost assuredly be forgotten by them as soon as I walk out of the room. If not... well I am the union rep as well which means that the principal is not likely to give me too much guff for fear I'll start calling downtown.

Petrarch's Love- Just wanted to say I've been enjoying reading the exchange on here. That last post of St. Luke's makes me wish I had the talent to teach art, or perhaps that I should have pursued the Art History route after all (I was teetering between that and lit. in undergrad) because of this statement:

Quote:
both he and I take the job seriously and do our best... during the required hours. The rest of the time is ours.

It suddenly occurred to me...no papers to grade! Lucky art teachers.

Petrarch's... I don't know that teaching art history would have been any less demanding than teaching literature... perhaps fewer books to read... but probably just as many papers to read and grade. Teaching art... on the other hand... certainly has its advantages. Of course I will note that perhaps the advantages are reversed when you consider the artist vs the writer. A writer can get by quite well with a small corner of the room somewhere and a computer. Hell, if push comes to shove there is nothing to stop you from producing the "great American novel" or the next poetic masterwork using nothing more than a pencil and a notebook. The demands on the visual artist are a little bit larger. If one is a painter you must consider that the cost of pre-made stretched canvases can be more than 4 times the cost of doing it oneself. If you decide to go the homemade route you must have (at the very least) a table saw, a chop saw, an electric drill, a staple gun, a canvas stretcher, and corner-clamps. Lumber is reasonably inexpensive... but canvas runs around $6.00 per yard for the lowest grade up to over $20.00 per yard for some fine linen. Acrylic Gesso, to prime a canvas, goes for about $20.00 per gallon. You can get around this by using Rabbit Skin Glue... but this must be prepared in a double boiler (I actually prefer this myself). Underpainting white... the final layer of primer... runs upwards of $20.00 per quart... and we haven't even started painting. The mediums: artist's grade linseed oil, stand oil, damar varnish, etc... are all rather pricey. Even turpentine (and one MUST use pure gum turpentine and not the cheaper thinner) now runs upwards of $8.00 per gallon. And now the paint. The cheapest oil paints... student grade Winton brand (among others) run about $9.00 per tube for the larger tubes (800 ml. A good artist's quality paint can cost a lot more. Real cadmium red or cadmium yellow (which are so much more amazingly brilliant than the chemical imitations) can cost upwards of $40-$50 per 200 ml tube (about the size of two fingers). A true ultramarine blue utilizing real lapis lazuli (the semi-precious gem in finely ground creating that brilliant blue you see in Giotto's _Arena Chapel_ or in Vermeer's paintings) can be far more than $100 per 200 ml tube. Now once you are ready to paint... you need a studio... the actual process is messy... and far too smelly for your apartment or home. You will also need storage space to secure all those paintings while you wait for the collectors to come beating down your door. The grass in always greener, eh?

----------


## Petrarch's Love

> Petrarch's... I don't know that teaching art history would have been any less demanding than teaching literature... perhaps fewer books to read... but probably just as many papers to read and grade. Teaching art... on the other hand... certainly has its advantages.


Yes, of course there would still be papers teaching Art History--though fewer of them than an actual composition class and less expectation that you're responsible for correcting all their grammar etc-- and the additional work of putting together slide shows and such, though the fun of getting to lecture with visual aides might be worth it. I may end up doing that anyway, since I'm in the midst of writing a persuasive proposal to the university to let me teach a course on lit. and visual art next year...but I digress. 




