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Aspects of art education 2

accessibility. The extant touchstone, grounded which necessitates such a static privatism, is communication can be seen to indicate a wanting
so firmly in privatist aesthesis, can hardly be hardly viable construed educationally: what is paradigm. Or possibly, if one wanted to push
expected to accommodate the purposive factors needed (and this, at least, from the viewpoint of semantic rigidity, no paradigm at all — for its
of engagement, which in another scheme of education), is a (re-) conceptualization of art qua prime feature is its exploitability, and such may
things might be paramount. That is to discipline. Explicitly, this is the point of the be conceived concomitant to the development
say, the material implication of most above-recommended engagement with teleology of learning strategies — in a situation in which the
substantive work makes its intention irrelevant. and the generation of practical histories, over the role of past work has degenerated to objects of
In this situation, that it is (and is physical), is prevalent domainal inadequacy and educational morphological replication, dispensation for
all; reasonability is ruled-out. incoherence of morphological privatism; that which activity is offered by bizarrely cohered
It may be thought by the reader, that tension the activity be construed in terms of 'histories', one would be loath to accredit such
occurs between our characterization of the art practitioner-adherence to a disciplinary matrix, activity and its apologists the possession of any
colleges as embodying a 'no rules' approach, and whose exploitation engenders a domainally paradigm.
this complaint (which lapses into the practical cohered education in terms of guided 'Education' presupposes education into, or
area) about the preclusion of engagement with engagement by the student with a towards something. Most people would agree
conceptual aspects of the activity. However, practise-historically significant set of exemplars. that the 'mission' aspect of art education is
such preclusion is an exact instance of the Quite apart from the failure to take account of crucially to be determined — along the spectrum
inability of the 'no rules' system to fulfil its own the status, qua government-subsidized education from 'decorators of the world' to Harrison's
requirements — the fault (and there is one here) sector, of the art colleges, it seems that the onus 'fifth column' in the world, educated to possess
lies not in our argument but in the logic of the is on the anti-disciplinarian to prove (a) the a 'non-economic' value system, but it is
'laissez-faire' concept. Colloquially put, that efficacy of 'laissez-faire' and (b) counter uncertain whether clarification can follow here
method's prescriptions would be something like arguments to a practise-conception, rather than without the prior internal cohesion of a
'Make anything you like within the bounds of vice versa, in virtue of the currently rampant discipline-oriented problem order. Logistic
what is presently believed to be the realm of the shortcomings of his conception. problems may be to the fore in the current
artist's wants'. And the inadequacy of this has In fact, it would seem that any relatively science education, but insofar as the colleges are
been best summed up by Atkinson and Baldwin— unprejudiced observation of the learning cohered by disciplines —the style of both teaching
that 'it is an error to suppose that an agent's procedures that do prevail, and their substantial and research being discipline oriented, it does
"wants" are given fixed and determinate while outcome, would suffice to overthrow the idea not yet seem to be a problem to choose social
the agent's choices are free'. that the student is a sufficient unit — and to goals, if for no other reason than that premature
Gravitation to the contemporaneous (and this indicate very clearly the current abuse of determination here would stifle discipline
only as morphically prototypal) seems to stem exemplar-based learning. Though this is not to development — resulting in the rise of (what may
more from a loose notion of spiritual availability swing radically to an extreme Lockean 'tabula be better connoted by English usage) an 'applied'
(Zeitgeist) than any guided involvement—a point rasa'— for 'direction' can be conceived activity. Rather, the practical esotericism of a
compounded by the randomness of the plagiary. 're-direction'; it is to maintain that histories (in developed discipline orientation is, one would
Coherence, or at least the attempt to reach it, is any substantial sense) are neither innate nor think, a prior condition for the efficacy of social
maintained by the generation of bizarre 'naturally' apparent. Devaluing the role of alignment. The cohesion of — in some measure of
metaphysics on the part of the student : viewed histories would be flying in the face of facts, and generality — paradigm governed research into
this way, what in other circumstances might holding these 'facts' to be tied singularly to an non-colloquially determinable problems is, one
appear as mendacity, could be excused as explicit discipline-conception would not only be would also think, a focus for extra-practical
quasi-hypothesizing pushed to fabrication by self-deceptive but generally unintelligible. commitments. Current romantic-anarchic
the enactment of the role-conception generated It is, initially at least, not so much what the outbursts, are no contenders at all, judged
by the practitioner/neophyte confusion. exemplars are that face a novice (though, of efficaciously.
Mendacious recourse to contemporaneous course, these are not arbitrary), but how they are 'Laissez-faire' is then manifestly incoherent
norms has to be inviolate, since no instruction ordered, the coherence of their presentation, on numerous counts as an educational
can ever be offered to the contrary in laissez- that matters — in a sense, the development of methodology. But 'laissez-faire' is the only
fake's' inadequate prescriptive structure; learning strategies. Within our experience, it educational methodology commensurable with
moreover, if this were added, in some way or would be less true to say that coherence is rigorously morphological differentia. A viable
other, it would be no more than an ad hoc denied than to say that it remains wholly alternative to the conception of art as a 'calling'
accretion, and as such, given the nature of the unacknowledged in art teaching. Indeed, the with its attendant mythology is required : what is
case, impossible to enforce. There can be no current norm seems to be a Rousseauesque being advanced here is a conception of art qua
ascertaining of whether the student means what reliance on the propensity of the neophyte to discipline, the practitioners subscribing to a
he says, indeed, what it would 'mean' if he did. save himself. paradigm, terms mooted earlier. For a prime
In the face of rigorously enforced morphological The role of the teacher in such a situation requirement of any educational policy, if
limits to criticism, fulfilment of the injunction to appears to be indistinguishable from that of the education is to remain significantly related to
'Make art!' does not admit of grounds for so technician, for one of their primary roles, that of communication, is a high degree of
doing. No criteria as to the priorities in such historian, has — to be charitable — been inter-subjectivity, a quality clearly lacking in the
making are provided; it is not so much the usurped. And it is 'charitable' for present situation. There must therefore be new
`laissez-faire' cannot detect dishonesty, as that 'departmentalized-history' would, at least, be (e.g. non-morphic) sortings-out of the domain,
within the theory's purview, the domain is, as it rendered innoxious if practical (prescriptive) in terms of the theoretically public, and hence
were, amoral. history was a 'going concern' in the fine art educationally communicable; a resultant
Against such a quiescent value-structure, departments themselves. condition of this, of course, could be a total
conceptions of 'development' are 'practically' It seems also that the degree of disorderliness, revision of the concept of fine art. q
('educationally') extrinsic. The conception of art and deficient and predominantly lay-order P. BERRY, R. WRIGHT, P. WOOD

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