21ST CENTURY SCHOOLING

Culture of Education

One complexity of teaching art is that it can be very confusing and is always debatable. It is subjective and abstract yet at the same time needs to have concrete methods. Taking the students out of their conditioning, and perceptions and working from preconceived notions is one of the prime tasks. Thus, developing a perception of the student's traits and then helping them develop a sound perception of the creative process is a central concept in teaching art. I do not start teaching a student with an end objective or a specific result. I start with start principles – the student’s intrinsic ability or natural talent and fundamentals of visual art; a combination of these. Any methodology that I might opt for is usually based on the potential and scope of the student and changes are accommodated as the student makes further progress in the course. For me, each student is an assignment in hand. I would opt for any method if finds it effective, however unconventional it may be!

It is very effective if one could inculcate sound observation and drawing skills from direct observation. It is equally important to develop visual thinking. Like the student seeks motivation from a teacher, as a teacher I would like to be motivated by the students too. Students who are ready to learn are one of the most inspiring aspects of a classroom. As we all know, good culture develops good taste, so it is important to develop a good learning culture, especially in art. I prefer students of different age groups sharing the same classroom at the same time as it provides a better learning experience. Encouraging students to discuss their work as well as their peer’s work in terms of concepts, expressiveness of the work, use of imagery and metaphors, skill, and the process is what I would encourage in a classroom. A good library helps a lot in today’s art education, though it is not a very real thing in Indian conditions. The pandemic has opened up a whole lot of new opportunities for accessing the best galleries and museums throughout the world through online platforms; this is surely an advantage.

To me, a great level of interaction with the students is central to the facilitation process. These discussions would result in exchanging many views; information and knowledge that are otherwise less explored in conventional school classrooms. I believe that connecting to one’s own culture and living environment is important and this is constantly addressed in my classroom. Direct, primary-level study of one’s own environment and documentation by noting down personal observations and responses forms a central part of learning. These are then analyzed laterally against other available resources and information, both primary and secondary. Students visit museums, galleries, and monuments with historic significance to study the art and understand the nature of the larger aesthetic practices. All visits are supplemented with actual works on the site. Direct personal one-to-one interactions with artists are highly encouraged.

I try to maintain a healthy level of interaction with my fellow practitioners, both the art world and art educators. This helps me share views and validate my own practice and gain new insights into professional practice. Interacting with the class teachers within the school, students' own peer group outside the art class, and parents and other stakeholders of students' life is very important in understanding and shaping up the pedagogical units to support the learning of a student, who attends an art class only for a few hours. Inviting all these stakeholders in a student’s life to art room learning helps me to not only share the learning that each student experiences but also support a balanced and healthy learning atmosphere. In fact, the development of a good learning atmosphere is the ‘hidden curriculum’. I would like to see pedagogy as ‘a culture for learning’ than just a method of learning. I strongly believe that the collaboration of ‘tasteful’ people in the area of education is a must. It is not the curriculum that calls the shots, but this collaboration of tasteful people. The curriculum is a by-product of such collaborations. To know how and where to follow, invent, change and evolve, contribute or even resist, sensitize and empathize is a part of the learning process. A curriculum is merely a tool that we adopt to bring culture into human life!

I strongly believe that socially we have moved from a position of transforming the knowledge from elder to younger to what could be called a ‘simultaneous knowledge acquisition’. The authoritarian positions have withered, and so has the pedestal. In a sense, the structure of hegemony has been broken down and collaborative forms have developed in their place. Wherever this is not well understood there is a conflict. This new condition has changed the configuration and dynamics of the traditional concepts of the cultural equation; of parent-child at home and teacher-student social equation at schools. Both these, homes and schools, are institutions in a sense, and hierarchical in their nature. Sharing positions with a sense of equal hierarchy may be perceived as a threat in its conventional makings. So the need for a triangular discourse of home -student- the teacher is crucial in our times because parent and school or teacher is a partners in a student’s learning.

The At Education conference, 2012

Currently, art exams for ISC and ICSE have three hours, which is still less, when compared to the time required at times the setup is complex or large in size. However, this is still a much better situation than it was ten years back. This makes me look back to some notes I have written in 2012 after an art education conference in Bangalore.

