It's true, professors with tenure can ignore the changing times. There's no accountability and no consequences, so tenured professors can be rigid, inflexible, and anachronistic, and get away with it. But of course, that is doing the students a disservice. There's a huge disconnect between academia and the real world, and young people know it.

In a way, the decline of tenure and the expansion of adjunct hires is good for students. It's bad from a labor perspective, but at least it keeps fresh blood coming in. Adjuncts have to continually prove/improve themselves, and can't rest on their laurels. Ever.

Regarding technology, I'm a selective adopter. Just because something is new does not make it good. But the corollary to this is that just because something is familiar does not make it good, either. We all must think critically about technology if we are to be effective educators, makers, and even consumers. Control the tools, or they will control you.

The fresco analogy unintentionally makes the opposite point. Art schools don't teach fresco painting anymore, except as an extremely specialist subject. Oil painting is a widely adopted technique that has immediate application across the board. Fresco painting is, for the most part, a dead art. So, in fact, students should not be required to learn it.

If you want to piss off students, wasting their time and money, then by all means, make them learn some specialized, anachronistic subject that has little or no application in the real world.

Aaron



At 4/23/2014, you wrote:
But you _can_ reject the technology. Not at all times, nor throughout the whole program. But, just because oil painting exists does not mean that art students shouldn't learn how to make frescos. --scott _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks


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      Aaron F. Ross, artist and educator
      http://dr-yo.com
      http://digitalartsguild.com

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