Page 53 - Studio International - May 1972

proto-shaman is likely to be regarded as some left without definition. It seems to have been student / staff ratios ; flexibility or laxity or
kind of cripple by the majority of people he implicit in the changeover from NDD to absence of curricula; teaching days or weeks of
encounters in the world outside. (There is a Dip AD that some kind of 'free area' was being very variable lengths; ease of access, at short
dreary existentialist notion that some 'poetic' established in which art could flourish and bear notice, for part-time staff or once-only visitors
equation can be made between the two.) I do fruit. But while there may be both historicity etc., etc. The larger the unit, the more necessary
not suggest that the art schools have come to and method to teaching someone how to draw, and the more powerful the role of the
fulfil this incapacitating function through the there is little of either involved in teaching them administration. Administratively, these customs
malicious intent of any individuals or bodies; how to be artists. It is a cliché that art students are hard to justify, particularly in relation to
merely that they faithfully reflect the system are neurotic; maybe art schools keep them that practises in other polytechnic departments; and
which they serve so well, whose highest values way. The very absence of definition has left art the means used to justify them within the art
they enshrine, whose noblest aspirations they schools, particularly fine art departments, schools are unlikely to attract sufficient
foster and whose most liberal principles they confused and highly vulnerable. The NACAE's sympathy from the uninitiated to guarantee
exemplify. and NCDAD's unwillingness to legislate might their continuation.
The isolation of art education and of art be seen as an evasion of some real responsibilities In fact it must surely be faced that the now
schools was built in from above, administratively, by liberals too fearful of establishing the grounds conventional means of justification of 'art
by the means of their establishment, and for repression, ignoring the lesson all liberals of education' in general must be abandoned or at
perpetuated by the almost total restriction of a certain generation should know by now: that least stringently reviewed. Allowing for the
growth in Dip AD courses during a period of there will always be those ready to repress in inadequacy of the analogy, the present claims of
comparatively major expansion in the rest of the circumstances for which others have been many art educators and art education
further education sector.3 The Department of unwilling to make decisions. administrators are open to criticism of a kind
Education and Science has just issued a The NACAE and NCDAD have been that might be applied to, say, a claim by
statement to the effect that art and design courses praised as liberal and enlightened bodies. Does practising physicists to be able to teach a subject
followed by less than 24 students will normally not their means of operation, with councils and called 'physics' without providing evidence or
be terminated, and that in the colleges of art no panels of distinguished unpaid men of exemplification of any theoria sustaining the
new Dip AD courses will be likely to gain conscience, accord with all those principles of practice of that science. The point is not that
recognition, though they may in the enlightened administration which have served art has to be seen as inherently theoretical, but
polytechnics. During a period of expansion the arts so well ? I see the formulations of these that any claim to teach it must be defensible in
elsewhere in further education there is little to councils (and, it goes without saying, of the terms of the claimant's theory or theories of art.
choose between standstill and decline. This is administrations they have served) as hesitant Otherwise one must rely upon a belief in
not to say that the art schools will be killed off or and naive; bound, worst of all, to a disastrously something like educational osmosis—as indeed
even allowed to die. I'm suggesting that there romantic view of art, of students, of college and many fine art departments evidently do, as if in
are ways in which they are needed. But it does local administrations, and of society in general. the belief that the central generative process of
seem that those in authority may have mistaken Romantic idealism is dangerous alike in art education were one of perambulation in and
the events of 1968 (sit-ins at Hornsey and administration and education; the around the art school by staff and students alike,
Guildford etc.) for some kind of purposeful administration of art education in this country punctuated by chance encounters. The National
revolt and have reacted accordingly. If art seems to proceed, out of idealism, by makeshift. Union of Students favours a comprehensive
student numbers are to grow in future, it will be Within the polytechnics the NCDAD is system for all further education, including art
under less vulnerable administrations. The presumably known for the toothless watchdog schools4; the more liberal art colleges and fine-art
isolation of the colleges of art will not thereby be it is; its authority has certainly been employed departments seem already to be pursuing
lessened—rather the reverse; it seems the by them of late with some apparent cynicism. something close to a laissez-faire primary school
autonomous colleges are to remain well insulated The polytechnic administrations have shown open plan.
from certain tendencies in normal education some impatience with the hallowed customs of There is apparently no end to the 'educational
and beyond. the fine art departments (the indirect results of experiments' for which art schools provide a
The Dip AD was originally designed to give the NACAE / NCDAD encouragement to testing ground—perhaps because they are far
some integrating respectability within an colleges to make something of their enough removed, as it were, from normal
educational area which was deliberately to be opportunities for self-determination): low human habitation to ensure that the rest of the

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