> Of course I will note that perhaps the advantages are reversed when you consider the artist vs the writer. A writer can get by quite well with a small corner of the room somewhere and a computer. Hell, if push comes to shove there is nothing to stop you from producing the "great American novel" or the next poetic masterwork using nothing more than a pencil and a notebook. The demands on the visual artist are a little bit larger. If one is a painter you must consider that the cost of pre-made stretched canvases can be more than 4 times the cost of doing it oneself. If you decide to go the homemade route you must have (at the very least) a table saw, a chop saw, an electric drill, a staple gun, a canvas stretcher, and corner-clamps. Lumber is reasonably inexpensive... but canvas runs around $6.00 per yard for the lowest grade up to over $20.00 per yard for some fine linen. Acrylic Gesso, to prime a canvas, goes for about $20.00 per gallon. You can get around this by using Rabbit Skin Glue... but this must be prepared in a double boiler (I actually prefer this myself). Underpainting white... the final layer of primer... runs upwards of $20.00 per quart... and we haven't even started painting. The mediums: artist's grade linseed oil, stand oil, damar varnish, etc... are all rather pricey. Even turpentine (and one MUST use pure gum turpentine and not the cheaper thinner) now runs upwards of $8.00 per gallon. And now the paint. The cheapest oil paints... student grade Winton brand (among others) run about $9.00 per tube for the larger tubes (800 ml. A good artist's quality paint can cost a lot more. Real cadmium red or cadmium yellow (which are so much more amazingly brilliant than the chemical imitations) can cost upwards of $40-$50 per 200 ml tube (about the size of two fingers). A true ultramarine blue utilizing real lapis lazuli (the semi-precious gem in finely ground creating that brilliant blue you see in Giotto's _Arena Chapel_ or in Vermeer's paintings) can be far more than $100 per 200 ml tube. Now once you are ready to paint... you need a studio... the actual process is messy... and far too smelly for your apartment or home. You will also need storage space to secure all those paintings while you wait for the collectors to come beating down your door. The grass in always greener, eh?


Yes, I know from my artist friends that art supplies cost a bundle, and of course I know that you work hard both as a teacher and an artist, despite the dearth of student papers. :Wink:  Luckily I don't even have aspirations to tap out the Next Great American Novel, so no one can accuse me of selling out to begin with. :FRlol:  

By the way, your kids' artwork is great. That's certainly a nice perque of the job. 



> I guess this is the point where one would expect me to say, "Touché my friend, touché." But I'll be back, I have to earn some money to feed my art life. StLuke, I betcha I have more free time during a given week to do my art than you...I've already spent six hours today on it. Um, I suppose this is the case because I didn't sell out.
> 
> PETRARCH: From StLuke's point of view, all half-serious artists should become art and gym teachers.


Alright, St. Luke's post made a fair amount of sense to me. One must, after all, earn some money somehow unless you're one of the lucky very few whose art makes it big, and it seems like teaching art would be a pretty reasonable job to allow the time for other pursuits. How are you doing it without "selling out." I'm really not being facetious here, I'm genuinely curious as to what kind of work allows you this kind of time to pursue your craft.

----------


## stlukesguild

How are you doing it without "selling out." I'm really not being facetious here, I'm genuinely curious as to what kind of work allows you this kind of time to pursue your craft.

I thought you knew that jon was a gigolo for hire. :Biggrin:  :FRlol:

----------


## jon1jt

> Alright, St. Luke's post made a fair amount of sense to me. One must, after all, earn some money somehow unless you're one of the lucky very few whose art makes it big, and it seems like teaching art would be a pretty reasonable job to allow the time for other pursuits. How are you doing it without "selling out." I'm really not being facetious here, I'm genuinely curious as to what kind of work allows you this kind of time to pursue your craft.


Of course St. Luke's post is going to make sense to most, it's going to make sense to anybody who believes the public education system is still worth working in (it doesn't hurt to tug at one's heartstrings by posting art work from the kids you teach either :wink :Smile:  I call StLuke's attitude the "one leg in, one leg out approach," and it's disingenuous because you can't have it both ways, sorry StLuke. I've heard the argument so many times before from colleagues, at least two who confided in me how much they loath themselves for having to work in public ed for a paycheck. It especially makes sense to the person who is afraid to step outside the confinement of a system that demands conformity. This reminds me of the guy who goes backpacking equipped with all the latest gadgetry and later romanticizes how much of a true outdoorsman he is. C'mon.

STLUKE: You embrace working in this dysfunctional public ed system while openly admitting to understanding it all it's unseemly facets. But you can't have it both ways, you can't have it both ways because the system doesn't allow free thinking. It's disingenuous because you present yourself as the lone hero, clever, all-knowing, an "outsider," who is outfoxing a system, as if only you know the dance to avoid the inevitable landmines and time suckage that comes with working in the industry. Surely ye jest. 
Look, I'm not saying that your motives to do your own thing aren't sincere or that your approach doesn't somtimes allow you to avoid policies that would otherwise get in your way. But you seem to disregard the fact that the system is already in your way. Face it.

