After the first sentence or so I was so bored by the article Berg points to that I gave up. I thought that this is only a redux of John Dewey's "progressive education" philosophy, or learn by doing idea. That was of course a good idea that was more or less the concept that later undergirded the Bauhaus curriculum and still inform the curricula of many schools world-wide.
There are always several sides to any issue, including anything to do with art. For instance, I like much of Jed Perl's writing because he is so good at getting to the heart of the decadence of contemporary art while holding to the enduring ideals of high art. But I also like a lot of what his exact counterpart, Jerry Saltz, writes as the reigning champion of low art and popular culture, the cutting rawness of vulgarity and of all things profane. Somewhere, mixing the two together helps to locate the real condition of art -- and of our times. The same dialectic is true when it comes to creativity. The free-experimentation with an eye on a goal or problem to solve is surely an important aspect of creativity as is the intelligent and practiced use of materials, tools, and rule-based methodologies. That's really quite elementary, isn't it? Berg's insistent desire to raise one side up -- always the most conservative tradition-bound side -- and to push the other side down -- always the irreverent tradition-bashing side -- reveals his aversion to the use of dialectic which is necessary to any intellectual search for truth. Saul's idea that seems to claim many 'discourses about art' each one embracing a tradition and each one at some great or small odds with the others is really a plea for a highly developed dialectic and, to me, offers the best albeit very complex access to what the art of our times is really about. It's a multi-faceted dialectic. I'd like to see Berg pay more attention to that level of thinking and much less attention to the daily deluge of journalistic dumbed-down re-hashing of well known ideas, like John Dewey's. Let's go to the thick soup, not the watered down soup of the soup. wc ________________________________ From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, February 6, 2013 3:29:26 AM Subject: "...Being taught something instead of exploring it for oneself discourages exploration that can lead to new conclusions..." Does that mean that creativity is adversely affected by training?: http://www.livescience.com/23522-young-children-think-like-scientists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29
