LTC 8730 Five Minds Paper

Building a Capacity for the 5 Minds for the Future in Art Education 06/17/2014 0 Comments   Michelle Ridlen Survey of Art Education 8730 June 2014   Building a Capacity for the 5 Minds for the Future in Art Education             In Five Minds for the Future, Howard Gardner describes 5 “minds” that we should master in order to survive a faster-paced future in the 21st century. Gardner posits that much of education is designed around a vision of school for preparedness for the 19th or 20th century. He states we would be better off if we cultivated these five ways of acting and thinking that are critical for success in our rapidly changing global society. These include the disciplined, synthesizing, and creating minds that are more related to intellect as well as the respectful and ethical minds that emphasize our character.  The five minds are the main characteristics we will need to develop in our students if we are to have leaders, workers, and citizens in a productive and worthwhile society. Gardner states: ·      Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding workplace and will be restricted to menial tasks. ·      Individuals without synthesizing capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable to make judicious decisions about personal or professional matters. ·      Individuals without creating capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away those who do have the creative spark. ·      Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons. ·      Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible citizens: none of us will want to live on that desolate planet. The Disciplined Mind             The disciplined mind refers to “employing the ways of thinking associated with major scholarly disciplines” and being “capable of applying oneself diligently” while “improving steadily, and continuing beyond formal education.” As teachers I think this practice is especially important to strive for. As a teacher we each should continue to seek new ideas and things to learn. Massimo Vignelli, the famed designer said, “Discipline is the attitude that helps us discern right from wrong … Discipline is what makes us responsible towards ourselves [and] toward the society in which we live.”  As role models, one of our first responsibilities should be to go after life long learning, to develop our disciplined mind. We should teach our students to pursue what interests them, to engage in acts of curiosity and nurture asking questions that we then desire to answer. By engaging in developing a disciplined mind, we should embrace the difference between subject matter and discipline. Instead of trying to commit to memory a large number of facts and then being tested on those facts, we should structure our teaching and learning experiences to help students acquire specific habits of mind and ways of thinking. The information should be understood in a way that is not an end in itself or a ways to an end, but rather as a means to a better-informed practice within the discipline. By being better-informed practitioners, and by being more engaged in the wonders and curiosities of the world around us, we are better global citizens. In my classroom studio, specifically I would want my students to engage in the pursuit of artistic habits. Developing their studio habits of mind, ways to generate ideas and create, and their personal creative process.             The Synthesizing Mind             The synthesizing mind is able to select and sort important and relevant information from large amounts of information that is presented. The synthesizing mind can translate that information in a variety of ways to make sense of it to self and explain it to others. I see this mind as being integral to the transference of information so that actual learning can take place. With the wide variety of information sources, and out interconnectedness through technology, it seems that this skill is even more important than in the past.             As part of the studio classroom, students should use their ability to synthesize their knowledge about multiple processes and sources for content in order to create, respond to, and reflect the world around them. Part of an artist’s voice is discovering how they reinterpret, or synthesize their interactions with the world and their community. Students should be experiencing the world, taking it all in, and adding it to their repertoire of experiences. Teachers should expose students to art experiences (studio labs, exercises, thought provoking questions, sketchbook assignments, opportunities for play, etc.) and have students reflect on them, asking them to take time to recognize what is important to them and incorporating them into their existing knowledge base. The Creating Mind             The creating mind aims to pose new questions, offer new solutions, innovate, and build on what came before. The creating mind requires a knowledge of what came before, making judgments of quality and acceptability and going beyond the existing knowledge base.  A creating mind will seek to think “outside the box” and to come up with unexpected results.             As artists, we should practice this habit so that we aren’t just regurgitating the same thoughts, but adding new perspectives and voices. We should push ourselves as teachers to develop creative art adventures, offering fresh perspectives and new ways for students to tap into their insights. We should expect students to develop this habit for themselves and seek to develop an ever-broadening reference to pull from. We should avoid having students copy other works they see unless they are being used to explore appropriation or parody – addressing ideas, context and content. Students should address multiple representations and multiple approaches to subjects. Teachers should encourage students to illuminate their thinking and approach exploration unabashedly. The Respectful Mind             As teachers, we are not just keepers of knowledge found in books, but we are also guides and mentors for more abstract concepts found in an individual’s and society’s character. The respectful mind is about responding to others with sympathy and respect, acting constructively when confronted with differences between not only individuals but also when among groups. Developing the respectful mind, we should seek to understand and work with others who are different and extend beyond mere tolerance.              Within the realm of art we should encourage students to encounter works that they may not seek themselves and offer chances for contemplation. We should offer these encounters not in isolation, but with peers and give them the chance to explore differences in preference and opinion. We should cultivate a supportive studio environment that encourages students to engage in respectful dialogue about each other’s work. We ourselves should provide models, practicing respectful feedback and nurturing support, seeking to understand a student’s aesthetic or message before condemning or altering it. We should model respectful behavior when interacting with not just our students, but also our peers, colleagues, parents, and supervisors. We should be mindful of our opinions and in passing judgment out loud so that students can observe or over hear. The Ethical Mind             The ethical mind is another more abstract mind that should be cultivated and continuously groomed. Students should be given the opportunity to examine and contemplate their own place in the world as a global citizen and their desire for what makes a more perfect society. Students should also be given the opportunity to place themselves in their current world and school community, encouraged to develop a better version of local community and learning environment. Student’s should reflect on their personal role, and be given a chance to express that in their artwork or contribution to their class, school, or community. Students should explore the core values they hold in their roles as student artist or future professional, and be given the opportunity to exercise their interpretation of those roles. I think it is important to offer students a safe place to tackle their thoughts on tricky issues. To offer a place (their artwork / sketchbook) that will remain private until it is chosen to be shared, so that students can develop and mold their thoughts before subjecting them to judgment. As teachers we are trustees of these core values and we can pass them along to our students. We should act to support students as they discover for themselves the role they are to play within this domain, offering insight and guidance when they stray too far from the path of ethical decisions.  Again, we should model ethical decisions and behavior within the realm of an artist, an art patron, and art viewer as well as within our role as teacher in a school community. We should model proper artizen etiquette.  Teaching our students through these five minds will require a personal reflection and desire to continue to grow ourselves as professionals and citizens of the world. We need to embrace our quickly changing society and reinterpret our place in it. Without the development of the disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful, and ethical mind we are doing our students s disservice and depriving them of a richer art experience. By ignoring them we are stripping a layer of promise off what learning in the arts could be.