And it's disingenuous to point to writers, like Kafka, who held down full-time jobs to support themselves while pursuing their writing careers because I wasn't talking about writers who work in insurance, I was talking about artists who work in public ed. You point to these masters of literature in the spritely way capitalists point to Carnegie and Rockefeller as examples of Americans who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps while failing to mention the scores of people who suffered at their brutal hand.  :Rolleyes: 

And since we're digressing, what about the countless writers who never sold out, whose work may be even far better than those you point to, who are being marginalized because they didn't graduate from an MFA program, who go unpublished their entire lives because they played by their own rules, who yawned against the strictures of the publishing industry? It's the same concept, StLuke. And why am I to believe that if you've sold out to public ed that you haven't also sold out your own art? 





> ]I'm really not being facetious here, I'm genuinely curious as to what kind of work allows you this kind of time to pursue your craft


I found a niche working as an SAT/AP tutor and adjunct. I left public ed because I envisioned myself ten years being as burnt out and disgruntled as the tenured faculty there. I rent office space and teach test prep primarily for SAT/SATII/AP exams. I have other specialized courses as well. I probably couldn't have succeeded in this gig had I not earned a Ph.D, and it's no surprise that many parents I deal with have MAs, MDs, JDs, Ph.Ds themselves. They demand that their children attend the best schools and they're willing to pay, and pay they do. I've devised my own methodology for beating standarized tests and have started putting together a handbook that I hope to get published commercially. When my clients write a check they write it to me, and they're happy to do so, unlike taxpayers with public ed. 

I adjunct because I love my field and it's the only place I can communicate those ideas with a like-minded audience, and more often than not my audience is actually very interested, they're college students who don't necessarily buy into the prescriptive way of their parents, and they're just as intrigued and stirred up as I am about the big questions philosophy asks. (Let's face it, the average college student majoring in philosophy isn't normally as concerned about getting a high paying job with a big company when he/she graduates. If so, they'd major in finance or enroll in the teachers program.  :Smile:  

I get to establish relationships with colleagues who are doing some amazing research, not just my field. Oftentimes the students I teach stay in touch and go on to do amazing things. The paycheck I earn is not so bad either given the limited time for each class.

----------


## stlukesguild

Of course St. Luke's post is going to make sense to most, it's going to make sense to anybody who believes the public education system is still worth working in (it doesn't hurt to tug at one's heartstrings by posting art work from the kids you teach either :wink I call StLuke's attitude the "one leg in, one leg out approach," and it's disingenuous because you can't have it both ways, sorry StLuke. I've heard the argument so many times before from colleagues, at least two who confided in me how much they loath themselves for having to work in public ed for a paycheck. It especially makes sense to the person who is afraid to step outside the confinement of a system that demands conformity. This reminds me of the guy who goes backpacking equipped with all the latest gadgetry and later romanticizes how much of a true outdoorsman he is. C'mon.

STLUKE: You embrace working in this dysfunctional public ed system while openly admitting to understanding it all it's unseemly facets. But you can't have it both ways, you can't have it both ways because the system doesn't allow free thinking. It's disingenuous because you present yourself as the lone hero, clever, all-knowing, an "outsider," who is outfoxing a system, as if only you know the dance to avoid the inevitable landmines and time suckage that comes with working in the industry. Surely ye jest.
Look, I'm not saying that your motives to do your own thing aren't sincere or that your approach doesn't somtimes allow you to avoid policies that would otherwise get in your way. But you seem to disregard the fact that the system is already in your way. Face it.

And it's disingenuous to point to writers, like Kafka, who held down full-time jobs to support themselves while pursuing their writing careers because I wasn't talking about writers who work in insurance, I was talking about artists who work in public ed. You point to these masters of literature in the spritely way capitalists point to Carnegie and Rockefeller as examples of Americans who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps while failing to mention the scores of people who suffered at their brutal hand.

And since we're digressing, what about the countless writers who never sold out, whose work may be even far better than those you point to, who are being marginalized because they didn't graduate from an MFA program, who go unpublished their entire lives because they played by their own rules, who yawned against the strictures of the publishing industry? It's the same concept, StLuke. And why am I to believe that if you've sold out to public ed that you haven't also sold out your own art?

I found a niche working as an SAT/AP tutor and adjunct. I left public ed because I envisioned myself ten years being as burnt out and disgruntled as the tenured faculty there. I rent office space and teach test prep primarily for SAT/SATII/AP exams. I have other specialized courses as well. I probably couldn't have succeeded in this gig had I not earned a Ph.D, and it's no surprise that many parents I deal with have MAs, MDs, JDs, Ph.Ds themselves. They demand that their children attend the best schools and they're willing to pay, and pay they do. I've devised my own methodology for beating standarized tests and have started putting together a handbook that I hope to get published commercially. When my clients write a check they write it to me, and they're happy to do so, unlike taxpayers with public ed.


