the work of art, integrity, and teaching

National Art Education Association

The Work of Art, Integrity, and TeachingAuthor(s): Duke MadenfortSource: Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 6 (Oct., 1977), pp. 30-34+36-37Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192184 .

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Duke Madenfort

1. We are standing before our stu-

dents, and we see them sitting there looking at us. There is no question in our mind that a separation exists between ourselves and the students. They are there some distance from us occupying their own space, while we are here residing in ourspacecastinga surveying glance in their direction. It is not long before the space that sepa- rates us from them is more strongly felt. We begin to feel within the space that each one of us occupies the roles that we are playing in relationship to one another. We begin to feel that we are the teacher and they are the students. The difference in the parts that we are playing becomes pronounced.

We see an outstretched assemblage of students sitting as an audience with their backs pressed squarely against their seats and their eyes fixed firmly upon our face waiting for us to teach them, to say something to them, to show them how to do something, to give them some ideas to think about, some ideas to grasp and formulatethat will have practical value for their lives and their chosen profession. And we feel the pressure to respond to them, to speak to them, to get the knowledge, the words, the terms, the concepts, the know-how of the subject matter in which we have been satisfactorily prepared out and across to them through the tension filled space that lies between ourselves and their apprehensive stares.

It is interesting how being aware of the relation between ourselves and the students within the roles that we are playing necessitates seeing the students at one moment as something separate from us, as something other than ourselves, and then at another moment finding them to be connected to us, to be brought together with us through the mediation of the roles themselves. It is precisely in assuming ourselves to be separate from one another and occupying a space of our own that we are able to relate at all within roles. Roles join us together against the background of our separation and make a harmonious connection between us.

As teacher and student, we comple- ment one another. We are each one of two mutually completing parts in a play staged for learning to take place. The interaction between ourselves and the students is mostly verbal, and as session after session of talk goes by, we try to communicate, we try to get various concepts across to the students and the students, in turn, try to grasp them and learn to apply their meaning. Each of us speaks one at a time taking our turns talking back and forth to one another in a formal but conventional manner.

The students play their role well as the learner, obediently and slavishly paying attention to the concepts and remaining quiet while we are speaking to them. As teacher and the one with authority, we then give the students an opportunity to speak by asking them if they have any questions concerning the concepts. A hand is raised from the outstretched surface of faceless people indicating that there is a question, and we acknowledge by nodding our head and calling out the student's name, if we know it. The hand is lowered, and we are addressed by our last name prefaced with our title "Mr., " "Ms.," or "Dr." according to the position that we hold in a hierarchy of prestige and status. Then a question is put to us as we stand here at the head of the class, and after a moment of reflec- tive thought, we deal further with the concept under discussion from another angle.

On the one hand, concepts act as intermediary agents similar to our roles in bringing ourselves and the students together, while, on the other hand, the intervention of concepts increases the sense of separation that is already there in the differences of our roles. We and the students each have a different relationship to the concepts. We act out our roles from an orientation that is determined by different goals. Our goal, as teacher, is to get the concepts across to the students, while the students' goal is to grasp them from us.

As we become aware that our harmonious relationship with the students is goal-oriented and purposive, it becomes clear that our harmonious connection to them is also causal. We are the occasion for bringing about a

result, an action, or state of mind on the part of the students. By playing at being a teacher, we provide the stimuli which will elicit certain kinds of desired or desirable responses from them. This necessitates seeing the students as objects before us, as objects of a certain kind serving a means to a certain kind of end. We see them generalized in terms of the work they are supposed to do, in terms of their studies, in terms of the role they must perform.

And in order to produce in the students the effects we intend, we must have the competency for doing so. It is our business to know the certain kind of means and to have developed those specialized forms of skill, techniques, and methods appropriate to achieving a certain kind of end, namely, that of getting the concepts across to the students. Every good teacher knows that there is a right way to teach, a general pattern of action to which a variety of particular actions conform.

As we watch the students being brought into a desired state of mind by our teaching methods, it gradually occurs to us that we are seeing them sitting there looking at us also as an object, a thing, a means to something else. They, too, see us as someone who serves a purpose for them, someone Who satisfies a certain kind of need within a hierarchy of needs. They see us as someone who provides the content of a course among many courses that they must take and pass in order to obtain the proper number of credits that enables them to meet the require- ments for receiving a degree which, in turn, has a practical value for seeking professional employment.

