Reflection #5

Pink’s Chapter 1 titled Right brain rising, was so interesting and easy to understand. I fully enjoyed reading and through this chapter, I could learn in detail about the functions of right and left hemisphere, how they works and how they cooperate while we encounter something to think, guess and interpret. Even if I roughly know that certain regions of the brain are more active than others when it comes to certain functions, it was still beneficial enough since I could connect this idea to importance of arts education. I perfectly agree with Pink’s claim that the popular believes that the function of right hemisphere is somewhat inferior to those of left hemisphere are wrong and those functions are not confined to particular areas.

As I expected, according to Pink’s scientific investigations like many other researches, learning art depends more on the function of right hemisphere rather than those of left hemisphere because art would mostly be dealt simultaneously and understood visually and in context. I believe these characteristics make art unique and valuable. As Pink mentioned, even though left hemisphere was fully activated if there’s no function of right hemisphere, nobody could have various works successfully or artistically done. That is because the left hemisphere only specializes in text but cannot specialize in context which the right hemisphere could deal with. Learning visual culture and visual literacy at the classes, I realized that how active and efficient learning occurs based on cooperation and harmony of both hemispheres of brain. For instance, using a multimodal composition which consists of both language and image or text and context could be a good method to provide students a chance to use both hemispheres in order to more critically successfully develop the ideas than when using only one hemisphere. This is what art classes are doing.   

In Korea, It has been over 10 years since the term, EQ(emotional quotient) has been very popular not only in the field of education but also in the various field that requires creativity and imagination. The educators and researchers initially placed premium on the importance of function of right hemisphere in a protest against the dominance of IQ. And their conclusion of researches that EQ as well as IQ is very important when learning something or for being a successful person has been widely believed. I assume this kind of change occurred as a result of that the perception toward the professional in art related field changed in a positive way. It is a very encouraging change to me as an art educator but it is still a shame because this new educational trend fully applies to only early childhood education but not to whole level of education.

Since it is the most important to harmoniously activate both hemispheres of brain for better educational achievements, I believe art have to be more emphasized in the current education. Besides art would be only one of the few subjects which help students use both sides brain which     designed to work together as a smooth, singe, integrated whole in one entire complete brain as Pink mentioned.  

Eisner’s chapter 6 not only described how the ideal curriculum looks like but also point out how wrongly standards work in the curriculum as a restriction. I was especially interested in the way Eisner claims about an appropriate role or function of standard every teacher deals with. Besides, it is good enough to persuade me to think the same way. However, one thing I was confused was about the part he claimed that criteria would be more appropriate for art curriculum than standards.  That is because criteria and standards have exactly same meaning in Korean. So I tried to read the paragraph several times and finally could understand what he meant. If criteria were more open and flexible and enabled students and teachers to deeply investigate the concepts or ideas, I also agree that criteria definitely need to be considered as the important concept in the curriculum.         

What the field needs are criteria rather than standards. If standards are conceived of as fixed models of outcomes, then their appropriateness in a domain in which ingenuity and imagination are important is questionable. Criteria, however, are ideas that prompt a teacher or evaluator to inquire into the work at hand in order to discern its educational and aesthetic value. Criteria invite inquiry; they do not close it off. (Eisner)

Reading this chapter, I have thought about the standards in art education in Korean. In the case of Korean art education, there are also many kinds of standards the Ministry of Education provides. And most teachers tend to consider the standards as a model of outcome or goal. Compared to those of America, from my experience with general education, it is more conservative and rigorous about the application of standards. I perfectly agree with Eisner that standards can be a major asset to teachers if the school provides them with the time and support needed to discuss with their colleagues the meaning of standards and the possibility of different standards for different populations, different schools and different students. However, unfortunately, this could hardly happen to the field of education in Korea because of various invisible restrictions such as lack of time, efforts or illiberal atmosphere. Even if teachers cannot afford to have the meaningful process to critically check the standards with their colleagues, it would be beneficial if each teacher uses standards as considerations for curriculum development without unquestioningly absorbing.

Through the Chapter 6, Freedman points out why teaching visual culture is important in contemporary democratic society in which involves more complex systems of freedom, individualism, equity and social responsibility.

Changes in art education can promote the transformation of cultural representations in school at large and effectively help educators to meet democratic goals. A visual culture curriculum is a collage for learning that illuminates and demonstrates an awareness of the fragile and fragmentary state of much contemporary cultural knowledge, as well as the resilience of cultural tradition. (Freedman)

I was especially impressed by Figure 6.2 Example scope and sequence for teaching visual culture. It gave me a chance to think how I could give a shape to teaching visual culture according to the levels and organizers as well as to have a better understanding about scope and sequence of visual culture. Interesting thing is that it shows how many concepts related to visual culture in democratic society could be dealt with in art education and how the ideas could be developing as the level goes up. Because of these advantages of art curriculum in teaching visual culture, I think teaching visual culture in any study need to take into account art-related curriculum in order to efficiently and fully understand cultural contexts.