Innovative Pedagogy in Art Education: A Lesson Plan Originally published in Unauthorized methods: Strategies for critical teaching. (1998). Kincheloe, J., & Steinberg, S. [Eds.]. New York: Routledge, pp. 173-184. Dennis E. Fehr, Ed.D

In recent years, socio-ethical issues have emerged in art education. This emergence calls for rethinking the content of art education foundational courses. In this paper I describe the first class meeting of such a course, The History of Art Education. In this meeting, the students and I deconstruct sexism in Western art history. The lesson includes two multimedia presentations and two lecture/discussions. For this webpage I wrote my remarks in boldface, and underscored common responses students make to my questions. The notes in standard type and enclosed in brackets are for the reader.

[Students enter a darkened classroom. Projected onto a screen is a slide of Puberty, Edvard Munch’s 1895 painting of a frightened, unclothed, adolescent female. Students find seats as a stereo plays Little Red Riding Hood, a pop song by the 1960s rock group Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

Little Red Riding Hood

Oowwwooooooo!
Who’s that I see walking in these woods?
Why, it’s Little Red Riding Hood.
Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood.
You sure are looking good.
You’re everything a big, bad wolf could want.
Listen to me! Little Red Riding Hood,
I don’t think big girls should
Go walking in these spooky, old woods alone.

Oowwwooooooo!
What big eyes you have,
The kind of eyes that drive wolves mad.
So just to see that you don’t get chased,
I think I ought to walk with you for a ways.
What full lips you have.
They’re sure to lure someone bad,
So until you get to Grandma’s place,
I think you ought to walk with me and be safe.
I’m gonna keep my sheep suit on
Till I’m sure that you’ve been shown
That I can be trusted walking with you alone.

Oowwwooooooo!
Little Red Riding Hood,
I’d like to hold you if I could,
But you might think I’m a big bad wolf, so I won’t.
What a big heart I have,
The better to love you with.
Little Red Riding Hood,
Even bad wolves can be good.
I’ll try to keep satisfied
Just to walk close by your side.
Maybe you’ll see things my way
Before we get to Grandma’s place.
Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good.
You’re everything a big, bad wolf could want.
I mean, baaaa . . . baaaa . . . baaaa.

By the time the song is over, most or all of the students have arrived. The lights go up. I welcome the students to the class and make the following remarks to theoretically locate the course.]

Welcome to my History of Art Education course. One might regard this course as a ‘revision’ of every art history course you may have taken. We are actually going to look at art by people who are not dead, white, European men. And we are going to link art education to the strongest cultural forces of past and present: religion, politics, education, sex, race, violence, and capitalism, to name a handful.

Some have described the content of this course as ‘radical left.’ I find the label curious. I seek an equal voice for all groups; this seems democratic, not radical. I question cultural prejudices; this seems to be an expected function of a professor. Yet I have been given the radical label by a number of people, not only within art education, but across the general education field. I find that I am acquiring a ‘radical left’ persona on a national level. This troubles me a bit, because such a label can pigeonhole my ideas before they are considered, or keep them from being considered at all. My response is to ignore the label; I am bored by whether I am radical or not. I feel no allegiance to ‘radicalism’ as a construct. I will continue to teach uncompromising democracy, and if I am consequently called radical, the comment speaks more of society than of me.

Some of you will not embrace my views. You will find me tolerant of that. After all, I could be wrong. My purpose is less evangelical than you may think; I am interested in providing arguments to your most sacred beliefs and then getting out of the way. Let me show you an example of what I mean. Let’s make a list of ten famous figures from history. I’ll write the names as you call them out.

George Washington. Plato. Jesus. Einstein. John Kennedy. Adolf Hitler. Cleopatra. Julius Caesar. Elvis Presley. William Shakespeare.

[I have asked this question of countless audiences over the years and, regardless of the audience’s demographics—its ethnicity, gender makeup, educational levels, career choices—the lists typically consist either of ten men, or nine men and one woman. Usually all are of European ethnicity.]