We are in demand. We supply what the students need. We are in demand because there is a demand for whatwe teach. We are a means to an end because the content of our course is a means to an end. The state of mind that we are really producing in the students is a state of having their needs satisfied.

So, our role turns out to be really that of a skilled producer in an industry producing for consumers. The students pay for our services, the value of which is measured by the degree of skill that we demonstrate in getting the

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content of our course across to them in order for them to pass it and get the required number of credits. And yet, despite the fact that the students pay for our services, they have to demonstrate to us the degree of skill necessary for grasping the course content that we are trying to get across to them, and then we, in turn, reward them by assigning the corresponding passing grade of A, B, C, or D. They receive an F if they do not measure up.

Thus the students see us not only as someone who merely provides the content of a course they need, but they see us as someone who holds them accountable, someone who judges and determines whether they have satisfactorily grasped the content of the course. We are reduced in their eyes to someone who gives them the grade that they need. For some students, this becomes the only end of any significance that we serve. What other end can we expect to serve in an environ- ment that thoroughly conditions them to work for a grade?

Within the tension-filled space separating us from the students, a widening landscape filled with the nausea of the emptiness of humanity begins to appear. We have the sudden realization that we and the students are grading one another. In the name of maintaining a more balanced, inte- grated, and harmonious relationship with us, the students' role is enlarged. They have been given an equal right to play the role of holding us accountable. They have the equal opportunity to judge and determine the competency of our performance in satisfactorily getting the content of the course across to them.

Thus the students become reduced in our eyes to people who give us the grade that we need. We no longer see them generalized merely in terms of their studies, but as objects who satisfy a need of a certain kind for us. We too have needs of a practical nature that have to be met. We too are caught in a hierarchy of needs. We are forced to see the students as the consumers of our courses, persons whose presence provides us with the numbers that we need in order to meet a minimum required number to have a class so that we can teach our courses and receive payment for our services in order to support ourselves financially. We need a satisfactory evaluation from the students so that we can obtain a promotion in professional rank and achieve tenure in order to have salary increases and economic job security.

We and the students are both victims of a tyrannous system from which there seems to be no escape. We are caught in a net of imputed needs and a game of mechanical doll-like role playing where each role ends up tyrannizing thetee other. We meet the need of being acceptable to one another in one another's eyes in order to satisfy the

need of being acceptable to and surviv- ing within a system that is itself tyranni- cal.

2. Blue, cool radiant sweet cerulean

blue gliding wide, gliding widening blue cerulean wide, blueing widening cerulean cerulean glide. Blue, sweet soft cool cerulean swirl, swirling twinkling blue twinkling blue green, blue green blinking green greening blue blue green. Blue green lulling lowly languidly slowly, lilting liquidly aerially airily.

Are we floating about up in the sky, floating weightless out in space, whirling freely from space to space, or have we become the openness of space itself, whirlingly extending and spreading unboundedly? Has ten minutes gone by? A year? An hour? Or a split second? Is it 1790? 1977? Are we in the year of our Lord, or are we time itself moving presently and continuously-never ending-a forever changing flow continuously and presently passing future past? Maybe we are the never ending forever changing flow of music-Debussy's "The Afternoon of a Faun" or perhaps a Bach sonata for unaccompanied violin. Could we be looking at a painting and seeing space blueing? Is blue blinking and twinkling at us? Are we looking at the painting, or is the painting looking at us? Or is it possible that we are simply the painting, sensuously moving, extending and spreading, changing and varying? Are we cerulean blue gliding wide, gliding widening blue cerulean wide?

It is like a dance, with movements of dancers coming to life the moment we leap into and thoroughly fuse with the sensuous flow of widening cerulean glide. We are one with the dance, gliding the widening glide of cerulean, singing the blinking and twinkling green of blue green greening blue blue green, lulling and lilting aerially airily. We are the cool fresh dance of morning cerulean fragrance, lying deep within a meadow of moist tall-leaved grass immersed in the glistening lilting drops of early dew.