OK Jon... let me get this straight. You present the notion that working as a self-employed tutor assisting students in beating the system of standardized tests required for college entrance and improving their odds of being admitted into the best schools is somehow a more noble... honest... profession (at least for the artist)... than to work in the actual field of education as a teacher. What am I missing here? You present yourself as the rebellious outsider, and yet you seem to embrace the ethically challenged side of capitalism far more than I had imagined. The children you are assisting in the endeavors to circumvent the system are already those who have the advantages of parents both willing and financially able to see that their children have the best of everything. Surely there is nothing wrong with that. But don't pretend that catering to these parents and their willingness to pay in order to assure that junior gets into Yale or Princeton is an any way some noble profession. You are just as much indentured to the system as anyone.

Personally... when it comes to art... I have no idealistic notions that one source of income is better than another. Whatever means of support suffices for you as the artist... and still allows you to be productive... even if it were to be a gigolo... is fine. I have no Romantic ideals about the noble artists who refused to "sell out", and starved in some hovel somewhere, and never published... or more likely never even produced what they might have produced... because they so nobly insisted upon playing by their own rules. That is just a pre-pubescent fantasy. If an artist does not engage in the dialog then he or she is irrelevant. Yes... I suppose that their work may be discovered years later in a trash heap some where or is a locked trunk in some empty room (it does happen: Traherne and Pessoa come to mind) but I'm not going to imagine that they are more noble role-models for the artist... let alone more likely to have produced masterworks of art that far outstrip the products of all of those artists who bowed to the system... who had a day job, or produced art for the commercial market, or married money, or accepted it from wealthy patrons, or most lucky of all... inherited it. Michelangelo, Bach, Dante, Shakespeare, Raphael, Mozart, Picasso... all would fall under this umbrella. And those romantic outsiders who played by their own rules? 

I have never suggested that I imagine public education to be some sort of noble calling. It merely works for me... at this point in time. I take the job seriously and do the best I can for my students... during the hours I am required to do so... but I won't try to delude anyone into thinking that public education does not have its share of problems. I would certainly not think twice about walking away from it if I were to suddenly find myself making a great deal of money from my artistic efforts alone... but then that is always the ideal: to make art full time. There are very few artists, no matter what field they work in, that would not gladly walk away if they knew they could live off their artistic efforts alone. But in most cases that's not reality, is it? And even if it did come to pass... does it denote that said artist is any less indebted to the system? Instead of working for the system involved in whatever profession guarantees that weekly check... the artist is now working for the system of the art market... or the publishers. Whatever butters your bread.

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## jon1jt

I'll get to that other stuff later. For now, I want to address something I thought was interesting you said but didn't have time in my last post.




> Of course I will note that perhaps the advantages are reversed when you consider the artist vs the writer. A writer can get by quite well with a small corner of the room somewhere and a computer. Hell, if push comes to shove there is nothing to stop you from producing the "great American novel" or the next poetic masterwork using nothing more than a pencil and a notebook. The demands on the visual artist are a little bit larger. If one is a painter you must consider that the cost of pre-made stretched canvases can be more than 4 times the cost of doing it oneself. If you decide to go the homemade route you must have (at the very least) a table saw, a chop saw, an electric drill, a staple gun, a canvas stretcher, and corner-clamps. Lumber is reasonably inexpensive... but canvas runs around $6.00 per yard for the lowest grade up to over $20.00 per yard for some fine linen. Acrylic Gesso, to prime a canvas, goes for about $20.00 per gallon. You can get around this by using Rabbit Skin Glue... but this must be prepared in a double boiler (I actually prefer this myself). Underpainting white... the final layer of primer... runs upwards of $20.00 per quart... and we haven't even started painting. The mediums: artist's grade linseed oil, stand oil, damar varnish, etc... are all rather pricey. Even turpentine (and one MUST use pure gum turpentine and not the cheaper thinner) now runs upwards of $8.00 per gallon. And now the paint. The cheapest oil paints... student grade Winton brand (among others) run about $9.00 per tube for the larger tubes (800 ml. A good artist's quality paint can cost a lot more. Real cadmium red or cadmium yellow (which are so much more amazingly brilliant than the chemical imitations) can cost upwards of $40-$50 per 200 ml tube (about the size of two fingers). A true ultramarine blue utilizing real lapis lazuli (the semi-precious gem in finely ground creating that brilliant blue you see in Giotto's Arena Chapel or in Vermeer's paintings) can be far more than $100 per 200 ml tube. Now once you are ready to paint... you need a studio... the actual process is messy... and far too smelly for your apartment or home. You will also need storage space to secure all those paintings while you wait for the collectors to come beating down your door. The grass in always greener, eh?