Thank you. Now let’s make a list of ten famous artists.

Picasso. van Gogh. Michelangelo. da Vinci. Rembrandt. Georgia O’Keeffe. Jacob Lawrence. Andrew Wyeth. Norman Rockwell. Andy Warhol.

[This list likewise typically consists of ten men, or nine men and one woman. I will occasionally get a person of color. Because the largest oppressed group throughout Western civilization has been women, I use the lists to initiate a discussion of sexism; however, one can use such lists to create awareness of the absence of any oppressed group from Western history. During this 3-credit, semester-long course, the students and I revise the established art canon so that it includes work by artists of color, both Eastern and Western; by artists who are women; by people of alternate abilities and various sexual orientations; and by artists schooled inside as well as outside the academy. Since this specific lesson is about raising awareness of sexism within the Western canon, the artworks cited within the lesson are Western. This does not imply that a hegemonic Western bias underpins the course. Eastern art is of course equally important and deserves an equal place in art teacher preparation programs. However, without first making visible the patriarchal bias of almost every art history course taught in the Western world, a professor may have difficulty making the value of Eastern art apparent.]

Why is it that women’s accomplishments seem unworthy of society’s attention? Why have they been erased from history? Is it true that women simply cannot paint as well as men? That they cannot write as well? That they cannot think as well? That they cannot lead as well?

It is not true.

Because I cannot be certain that I speak truth, as I said, I am less interested in “converting” you than you may think. I at times will issue polemics to which you are encouraged to respond either pro or con. As indicated by the two lists you offered me, the period in history called modernism is characterized in part by a subordinated place for women. This attitude so permeates modern thinking that traditionally it has been accepted by both men and women. Its invisibility is so comprehensive that you may not have noticed the biases reflected in your lists had I not pointed them out.

We will challenge this “sacred text” of culture. It is appropriate that challenges such as these emerge from a university setting. Your tuition was paid in good faith by somebody, perhaps you; what do you expect from the university in return?

Competent teaching.

Right. And first and foremost, you deserve to have the university test your most sacred beliefs by exposing them to a diversity of views. Any institutions of higher education that present a monocular view, an ‘immaculate conception’, of truth are affronts to the free marketplace of ideas. These moral gatekeepers rob their students in the worst way universities can—they not only deny their students the opportunity to test their prejudices, but they seek to entrench them. Does this show faith in one’s ideas?

No, it appears that one feels threatened by opposing views.

Such lack of faith seems to speak ill of philosophies thus sheltered. It may be born of the fear that one’s philosophy cannot withstand critical examination, that one’s students will ‘fall away’, seduced by the Pied Piper of Paralogisms. The result is a body of alumni who may know the ‘how’ within their fields of study, but precious little ‘why’. They are the worse for it.

If the university is successful in being ideology-free, what is the role of the faculty?

Professors within the university should openly espouse biases—so long as we, the students feel safe to rebut them.

If the university has done its job, it has obtained a thoughtful faculty who represent an ideological cross section. Such a faculty will expose students to a variety of views. What is the advantage of this to students?

When we construct our ideologies, they will be informed.

In this course oppression will be gauged from an art historical database and viewed through the lens of art education. Art education encompasses both the visual and verbal records of Western civilization from prehistory to this afternoon. Humans made art for tens of thousands of years before they wrote and, following the advent of writing, the visual image continued to function as a societal mirror revealing truths that defy the printed word. At the same time, the power of the printed word is self-evident. So the lens of art education is wide.

The line separating art from art education meanders at will across the cultural landscape. Not only does this make demarcation difficult; it indicates that it is unimportant. Where the art education record is scant (this is particularly true of prehistory), we will examine oppression as it appears in the history of visual art per se. Often we will discuss oppression in its many guises without mentioning art or art education directly. We will start and end with art education but, to make our inquiry meaningful, we must paint an extensive backdrop. Why?

By contextualizing art education, instead of studying it in a cultural vacuum, we can understand what it means.