We must be dreaming. Are we awake? Alive? Asleep? Or dead? Are we hallucinating? Imagining? In a trance? Meditating? Have we finally given up our body? Are we flowing heavenly, becoming ethereal? Or has our body been resurrected by Eros, brought back to life, given a new heart, a new consciousness, reawakened to wholeness? Have the violent rents, the despairing tears, the separations, the divisions disappeared? Are we once again the immediate and sensuous wholeness of our living body and the world? Are the gliding and widening blue of cerulean and the glistening lilting drops of early dew stirring experiences of our body? Is the singing dance ringing with the poetic song of

our joyful and freely responding body? Is the dancing painting prancing with the spontaneous playful innocent movements of our body's newly born fresh dance?

Is the whole of the world becoming the life of our body, or is the whole of our body becoming the life of the world? Are all of us members of one living body alive with the love of humanity, filled with the joy of the simple contact of another human being, deeply affected by the aliveness of the quiet touching and caring hand of a friend? Is the song, the dance, the painting, the work of art alive with the love of humanity and a friend's vibrant loving presence? Do we meet our friends, our humanity, within the inti- mate encounters of works of art? Do we love our friend in the same manner as we love a work of art? Do we bring our hands, our heart, our mind to the hands, the heart, the mind of the other in a surrendering move to the wholeness of friendship, being and becoming the whole which is the friendship, the art, itself, knowing the other in primordial silence, gliding the widening glow of cerulean, creatively touching and being touched, reinforcing the living with the living, the sensuouswith the sensuous, immediacy with immediacy, openness with openness?

Do we continue futuring one another anew within the realm of wholeness by unraveling newer and newer complex, often difficult and painful layers of being whole, discovering that the out- come of futuring anew is unknown, uncertain, and unpredictable, that fail- ure along the way is as much a possibility as success, that the wholeness of friendship, like works of art, can never be known all at once, at any given moment because friendship, ourselves, the other person, and works of art are never whole, never existing totally, all at once, at a moment, whether at a moment in the past, the present, or at some future moment?

Friendship, ourselves, the other person, and works of art do not occur in moments of time. Each is time itself moving openly and continuously. With friendship, as with the others, we are continuously being and becoming whole; but the whole that we are being and becoming is not something separate from the process of being and becoming itself. It is not something known that we set out there as a goal and try to achieve. It is not some preconceived form waiting for us at some end of a forming process that we go through as a means to an end, designed to make friends. Friendship cannot be made an end at which we arrive by technical means or by any means whatever; for the whole process of friendship is a creative process of being and becoming, and its duration has no end. It does not start at one point and come to an end at another. It is not bound by any spatial ortemporal

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limits; for friendship, like a painting, a dance, or a song, is the openness of moving space and the continuity of time-never wholly complete, never wholly closed, and never wholly static.

When we are unraveling newer and newer layers of being whole, we are not being any more whole and we are not feeling any more complete or fulfilled than we have along the way. We are simply feeling that we are still moving wholly, still continuously extending and spreading, repeating and varying, moving spatially and temporally as we are moved, still opening and bursting forth a new future out of future passing presently past, still growing and pene- trating greater depths to the whole of ourselves and one another, still feeling ourselves forming and being formed creatively by one another, still bringing our hands, cur hearts, and mind to one another with the clarity and openness of immediacy to see one another fully as we are, treating the other as auton- omous by allowing each of us to be our individual selves, still savoring sweet touches of passion and warm smiles of quiet contentment, still doubting and making awkward frenzied mistakes, then replenishing by exchanging tales of amusing delight, spiraling trium- phantly to resonating heights, suffus- ing the whole of humanity with love and clear light, dancing the joyful song of our body's resurrection with the world, singing the spontaneous, playful, innocent, surprising movements of a newly born fresh dance, a cool fresh dance of morning cerulean fragrance, a meadow of moist tall-leaved grass and glistening lilting drops of early dew, cool radiant sweet cerulean blue gliding, glistening swirling blue twinkling, twinkling greening blue blinking blue green blue.

3. "What's going on?" "What is happening?" "What were you doing there moving

your arms about?" "Why were you moving them so

slowly?" "It looked weird, like some form of

meditation. Was it Tai Chi?" "Was it some new kind of modern

dance?" "I thought you were freaking out. It

was scary, and yet at times I wanted to laugh. You looked funny."

"None of my other teachers comes into class and just stands there looking at us, staring at us for what seems like hours, saying nothing, and then sud- denly stirs his fingers and begins to lift his hands and arms in slow motion, waving them all about in the air for no apparent reason."

