Page 26 - Studio International - July August 1968

Art through education

The two articles published here dealing ing, friendships. I was always reminded of have been made—by education. They've
with aspects of art education lay particular Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young been made in other ways, for nobody's
stress on the writers' belief in the potential Man which is a portrait, above all, of the dumb; people are shy, are slow, can be
of polytechnics. maturity of adolescence. That is not entirely obtuse, but none of the sane and few of the
a paradox. If maturity is not the right word made are quite dumb.
for adolescence, we haven't yet invented the Yet, in art school, too many of our students,
right word, and that is largely what student when they come in, have been negligently
discontent is about. set on or ineffectively bumbled through the
But I'm running ahead of myself: from basements of learning by dispirited men, by
More and more, as I work with art students, where I'm teaching now, I am conscious prissy women, by inadequate, tired, over-
it seems to me that one of the chief roots of intensely of the damage that the institution whelmed, ordinary teachers coping with
the trouble lies back in secondary education. of the sixth form does, particularly the enormous classes in grubby schools, in
I remember how grossly mundane and in- damage it does in bad, restrictive schools. I grubby towns. They've been taught by
adequate my own was at an expensive public once had a mistress a long time ago, a rote, they've hardly been taught to read and
school until, unexpectedly, at the age of double first; a girl on the spit of herself who, write some of them (Christ knows what
fifteen, I won a school essay competition and before she committed suicide, never resolved you've got to do to fail in English language
was told I was clever and was moved over how to be at once a woman and an intel- '0' Level in the North East of England) ;
into the university stream. There—we were lectual. Many intellectual girls do resolve they've been told, they've been let know
enormously lucky and privileged—was a that dilemma, which is not necessarily their they're dumb.
garden. It was run by a man called Max cross, and it would be simplistic to put down And they're not in the least dumb. But,
Reese, a brother of the England bridge that particular waste and tragedy to a because they've been let know they are,
player: a corsetted Falstaff, a high Tory, a particular school : but she often used to tell because education's something for the
schoolman, a medievalist, a Shakespeare- me about that school, one of the most flyers, for the top sixth formers in their
and-seventeenth-century scholar, a casuist, famous girls' grammar schools in .the schools, they've given up education except
a clowning angler who repeatedly hooked country: a place I now see, now that I have for what'll directly help them to make a quid
us and threw us back and hooked us again, to teach many girls from it, as a mad afterwards. Which statement can be expres-
dragging before our bedazzled eyes every negative female garden where all is mown sed in sociological terms thus: if the school
fly in his book: Horace, Catullus, Herbert, down to an inch fat—all, that is, that is not is not good, if the educational horizons of
Duns Scotus, Aubrey, Charles I, Hampden, elongated and forced up to bear dry blooms the home are limited, children will probably
Donne, the Bard ; snivelling, shuffling, in the tiny little hot-house of its sixth form. nowadays pick up their '0' levels, even one
turning himself into James I : Augustan, I exaggerate? I don't, about that particular or two 'A' levels perhaps, but the culture
unlocking the sherry cupboard, taking one school: not only are the non-academic they will choose will largely be the mass
glass himself, offering us cheese biscuits; streams kept under, they're often neglected. culture of their age group, leavened or
reading us Dryden, Swift, Locke, making We've had girls from there who were meant deadened by whatever they retain from
us work, making us write, humiliating us, to have been taught modern history from the home or school.
encouraging us, making us. French Revolution onwards for '0' Level Now I may be entirely wrong, starting to
Schoolmasters of genius are necessarily (plus a few dates and kings and queens of talk about art education from this end, from
rare; but the institution of the sixth form is England when they were little girls) but, the bottom end. But I don't think so. The
not: the isolating, the nurturing in late because the teacher who was meant to have bone of the Hornsey students' discontent is
adolescence in grammar schools, in public taken them got ill and couldn't be replaced, the Diploma of Art and Design which, as it is
schools, and now in comprehensive schools, they did a little Boer War and a little Greek largely construed at the moment, is a load
of the university stream, of the bright, is an and French History; then they did, for '0' of old owls' droppings. But each generation
essential part of our education as it stands. Level itself, the reunification of Germany, in of owls builds its nest on the previous
I don't think that it should necessarily go. I great detail, with all the dates from 1850 to generation's droppings. I wouldn't abolish
think it should pup and pup and metamor- the Franco-Prussian War no less, because the Dip AD. But I would abolish the
phose: Bristol Grammar School usually has that was what the new teacher knew. university-mimicking written exams for it,
a very brilliant sixth form. There is a café in They come in with a sufficiency of '0' which is quite easy; at least one college has
that city which some of them occasionally Levels, and even one or two 'A' Levels, these already done it. But I don't see that it can be
used to invade mid-mornings a few years girls from this particular school, but few anything but negative to go back; to cease
ago for coffee and a surreptitious smoke. things add : in learning hours you're a good to try to give as wide and broad an education
Trying to read a book, ceasing to be able to little mouse and there are all these facts that as possible to art and design students. For,
concentrate on it, it was impossible not to be you want for qualifications; in the evening I repeat, I've started at the bottom end. In art
aware of an intensity; of a conflagration of you're somebody else ; when you're qualified colleges there are minds that have not been
opening minds feeding each other on newly and married you'll be somebody else again. trampled ; there are students as intellectually
discovered ideas; gossiping, quick-silver- Few lights have been lit, few connections able as any anywhere ; as articulate, as well
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