Excellent. The pieces of this story form a sprawling cultural patchwork that was quilted with the thread of art education. We will undertake, for example, to balance the utopian yang of Western culture with its dystopian yin.

A heartening number of works have been published in the last two decades which analyze the contributions of oppressed groups to the West’s visual art heritage. This is not the case in art education (under which label I include training programs for adults as well as programs for students in public schools, community centers, juvenile detention centers, and other alternative sites). We are only now beginning to see literature—still in articles more than in books—in which art education’s potential as a cultural force is linked with the dismantling of oppression. I suggest that the two most important periods of the human story to study, if one wishes to remediate oppression, are the dawn of history and the present. Why?

Oppression began at the dawn of history, and its mechanisms have changed little from then to now.

And to remediate oppression, one must dismantle these mechanisms as they exist today. Consequently, most of this course is devoted to the present. If one chooses to remediate oppression through art education, one must redefine art education. Immured for too long in a cultural closet, art education must shake itself free of the bonds of banality that have banished it to the outer reaches of the public school curriculum. Until it defines itself as more than merely a vehicle for ‘aesthetic experience’, in the closet is where it belongs. Art education programs must resonate to the lived experiences of all students by providing them a visual language through which they can express themselves with images that demand society’s attention, images that jolt cultural preconceptions. If our artists and teachers join to change the world, the world will change.

Now let’s discuss how oppression is institutionalized. Oppression occurs in categories. What are they?

Gender, class, race, religion, sexual preference, ablism, etc.

Our prejudices run so deep that, curiously enough, unflinching adherence to democratic principles is today’s radicalism. I have anticipated the efforts of critics to neutralize my voice by categorizing me as, oh, an agnostic, anti-family-values, anti-moral, ACLU freedom freak; or a bleeding-heart-liberal, lecherous, book-reading, baby-killing, devil-worshipping dope fiend; or maybe a longhaired, leftist, nigger-loving, pro-death, pro-thought, pro-sex nutzoid. I hypothesize this conversation:

“You know, Fehr says something interesting about that—”

“Fehr? Don’t you know he’s an anti-electric chair, gay-blubbering, gun - hating, femi-nazi, sicko / atheist / commie / pervert?”

“You’re kidding! I had no idea. Well, forget that!”

I must confess that the above descriptions of me are close, but the fact remains that I also am a White, middle-class, middle-aged, middle-income male of European ethnicity and Protestant background—a member of today’s least fashionable (not to mention most boring) demographic group. I am not even gay—for which I of course apologize.
On that note let’s look at some more art and listen to more music—Johnny Clanton's "Venus in Blue Jeans."

[Venus in Blue Jeans

She’s Venus in blue jeans,
Mona Lisa with a ponytail.
She’s a walkin’, talkin’ work of art.
She’s the girl who stole my heart.
My Venus in blue jeans
Is the Cinderella I adore.
She’s my very special angel too,
A fairy tale come true.
They say there’s only seven wonders in the world,
But what they say is out of date.
There’s more than seven wonders in the world.
I just met number eight.
My Venus in blue jeans
Is everything I hoped she’d be--
A teenage goddess from above
And she belongs to me.
My Venus in blue jeans
Is everything I hoped she’d be--
A teenage goddess from above
And she belongs to me.

[To the beat of the song, I rotate through the following slides of works of erotically-posed, nude women taken from the Western canon. As the slide list shows, each work was created by a man.]

[The song and the slides end. The lights are raised and the discussion continues.]

Let’s deconstruct the messages of these two art forms, the musical and the visual. What did you just see?

A historical survey of the female figure in Western art.

Painted by whom?

Men.

Did you recognize any of the images?

Yes.

Is it fair to say that the nude woman constitutes a theme within Western art history?

Yes.

This is particularly true since the Renaissance. We will talk later in the course about how the Renaissance was not necessarily a step forward for civilization. Now, what did you just hear?

A piece of popular music that defines women as artistic and sexual objects.

The song was performed by whom?

A man.

Do the verbal message of the song and the visual message of the artworks agree on how men are to view women?