You mention the simple tools of the writer, but what happened to the artist with his/her tubes of paint, brush, easel, and canvas? I read some visual arts mags, I've been to some shows, it's fair to say that the visual arts has taken a turn of sorts---your description above demonstrates how absurd it's all become, even in public ed---yet another example of how public ed follows trends but does not create them. Why should schools like yours spend tons of money on all of that---oil, varnish, ovens, blah blah, when the average kid still hasn't acquired a sense of the basic techniques of painting and drawing?

I remember when I was in elementary school---and high school, and feeling such a rush when our teacher handed out pencils and construction paper and told us to draw whatever we liked. I wonder what your kids say when you don't have enough expensive oil paint to go around.

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## Jane Jane

This presents a bit of problem for me.
I have helped out in the educational system on and off for years. And in all that time I saw maybe five teachers with integrity, who did what they preached, who even approached learning as anything other than a job to get through to until holiday.
The five that I was priveleged to know were so outstanding, compassionate, learned and humble that the students stuck to them like crazy glue.There was not enough of them to go around.
The others had perhaps some good points, but more often than not their personal prejudices or hangovers or anger at their salaries etc caused them to do much less than I believe they had it in them to do. And the children were the losers.
I remember my little girl came home one day in tears. She was to have performed at a beautiful Heritage place with her class for certain high ranking city officials. The children were all dressed up in their best, excited if quite tired from hours of practising. 
After the performance as the children all stood whispering to one another in another room she stalked in and told them they had done badly and were a failure.
My little one and another tearfully told her they had done their best. "Well it was not good enough' she said.
To this day my child hates the sound of her own beautiful voice.
And from throwing chairs and chalk, to cursing and having temper tantrums many teachers just don't make the grade in my opinion. 
Those that do are stars shining in a very dark firmament.

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## stlukesguild

You mention the simple tools of the writer, but what happened to the artist with his/her tubes of paint, brush, easel, and canvas? I read some visual arts mags, I've been to some shows, it's fair to say that the visual arts has taken a turn of sorts---your description above demonstrates how absurd it's all become, even in public ed---yet another example of how public ed follows trends but does not create them. Why should schools like yours spend tons of money on all of that---oil, varnish, ovens, blah blah, when the average kid still hasn't acquired a sense of the basic techniques of painting and drawing?

I remember when I was in elementary school---and high school, and feeling such a rush when our teacher handed out pencils and construction paper and told us to draw whatever we liked. I wonder what your kids say when you don't have enough expensive oil paint to go around.

Jon... you misunderstood me here. I was speaking of the personal costs of an artist vs that of a writer. Oil paints are rarely ever used by students prior to college... with the possible exception of some advanced painting classes at the high school level. The materials simply are far too expensive, they can be dangerous if improperly used (turps and thinner are flammable, cadmium, chromium, white lead, cobalt, and the various driers are all poisonous), and the fumes alone can be a health issue if not properly ventilated. At the elementary level the materials most often employed are scissors and glue and construction paper, tempera and watercolor paints, crayons and inexpensive student-grade oil pastels. At this age the focus is upon learning to properly utilize the materials, introducing some concepts about observation, compositions and the various elements of art and principles of design. Students are also challenged to utilize art as a means of expression and explore what has been done by artists from various cultures, eras, societies, etc... Education as an institution is not and cannot every be at the cusp of the _avant guard_. This is one of the great mistakes made at the Post-Secondary level of art education. The idea that you can teach a student to be a great artist... a revolutionary... is absurd. All that can be passed on is the skills and the knowledge of the history and traditions. It is up to the individual to make of it what he or she will.

