Increasingly those pedagogues who are less instrumental in their thinking and understand that creativity is the next big skill (commodity) have transformed the anagram of STEM into that of STEAM the A of course stands for art. The logic is that Art (not as a career choice bu) as a skill set supplies a heuristic model - ie trial and error learning - a question creation - without focusing on getting the correct answer as much as getting unexpected results - seemingly our scientist , engineers, and mathematicians are no longer competitively as creative as they once were because they focus more on the solution than on how might they formulate the question *CriticalPractice* 21 TREET PROJECTS La Table Ronde 162 West 21 Street NYC, NY 10011
[email protected] www.21stprojects.org On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 9:02 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > All this talk about kids and what and how they learn and whether or not it > is > practical is not interesting beyond the level of magazine articles. Yes, > kids > learn differently (see Gardiner's Multiple Intelligences) and yes, except > for > the privileged children the the very rich, they need to find ways to be > useful > in society. There are, obviously, many ways to do that. On a forum like > this, > with many artists and other creatives on board, it's not going to be easy > to > argue against nurturing kids' imaginations. > > As a youngster who only cared about art I never gave a moment's thought to > how I > would survive as an artist or at all when I grew up, despite the > consternation, > worry and hand-wringing of Depression-era parents. And I always had a > part-time > job from the age of thirteen until college and after college I never was > one day > without a job until age seventy. Even now I work every day and earn money > with > my art. Without inheritance I was able to raise a family and live pretty > well > and give my kids debt free educations at top schools. Maybe I was just > lucky > yet I do believe people should pay their own ways and, if they need to, > earn > whatever is required to do what they want. > > So, it's a blend of following one's own drummer while also being useful to > society that make the most sense in a democratic capitalistic society. > Education curricula and societal ideals should provide for both. What's > more > annoying than a society that degrades imagination and creativity for the > sake of > emphasizing routine job skills? And what's more demoralizing than people > who > think their uniqueness and so-called free-spirit creativity entitles them > to be > fully supported on a public dole? > wc > > > > ________________________________ > From: joseph berg <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Sat, February 9, 2013 3:41:08 AM > Subject: Re: Skills children learn from the arts > > On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:37 PM, joseph berg <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 7:50 PM, Lew Schwartz <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> Even more annoying about tripe like this is the presumption that > everyone > >> agrees on the same achieve/success/money definition of education. It's > >> enraging. What happened to personal fulfillment, insight or joy? > >> > > They've become unaffordable luxuries for more and more people in the > > 21st-c. > > > > > - Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of thing > that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't > have time for all that. > > George Carlin