Yes.

Historians suggest that we in the late twentieth century are experiencing a change in how humans live, a change significant enough to call for a label other than modernism. What is that label?

Postmodernism.

The term ‘postmodern’ refers to today, a time characterized in part by the questioning of modern notions. Consequently, we find ourselves surrounded by conflicting messages. Let’s view some more slides, this time of artwork that depicts women differently from what we saw a moment ago. As we view the slides, let’s listen to music—this time by women—and decide if the music sends messages that agree or conflict with the messages of the art. First "He’s So Fine" by the Shirelles, and then "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March.

[He’s So Fine

Do-lang, do-lang, do-lang,
Do-lang, do-lang, do-lang.
He’s so fine,
Wish he were mine.
That handsome boy over there,
The one with the wavy hair.
I don’t know how I’m gonna do it,
But I’m gonna make him mine,
And be the envy of all the girls.
It’s just a matter of time.
He’s a soft-spoken guy.
Also seems kinda shy.
Makes me wonder if I
Should even give him a try.
But then I really can’t shy,
I can’t shy away forever.
And I’m gonna make him mine
It it takes me forever.
He’s so fine (oh, yeah).
He’s gonna be mine (oh, yeah)
Sooner or later.
I hope it’s not later.
We’ve got to get together (oh, yeah)
The sooner the better.
I just can’t wait--
I just can’t wait
To be held in his arms.
If I were a queen
And he asked me to leave my throne,
I would do anything he asked,
Anything to make him my own.
He’s so fine (so fine)
So fine (so fine)
So fine (so fine)

I Will Follow Him

I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow.
I will follow him wherever he may go.
There is no ocean too deep,
There is no mountain can keep, keep me away,
Away from my love.
He is my destiny.
He’ll always be my true love, my true love, my true love,
From now until forever, forever, forever,
Ever since he touched my hand,
I knew I had to be close to him.
I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow.
I will follow him wherever he may go.
There is no ocean too deep,
There is no mountain can keep, keep me away,
Away from my love,
Away from my love
Away from my love.

Slides 1 - 9 depict the pre-historical Goddess (i.e., the Goddess prior to Patriarchy). Slides 10 - 12 depict Mary, the Christianized version of the Goddess (i.e., the Goddess redefined by Patriarchy). Slides 13 - 20 depict artwork by women from the Baroque into the early twentieth century. Slides 21-49 depict work which has emerged since the feminist wave that began in the 1960s.

The music and slides end. The lights come up.]

What kinds of messages did you get from the slides?

Originally the deity was female. Women have been oppressed. Women are becoming empowered.

What messages did you get from the music?

Women need men to save them. Women should follow their men.

Remember that the first presentation was modernist. The visual and auditory messages agreed that women are to be objectified. The second presentation was more postmodern. The postmodern age is defined in part by the simultaneous presentation of conflicting messages, often from seemingly similar sources. Specifically how did this occur in the second presentation?

We received two messages simultaneously, but--although both were by women--they conflicted. One called for empowerment, one for submission.

During the writing of the text for this course, I was asked if such a book should be written by a White male. Am I the appropriate one to answer that?

As the author you are entitled to your opinion, but readers will have the final say.

I agree. My answer begins with the observation that I do not anoint myself a spokesperson for women or minorities. After all, as Henry Giroux notes, "When freedom is defined by the privileged, the oppressed are victimized not only by labor exploitation, racism, and patriarchy, but by liberal arrogance.” Patti Lather adds, “...too often [liberatory] pedagogies fail to probe the degree to which ‘empowerment’ becomes something done ‘by’ liberated pedagogues ‘to’...the as-yet-unliberated, the ‘other’.”

Then what business have I, a member of the dominant group, saying the things I say? Is it enough to be aware of what Foucault labels the indignity of speaking for the oppressed? As Joe Kincheloe points out, we walk a tightrope between issuing our analyses (and I shall indeed strive to issue such analyses) and refraining from speaking for the victims of hegemonic forces (and I shall indeed strive to refrain). I believe, however, that the demonizing of the heretofore-deified White male is not the answer; it tilts the ship of culture too far the other way. Lather continues, “...to write ‘postmodern’ is to write paradoxically aware of one’s complicity in that which one critiques.” What is the alternative?

