A Justice Site

About Us - Site Map: Where to Find Stuff - What's NEW?

MIRROR SITES: CSUDH - Habermas - UWP
YAHOO DISCUSSION GROUP: Building Communities
MODERATORS' NEWS: jeanne's World - Susan's World

UWP Criminal Justice Dept.

FIND STUFF: Announcements - Topic of the Week
Issues - - Visual Sociology - Sources
SEARCH: Site Index - Topics Index - Archives

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

WWW www.habermas.org

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: April 27, 2008
Latest Update: April 27, 2008
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
patriciaacone@yahoo.com
Yahoo Discussion Group: Building Communities

Topic of the Week:

Art Within Education

An article in the New York Times Magazine today chided those of us who find the arts essential to a solid education. I was dismayed that teaching the arts in school turned on a primary perspective of art as an academic discipline, with skills that would lead to a career in art. Yes, I do respect the psychologists and art college faculty who carefully engage in research to determine how "studying art" can raise math test scores. But I'm not the least bit interested in raising some entrance level test score. I'm interested in leading you to think deeply about social and criminal justice issues, and to have that knowledge at your fingertips when the occasions for it arise.

Susan and I are not teaching classes in art. We are using art to encourage you to learn at a deeper level, to embed that learning in your conscious and unconscious awareness, so that it will pop up later, when you need it. We encourage the making of anything, drawing, cards, a sculpture of yarn, jewelry from a found object. We're even encouraging you to develop your skills and understand the importance of "making things," for such activity is important to reducing stress, and increasing all skills is important for humans. (It's supposed to reduce the probability of onset of senility and memory loss, and it satisfies our natural curiosity.)

Anything that you make for a local exhibit on the issues and concepts that matter in social and criminal justice serves to embed that knowledge in your mind. What you have made then becomes a recuerdo, a reminder of that learning. The process culminates in a product, whatever it might be. In the process of creating that product, be it a poem, a sweater, a card, an exploding box, a sculpture, a musical piece, you are connecting the learning that goes into the process with your earlier learning (as in the example of paper clips connecting to one another, so they all come out attached). That leads to deeper knowledge that you have reinforced by using it in things that matter to you. And the product or object will bring back some of those memories in the future. That's straight Skinnerian conditioning theory, connecting the response to the stimulus.

Your exhibition and sharing of those arts projects ensure many more chances to embed what matters, the learning, in conversations and discussions with others. That raises the level of discourse. And if the exhibition is fun and rewarding, that may well contribute one day to raising the level of our governance discourse. Now, that's deep learning.

Susan and I hope that you will connect the issues of social and criminal justice to icons that will recall that knowledge for you everytime it is needed, as much as the Coca Cola logo calls to mind the refreshing drink of cold liquid. Just think of us all as "advertising education."

References:

• The Way We Live Now: Drawing Lessons By Ann Hulbert, New York Times Sunday Magazine, April 27, 2008. Backup with commentary.

• Instructions for a Wearable Art with Message Project
  Instructions for a bracelet with a message. The project could yield a bracelet, an object included in an exploding card box, a framed art piece, a trivet, whatever. One example is done in advanced crochet. One example requires no more than the simplest of crochet, a chain and a single crochet. Suggestions are given for ways to transfer the project to absolutely no use of crochet or knitting. Instructions are included in the discussion for moving the focus from male to female and across age groups.

• Instructions on Free Form

  More detailed instructions on how to do freeform and what freeform means for those who knit or crochet, and for those who don't. Special instructions for when and how to break rules in free form.

Resources For Governance Discourse Online
(At Least Some Free Access):
Finding Issues that Matter and Reliable Access to Information on Those Issues

• Newspapers:

  New York Times - Los Angeles Times - The Wall Street Journal
  The Washington Post - Arts and Letters Daily
  

• Magazines:

  The National Review - The Economist

Still working on restructuring. February 12, 2008, jeanne

A Range of Scholarly Sources
on Issues that Matter from Many Perspectives, Left, Right, and Other

Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor -
Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation
The Cato Institute (Libertarian) - The Open Society
BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
- La Opinion - The Washington Post
Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report
- Web Sources Linked from Dear Habermas
Concept Index - T.R. Young and the Red Feather Institute
The World Wide School - Free access to important early works.

The Slought Foundation: New Futures for Contemporary Life
The Church and Postmodern Culture: A Conversation

Independent Media Center Alternative news, not from private media corporations.

Public Library of Science Open access.

Wikipedia

Old Source List of Online Sources

 

 

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
Individual copyrights by other authors may apply.