You are right that visual art has undergone a great shift. We are currently in the midst of something that has been labeled "Post-Modernism"... for lack of a better term. Post-Modernism in the visual arts can be roughly dated from around 1960 onward... although it is deeply rooted in the concepts of the much older art movements of Dada and Surrealism... and especially the efforts of Duchamp. This current movement or state of the "art world" is essentially directionless. If we go back only as far as the mid-1950s... the height of the Abstract Expressionists... we find that there were very few artists... most centered around a few cultural capitols: Paris, San Francisco, London... and especially New York. There were only a few dozen galleries... fewer writers... and few art schools. Today... since the late 1980s... America has turned out more students with BFAs than there were people living in Florence during the Renaissance. I've already explored the small percentage of those art school graduates who actually do something with their education. In spite of this, there are over 50,000 self-proclaimed artists living in New York City alone. What was once the "art world"... a rather homogeneous direction taken by the artists of any given period (with an opposed group such as one might imagine with the Neo-Classicists vs the Romantic) has degenerated into a fragmented mess. 

There are late Modernists who continue to work in the traditions of high Modernism as exemplified by Picasso and Matisse (Sean Scully, Howard Hodgkin, John Bellany, Martin Puryear, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Anselm Kiefer, William Crozier, etc...). There are conceptual artists rooted in the innovations of found objects, collage, assemblage, installation, and "idea art" as exemplified by Duchamp (Andy Goldsworthy, Charles Matton, Richard Greaves, Damian Hirst, Joseph Kosuth, etc...). There are artists who thrive upon irony and the mockery of the ideals of their predecessors... painting pornographic imagery with the techniques of an old master, etc... (John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Masami Teraoka, Dana Schutz). There are artists who have no concept whatsoever of tradition and history and have fallen fully into an embrace of popular culture (Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, etc...). Then there are artists who imagine that the role of art is solely that of social/political activism... the content being far more important than the actual aesthetic worth (Kara Walker, Sue Coe, Judy Chicago, etc...) There are artists who look to the artistic styles of "outsider": folk-artists, self-taught artists, non-Western artists (David Bates, Roberto Marquez, Renata Paulabinskas, Douglas Bourgeoise, etc...). There are artists rooted in photo-derived imagery (Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter, Gottfried Helnwein, etc...). There are reactionary artists who seem to imagine that the last 100 years of art history were an anomaly that they would like to imagine never occurred and who imagine the role of the artist as mimicking the look, the subject, the style of a bygone era (David Kroll, William Bailey, Alan Feltus, Michael Workman, Steven Bigler, Victoria Adams, Fred Wessel, and most of the artists you'd see in _American Artist Magazine_) and then you have a large group of artists who are well aware of and even in admiration of the achievements of Modernism... and yet have chosen to aim for a type of "realism" rooted in some of the techniques of the old masters... but equally responsive to the visual world of today (Lucian Freud, Eric Fischl, Avigdor Arikha, Antonio Lopez Garcia, Bo Barlett, Ann Gale, Paul Fenniak, Alyssa Monks, etc... In other words... there is no single "art world" or "art market". It has fragmented into a collection of individualized directions and there are a certain number of truly talented artists in almost any one of them. But it is almost impossible today to speak of the direction of art or the art world... or to assume that an artist working in a style that is not the "flavor of the month" in a specific art publication of art gallery is an outsider with little influence or following. More than almost any time in the history of art we seem to be living in an era where the truly relevant artists will only be discerned over time.

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## bluelightstar

> And from throwing chairs and chalk, to cursing and having temper tantrums many teachers just don't make the grade in my opinion. 
> Those that do are stars shining in a very dark firmament.


I'm sorry you had a bad experience with a teacher, but I can assure you that the majority of teachers are fine people who enjoy teaching and learning. Don't let what one terrible teacher did to your child spoil your view of all of us as a whole.

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## jon1jt

> The others had perhaps some good points, but more often than not their personal prejudices or hangovers or anger at their salaries etc caused them to do much less than I believe they had it in them to do. And the children were the losers.
> 
> many teachers just don't make the grade in my opinion. 
> Those that do are stars shining in a very dark firmament.


That's exactly what I'm talking about Jane, many public school teachers are there because it's a cushy job and they know they can fool everybody around them to believe that they are REAL teachers. But no teaching license makes a teacher, the teaching license just gives them a little something extra to use as toilet paper.  :Biggrin:

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## bluelightstar

But our jobs are NOT cushy. You don't take a job as a teacher so you can sit around and drink coffee. It's impossible to do for most of us. We have a million things to do daily, and we take more work home than virtually any other profession. Teaching is not a job for someone who wants to sit around and twirl in a desk all day - it's not true.