Not to write at all.

Lather concludes, “In an era of rampant reflexivity, just getting on with it may be the most radical action one can make.” I believe that my views contribute to postmodern dialectics against oppression, and I opt for just getting on with it. Dogs Playing Cards, and this course, are not destinations; they are two more steps on the journey to a free world. My thesis, quite simply, is that the oppression of one group by another is bad for both. So, in terms of action, what are my options?

You can act against oppression, or you can be the oppressor, or you can abet the oppressor by remaining silent.

I believe that I, a White male, can contribute to the struggle for emancipation, and that this option is preferable to the other two. I choose to voice my disagreement with certain aspects of modernism, and in so doing, I implicate myself within Lather’s postmodern paradox.

I wear my anger openly. Not only am I tired of the oppression to which other groups are subjected; I am tired of my fellow men dropping dead eight years earlier than women from the stress of oppressing them. Should scholars be objective or subjective when they conduct research?

Objective.

Why?

Because bias will color their interpretations.

Where were you taught that?

In statistics and research design courses.

I suggest a different view. The notion of objectivity is a romantic myth. I adopt a subjective, angry voice, and in so doing I undermine the pseudo-stance of the objective, muted voice. The myth of the muted voice, heralded for so long as the only appropriate academic voice, is no voice at all, and therefore serves the status quo. It ill serves the radical emancipatory axis, which by definition spins against that of the presiding body politic. The objective voice is simply another means by which H. L. Mencken’s “booboisie” have made us shut up. I do not wish to assume the role of spokescreature for demographic groups, either marginalized or mainstream, but rather to contribute to the emancipation of us all.
Given that much needs to be done to achieve a world of peace and freedom, is there room for hope?

Yes, humanity is driven to survive, to improve its condition.

I agree. Riding shotgun with my anger, careening on this bouncing buckboard of civilization, is my hope. If hominids emerged three million years ago, and fully developed humans 100,000 years ago, then civilization, at only 6000 years old, is an infant. One could argue that we have done well in such short time. So my anger is contextualized to the present. I think we’re going to make it.

Let us turn to art education. The subtleties of oppression are found throughout aesthetic philosophy. One view of aesthetic study could be called cultural literacy: it means familiarity with those books, works of music, and objects of art which society has deemed ‘masterpieces’. Does this view conform with, or challenge, dominant social values?

It conforms.

It is a form of social adaptation—the embracing of elitist values to fit in. An example occurred in 1874 when Harvard University offered the first art history class in the United States. Open only to wealthy White males, its purpose was to place them on a cultural level equal to that of their European counterparts.

A second approach might be called philosophical literacy. It involves studying the ideas of individuals our culture has christened ‘great thinkers’. Does this view conform or challenge?

It conforms.

It too is a form of social adaptation. The sheep are told by the wolves which exemplars to memorize if they wish to run with the pack, pretending that they too are wolves. The fantasy lasts as long as the wolves are amused. It ends when the wolves get hungry.

Another approach is that of critical theory—the study of value systems underlying sociological assumptions. In the case of art, this includes identifying which group magistrates the line separating ‘fine’ and ‘popular’ art, which determines what ‘good’ art is, who is excluded from these processes, and how the dominant value system is maintained. Does this view challenge or conform?

It challenges.

I have seen oppression deny so many their right to participate in the American experiment; to serve as dog catcher or president; to make, teach, or view whatever art they choose. Because of this, we all—oppressors as well as oppressed—inherit a diminished legacy. How is this so in the visual arts?

By denying certain groups the opportunity to make art, the world’s art heritage is smaller. There is less art available for anyone—oppressor or oppressed.

Extend that point beyond art to the rest of society.