The Art Education Conference, 2012

The Art Education Conference held at NGMA Bangalore was jointly organised by the Goethe- Institute/ Max Muller Bhavan, Bangalore, and the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA). It was informative and contributive in terms of current educational practices. It was an opportunity to hear a set of stakeholders, decision-makers, and practitioners in the area of art education providing their views on educational practice. The speakers included nd a set of teachers from Rural Karnataka who were part of the Kali Kalisu Programme, Dr. Pawan Sudhir of NCERT, Prakas Belawadi, Deborah Thiagarajan, Jinan K. B.,  Kirthana Kumar, M. K. Raina Manford Schewe, Dr. Vivek Bengal Sabina Wush, Kotiganahalli Ramaiah and Suresh Kumar Reddy of the Samuha Art initiative and collective Bangalore. 

The perspectives they provided were interesting and varied such as 'nurture learning centers' or to say 'ban the schools'! Presentations included a study from the tribal societies of Kerala on how children learn themselves when left alone to explore (A video presentation by Mr. Jinan), and how the brain responds and enhances brain capacity when involved with the art activity (Dr. Vivek Benegal, NIMHANS, Bangalore) and implications in excessive use of computers, to mention some examples. But all sessions were not equally effective, I guess. I think the opening and concluding sessions were not as effective as the presentations. The tour of the gallery was interesting but not very informative. The session by Nikhil Chopra too had nothing much to offer in terms of classroom practice and the work he showcased, a project from Kashmir, sounded very ordinary.  

The second day was very contributive with excellent discussions and presentations. It also seemed that the discussions were more effective on day two compared to day one. The presentation of a workshop conducted by Mr. M. K. Raina in Kashmir sounded more effective. Presentations by Ms. Kirtana Kumar and Shri. Kotaganahalli Ramaiah too received good attention. Probably the time given for each presentation and for discussion was short which impacted the overall output.

During the conference, I had a chance to interact with Dr. Pavan Sudhir from NCERT and had a brief discussion about the need for more time for the Art Board examinations. At present, the time given for both ICSE and ISC is two hours and thirty minutes. This seems to be too less for students of 14-17 years can handle very effectively. Sometimes even the climatic conditions of each region also impact the effective running of art examinations, for example, the use of watercolur in winters in the northern part of the country. So if the time frame is increased it will not only help students to improve their work quality but also help to avoid unwanted emotional stress that was caused by the time constraints. It will give them more confidence to approach the examination and a certain level of happiness while leaving the examination hall.

26/11, ALTBL, Bangalore- an exhibition; looking back to 2010

 Around the year 2010 Bangalore saw an increase in contemporary art events and there were many more new galleries opened around the turn of the decade. Some of the spaces still seemed elusive for those artists who were lesser known or beginners. Some alternative venues and spaces have formed by then such as Samuha and Shanti Road 1 were a couple of them. The ALTBL was conceived in the same order, as an alternative art space, an art collective, and an interactive space for photographers and artists to meet and exhibit their work in an informal manner. The objective of ALTBL was to function as a facilitator between a set of stakeholders in the art world that include artists, connoisseurs, critics and writers, curators, gallery owners, and buyers. The show 26/11, the second event from ALTBL, held during 26-28 November 2010 was a humble step towards this.

26/11 was much more than a coincidence. When ALTBL planned a show in November, this title provided a curatorial scope, with a relevant context to reflect upon. 26/11, as all know was not just another political event but a significant one that stands or points to a set of problems that imply both the historical as well as contemporary concerns of the subcontinent. In a sense, it had formed a parable for our times. It was something that should not have happened. So this irony in this incident was a strong element for artists to reflect upon. Thus 26/11, as an exhibition, formed a platform to bring divergent art practitioners into a single context. The works included in the show echoed some underlying conflicts of our time. They had a set of codes or images that reflected certain social narratives of social realities of our times but are problematic in all aspects. 

My work in this show was titled 'Basic Alphabets'. It was a way of locating a set of visual options, and images that speak primary characteristics of a culture, to be precise 'conflict'. Conflict is a conceptual thread that runs through most of my works since 2000. The exhibit in this show was a metaphor intended to reflect the implicit conflict within both the existing as well as evolving cultures. It seems to me that it is the protagonist himself who eventually turns out to be the antihero. This is the irony of our times.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Sdbpe1-NbERAOJ36mIAAB2hFF8Ot2ka/view?usp=sharing