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## jon1jt

> But our jobs are NOT cushy. You don't take a job as a teacher so you can sit around and drink coffee. It's impossible to do for most of us. We have a million things to do daily, and we take more work home than virtually any other profession. Teaching is not a job for someone who wants to sit around and twirl in a desk all day - it's not true.


Great post, StLuke, I'll respond in bit.

As far as above comment, it's true teachers have to do a million things daily. The load does lighten some, at least it did for me by my third year. At that point my lesson plans were pretty much done and it was a matter of recycling. Exams/quizzes are provided on CD Roms, including various activities. Departments have their own stash of materials. There is no getting around the grading---students need to know how they're doing, it keeps them on task. There's the after-school meetings and all-day conferences. 

If you read my comments I've been consistent with my position that the teaching profession is dysfunctional and it's especially not desirable for an artist.

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## jon1jt

> Jon... you misunderstood me here. I was speaking of the personal costs of an artist vs that of a writer. Oil paints are rarely ever used by students prior to college... with the possible exception of some advanced painting classes at the high school level. The materials simply are far too expensive, they can be dangerous if improperly used (turps and thinner are flammable, cadmium, chromium, white lead, cobalt, and the various driers are all poisonous), and the fumes alone can be a health issue if not properly ventilated. At the elementary level the materials most often employed are scissors and glue and construction paper, tempera and watercolor paints, crayons and inexpensive student-grade oil pastels. At this age the focus is upon learning to properly utilize the materials, introducing some concepts about observation, compositions and the various elements of art and principles of design. Students are also challenged to utilize art as a means of expression and explore what has been done by artists from various cultures, eras, societies, etc... Education as an institution is not and cannot every be at the cusp of the _avant guard_. This is one of the great mistakes made at the Post-Secondary level of art education. The idea that you can teach a student to be a great artist... a revolutionary... is absurd. All that can be passed on is the skills and the knowledge of the history and traditions. It is up to the individual to make of it what he or she will.


Yes, it seems I misunderstood your earlier post, sorry about that. Your point about teachers who 'teach' art brought to mind the old saying, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." 




> Today... since the late 1980s... America has turned out more students with BFAs than there were people living in Florence during the Renaissance. I've already explored the small percentage of those art school graduates who actually do something with their education. In spite of this, there are over 50,000 self-proclaimed artists living in New York City alone.


I did my undergrad in NYC and am very familiar with the kind of artist you're talking about. They tend to be clicky, come from out of town and love mental masturbation. The ones I knew personally spent most of their time at parties talking about art. I took an ArtForum course in college that showcased a new artist each week. I recall one of the avant garde masters who had a studio in the Village come in to tell how he paid local artists $15.00 per hour and sold their work for 15G and up. He was very proud of this practice, and justified it on the basis that it was his name on the art that generated interest in the sale. A riot almost broke out right there! He told how he provided his workers a "nice studio to work in" and let them make their own hours. Very amusing at the time, I wish I could recall his name. (Musabi, or something like that.) He was also of the opinion that you had to live in the city if you wanted a reasonable chance at getting your work noticed, emphasizing the advantage of "networking." Another memorable artist who presented went by the name of "King Missile. He had received some commercial success with his song/video, Detachable Penis.  :FRlol:  Then there were the porn film artists. Wonderful course.  :FRlol:

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## stlukesguild

I did my undergrad in NYC and am very familiar with the kind of artist you're talking about. They tend to be clicky, come from out of town and love mental masturbation. The ones I knew personally spent most of their time at parties talking about art. 

Certainly the art world is full of such "artists". In my own experience... and I graduated from a traditional art school (and not a university art department) which stressed the idea that an artist was someone who made art... and thus spent more time in the studio creating than in thinking and talking about art... or putting on the look of being an artist... such "posers" were far more prevalent coming immediately out of high-school: dressing in a manner they imagined would be perceived as outrageous... drinking excessively because everybody knew the great artists like Jackson Pollack were drunks, etc... Such behavior did little to impress in the school and was quickly abandoned... or the student would move on. Of course after art school I have seen more than my share of artist wannabes who hang out at all the "important" gallery exhibitions (in order to be seen more than to see what someone else is doing). They usually dress in the obligatory artist's uniform of all black. The real work of art takes place mostly unnoticed... alone in a studio with the work... and demands a great investment of time and self-discipline... not personality traits that are all that popular to many.