The result of oppression is slower scientific, philosophical, political and religious advancement.

What role does art play in this mis-en-scene? Art is a priest to many gods. At various times, art has been justified or attacked on grounds that it improves morals or destroys them, develops emotional health or breeds raving lunacy, elevates or pollutes society, increases intelligence or dulls the brain, stimulates problem-solving skills or deadens creativity, offers investment opportunities or dupes a gullible public, teaches patriotism or undermines a nation’s values, instills respect for our siblings on spaceship earth or breeds cultural elitism, teaches other school subjects or teaches nothing of consequence, offers spiritual enlightenment or leads to idolatry, provides diversion for the leisure class as it improves the taste of the working class, and keeps women out of trouble as it imparts marketable skills to men.

Arthur Efland suggests that a three-fingered-fist—patronage, education, and censorship—has been used to control the arts throughout Western history. The rationales for art education that predominate in a given culture at a given time are determined by that culture’s power conflicts. If we envisage a continuum with freedom on the left, indifference in the center, and censorship on the right, we find that powerbrokers gravitate leftward when they feel secure. Romantic rationales emerge. Under stable conditions art is not needed to acquire power, so overt agendas disappear. Powerbrokers become champions of culture. Governmental and private endowments appear. Censorship abates, patronage diversifies, and art educators are free to teach as they choose. Leaders praise the arts as central to a well-rounded education. Because they feel secure, they tolerate critical voices, creative thought, expressive freedom, and heightened connoisseurship. Art thrives in such a setting.

However, when a culture is in transition, powerbrokers may choose the middle ground—indifference. Patronage may be elusive. Indifference results in an artistically unschooled populace which in turn results in a visually illiterate culture. Since art is not perceived to serve utilitarian ends, it is deemed unimportant. As art is ignored, so is art education. It becomes a caricature of itself. An example of this occurred in the mid-twentieth century. Modernism flourished within the art community but was popularly ignored. Meanwhile, sentiment in art education was to decry ‘adult-imposed’ standards such as art history or social criticism. The public, unschooled in art viewing, failed to grasp the innovations of modernism. “Why should we pony up the time and money to view art we don’t understand?” the public reasonably asked. Had school art curricula been robust at mid-century, the public may have kept pace with the art of its time. The gap between artist and public would have narrowed rather than widened. A telling measure of the result of this approach is that so few artists who grew up during this time credit their public school art educations for helping them. Policymakers who came of age during this period occupy seats of power today. Visually ignorant, they by definition do not know what they are missing; consequently they do not value it. Under such leadership, it is not surprising that visual illiteracy is commonplace.

In times of instability, powerbrokers move to the right. Giftwrapping their tactics in the rhetoric of God and country, they co-opt art education, and art itself, to serve their ends. If power lies with the state, technicians often are trained to produce state propaganda, or to develop economically exploitable skills. During the United States’ revolutionary period, for example, as the infant nation struggled for economic self-sufficiency, industrialists implemented art education programs intended to produce able designers and improve craftship. It was hoped that this would make colonial products more competitive with those of Europe. If a culture’s power is concentrated in the church, as it was in the middle ages, art education is often used to train technicians to disseminate dogma. In such circumstances a culture’s leaders impose their own visions. The sound of silence echoes across the land as the visions of artists go slip slidin’ away. Patronage shrinks, education ossifies, and censorship revives. Creativity dies.

Given the ebb and flow of historical currents, are such circumstances occasionally inevitable?

Probably.

I suggest that we assume they are never inevitable. In a democracy, powerbrokers are helpless to push society without its consent. I call your attention to the untapped political potential of art education, one of our culture’s most under-utilized means of social reconstruction. Its network is already in place. Let us use it.


To summarize, in this course we will use the art record to help us define which groups have shaped civilization, and which have been silenced. We will become familiar with the machinery by which this hegemony has perpetuated. From there, we will establish linkages to the art education curriculum, and determine how both art and art education have been tools for various agendas. Finally, we will develop a mission for the art curriculum of today.

See you on Thursday.