Feb 4, 2013. Broken finger. Slipped on 120th street. Ziegfield collection publication hand out 1990 story of arrival, finding the collection here at TC in boxes founder of NAEA, show juried by Ittens, Reid, Lavine, head of art ed. Inner consistency Culture identity of themselves Greatest collection of ado art Cultural inflection Integrity of ado voice Kids don’t work quite like this anymore Premiered at the Hague Exacerbated by job situation; question: (present everywhere): • college for all? •aspirations to college? •other mechanisms of higher education? (apprenticeships, school & industry) •what are the Universities about? (extension of secondary ed? ) •tradition role of University changing? if not the university, what other ways can there be for people to move into the next phase of life? U.K. grammar school (aka high school) by exam entrance only, rigorous academic schedule, or – a secondary model not aimed at the university level. Unfair to nudge children into failure. Ideal: each “level” equally valued, but parity did not work out. U.K. 1960s comprehensive high school, all kids together. Social value systems at play in the dialog about equality of university educations. Changing with the open society of networks (MOOCS) Different in Spain (Laia) and Germany (Jesse) “value marker” – Wendel voctech programs can make h.s. lower ranks, social upheaval of first year college students. What role does secondary education play in the educational structure? – in culture? Ed system as biz – economic problems overlaps on human values Judy: should the university be a business? Confronting a lot of cultural issues that overlap on structure of adolescent experience. Degree of flexibility in US system {as a strength of the system} These issues are background for discussion as we try to understand checks and balances of the young person’s experience. Past as more clear trajectory for path to adulthood. e.g. Downtown Abbey as illustration of what happens when real social changes take hold. e.g. initiation rites as physical transition pints that separate and remove and educate and test ~ clear demarcation between child/adult. Removal: a period of liminality, a suspended space, not part of society. Alice Walker book on contemporary female initiation rites brought consternation, strong reaction to the book. Judy: continuity of experience in education…goes up and down. Graduate --- bottom of the pile --- graduate --- bottom of the pile Sets current teachers against the next teachers Elementary teachers vs. high school teachers [opposition] Middle school as “survival” – no vision forward; treading water; lost years; “This American Life” episode. It’s a constant planning and prepping for what comes next. Judy: reminder of childhood developmental issues. Middle ground of childhood leads into adolescence • cartoons, drawing of the self. We work ourselves into our own work. •child with marker in the mouth: art development begins in body; the 1st experience involves the body; making marks on paper as serendipitous; drawing as product of physical engagement; implications of being in the body with changing body of the ado; child with paint everywhere, paint on the body, first paint on belly; sooner or later there’s a magic moment where the child recognizes intentionality; hand and eye start to work together. This develops for all of us. Why extraordinary? We make something where there was nothing before ~~ Not “scribbling” [get that word out of art education] but exploratory drawing. Line drawings as milestones. New levels of action. Rehearsal of ways to make lines. Piaget—repertoire of action with materials, crayon vs. paint. Material itself teaches you that a line can start and stop. Paint teaches you blotches and patches. Practice makes spots. Beginning of what later becomes a very complex repertoire Huge sense of accomplishment that whole surface of the paper can be 100%ed. Rich experiences with materials ~ different actions lead to value judgments about ability. Drawing a line that encircles – joins itself—makes a place. STUFF inside and STUFF outside. Kids make enclosures; emerge in all materials but are different because OF MATERIALS. Pre-symbolic development roughly ages 3 to 6 yrs. Sensory motor learning. Surfaces are divisible or continuous. Kids are learning visual, relational, expressive >> concepts. “lines” are happy or sad, lines are attached to feeling. “This is a picture of …” >> stories emerge from materials themselves but adults imply the relationship to the “world”…but if they kids haven’t made the connection themselves it’s utterly confounding to them. A riff on “creativity” as laden with values and direction and bias. Artistic development as vernacular – “tell me about it…” give kids the opportunity to tell you where they want to go in that vernacular language. With adolescents > invite them into reflective process where they begin to look at their work differently and perhaps with a more critical eye. Child’s drawing: me in bed feeling sick > head > pjs > blanket > window > inside of room > red is me feeling sick. The period of naming. Naming of painting. Doggy becomes spider. Then they begin to have premeditated ideas about subject matter. It becomes affective, experienced, felt. It’s not about how the world “looks” The material pulls meaning into the work. >>Proto symbols: naming after and during making. Materials express ideas. Ideas originate in experiences of the real world. Physiognomic perception. Fantasy and imagination. Moment of expressive clarity. Constructs of the human mind. We are not born knowing that a line means something… We revisit this proto-symbolic age in adolescence. Development moves forward and moves backward. There is an array of movement simultaneously. “early person” has “two things that hang down” enclosure stuff inside and stuff that hangs down “this is a person” feet >> the standing upness as important rather than visual. Arms >> multiple for movement. Return of enclosure. Visual clues entering the work. “I” “ME” “MINE” >> to function. More visual differentiation in ado. Houses, vehicles, spatial orientation emerging from the surface. The vertical relationship in the middle equals AIR. Concrete idea > what is there important to read the work developmentally so that they don’t confound. >>These aren’t performances to please you, these are meaning-making explorations. >>Early Images. Basic categories. Functions. Identity. In adolescent art there is a return to the earlier repertoire.