I took an ArtForum course in college that showcased a new artist each week. I recall one of the avant garde masters who had a studio in the Village come in to tell how he paid local artists $15.00 per hour and sold their work for 15G and up. He was very proud of this practice, and justified it on the basis that it was his name on the art that generated interest in the sale. A riot almost broke out right there! He told how he provided his workers a "nice studio to work in" and let them make their own hours. Very amusing at the time, I wish I could recall his name. (Musabi, or something like that.) He was also of the opinion that you had to live in the city if you wanted a reasonable chance at getting your work noticed, emphasizing the advantage of "networking." Another memorable artist who presented went by the name of "King Missile. He had received some commercial success with his song/video, Detachable Penis. Then there were the porn film artists. Wonderful course. 

Mark Kostabi. Real a**hole. I had a friend in New York who worked for him. His approach to art was much the same as Hallmark Cards. He had a group of art directors who simply came up with ideas for paintings. The ideas that he thought best were then loosely rendered up by a team of graphic design illustrators. Again he would give a stamp of approval to the "best" work and it would then be turned into a fully worked up painting by a team of "renderers"... mostly art school grads getting $10-$15 per hour. The "best" of the completed works then received his signature... the only element he contributed to the actual creation... much like a fashion designer's name on the label of something he or she had no part in designing. His only real contribution was to show up at the exhibitions and insult buyers for buying these stupid crappy paintings that weren't even painted by him. (He actually admitted as much!) The buyers inanely imagined that what Kostabi was doing was no different than what old masters like Rubens had done when they employed assistants. Of course his idea was not new. Andy Warhol's entire oeuvre was virtually created in the same manner... rather like a mass production firm.

Kostabi's career tanked while I was living in New York following an incident in which he discovered that a group of his "renderers" were selling "fake" Kostabis in Asia. They figured that they did all the work... why not get the cash? The case went to court and it was found that he could not sue them for "forgery" as his "own" paintings were essentially created by others and as such he had no claim to how his paintings looked. The only crime that they could be tried for was fraud in the instance that they signed his signature. Kostabi became a laughing-stock and virtually disappeared from the scene. Now... nearly 15 years later... he is making a big comeback as his approach to making art has become common practice among many of the current art stars. Essentially the practice is no different than the use of a team of "ghostwriters" such as Dumas employed... but for anyone who feels that a work of art should exhibit the "voice" of the artist, such an approach to art is an abomination.

I will say that one aspect of what Kostabi told you is true. The key means for most artists desiring recognition is "networking"... although one might be less kind and call it for what it is: a**kissing or brown-nosing. Young artists virtually fight for the "honor" of gaining a position as studio assistant or "peon" to some well-established artist in hope that they will gain access to the big names in the art world as a result. The pay is mostly sub-standard and most of these artists never make that imagined break into the stratosphere of stardom. 

There are many artists now who hold out hope for the internet as a means of breaking free from the stranglehold of the art dealers and the system... and certainly the internet shows some potential for those computer literate and capable of self-promotion. A movement known as "A Painting a Day" has caught on and there are a number of talented artists who have been quite successful in marketing directly to the audience... and to an audience not comprised solely of billionaires. One of the best is a professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia: Duane Keiser. His "painting a day" blog follows his efforts:
http://www.duanekeiser.com/index.htm

The other approach favored by most artists is to: 
1. Continue to work in the studio... 
2 Make relationships with other artists who are also active and whose work you respect... 
3. Be willing to accept criticism from such
4. Continue to exhibit...
5. Develop a relationship with gallery owners who you respect (for their eye... for their support... for their business ethics)

The reason there are so many artists in academia is because it affords you the secure income needed to continue working as you please... not as the market demands... and it affords you the money needed to actually purchase the materials for creating art. Yes... there is a trade-off in the loss of time to your "day job"... but there's always a trade-off and for many who play the game of the "starving artist" or "rebellious bohemian" the trade-off is that all the effort goes into the show... and none into the work...

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## jon1jt

Yes, yes, that's his name, Mark Kostabi!!!! I can't believe you know this guy, wow! I'm happy to hear what happened to him, the smug jerk!  :FRlol:  

He was wearing some pricey European blazer at the lecture and a student asked him how much he paid for it. He answered, "Oh this one's cheap, $4800 or so." I got the sense he was purposely trying to antagonize the student audience. 

I found your whole perspective on artists very interesting---I had no idea it was that bad...I never got to meet many students attending art school, only the university variety, which love dressing the part as well. 

I'll definitely check out that site you recommended and respond to some other points, I have to run.

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