"It looked like you were swimming and gracefully gliding through the water. I could really feel the water swirling about you. I wanted to get up and move with you, but I felt too embarrassed in front of everyone."

"I didn't want to get up and move with him because I didn't think there was anything inviting about the way he moved. I felt that he was too private, too personal, too much into what he was doing to care anything about me. It seemed like he could have cared less about whether any of us were alive or dead."

"I'd like to know what we're all talking about! We're just wasting more time. Twenty minutes have gone by already since we came to class, and nothing has happened that I can figure out. You're the teacher, why don't you start teaching us something? I didn't spend good money for this."

"Yeh, what does all this have to do with a course called 'Studio Art Experiences for Children'? When are we going to start making art projects? After all, that's what we're here for. I want to know how to make things out of milk and egg cartons so that I'll be able to show pre-schoolers what to do for art. Our child development teachertold us last semester that kids like to put things together out of scrap materials and odds and ends."

"I'm here because the course is required and I need a grade. You haven't told us yet how we're going to be graded."

"That's one of the problems right there. I think grades are overemphas- ized. Most of our education courses give us nothing but cut and dried methods. We come into our classes conditioned to expecting the same old thing from our teachers and wanting them to tell us what to do and how to do it. When we're in a situation, as we are now, where a teacher is doing something different and isn't following the role of telling us right at the start what we're going to be doing on such a day, how many tests we're going to have throughout the semester, and what we have to do to pass the course, we get uptight, upset, peeved, and offended, and insist upon holding on to our preconceived notions of what consti- tutes a teaching/learning situation."

"Look! There he is moving again. Hasn't he heard anything we've been saying? He just seems to ignore us. Why doesn't he at least explain what he's doing!

"If I were to move like that out in the street, people would think I was crazy. I can't figure out what he's up to."

"Maybe there's nothing to figure out. Maybe it's just all in how we're reacting, in what we're saying and doing."

"You're as crazy as he is. This isn't supposed to be a psychology course. I've had it! I'm leaving!."

"I am too."

4. We continue moving immediately

and sensuously, ever so slowly, being the space and time of the wholeness of our living body and the world, gliding widening blue cerulean wide and blink-

ing blue green blue green blue. We are fully aware that several students are walking out of our class. We recognize that we are running the risk of the possibility of their dropping the course and not coming back, and we are aware that other students may walk out at a later time. Nevertheless, we continue moving as we are; for we have given up the role of teacher and have leaped into being and becoming the whole of ourselves teaching.

We have given up trying to be something other than the immediacy of ourselves. We are no longer trying to play games, amuse, or perform feats of magic upon our students in order to win their approval, be acceptable in their eyes, or get them to like us just to retain them in our classes, or up the en- rollment, and flatter our ego. Fortu- nately, our ego will not be crushed by their rejection as it might have been at an earlier time in our lives, at a time when we only knew how to relate by giving and receiving with our ego.

When we give up the role of teacher, we are at the same time suspending and withholding a facet of our ego. The only sense that we ordinarily develop of ourselves and the only way we usually get to know who we are is by that which emerges within the tyrannous context of playing various roles provided by our society, roles like parent, son, daughter, husband, wife, artist, businessman, scientist, lady, gentle- man, teacher, or student, and learning to act out the parts as they are written for us. Since the roles are standardized and bring us to conform to a given way of behaving under certain conditions, the awareness of the relation that we have to ourselves is an abstract and generalizing one. We are placed at a distance from the whole of ourselves to view ourselves from the vantage point of separation and objectivity, and then the separation is bridged by bringing us together with our more subjective selves through the mediation of abstract and generalized concepts of who we are.

On the one hand, each of us is building what seems like a firm and secure ego out of the blocks of cultur- ally well defined roles, while, on the other hand, our ego is splitting, breaking, and shattering into innumerable parts by the difference of the many and varied roles that we are playing throughout the turnings of our lives. We find ourselves disintegrating emo- tionally and intellectually by the worthy, but diverse and most often conflicting moral and value systems required by each role. Direct contact with the integrity and unimpairment of our whole being and the whole of our living body and the world seems forever lost to us. We wonder if we were ever whole at all.

Interestingly enough, it is our communion with works of art and our ex-


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periences with the immediately sensuous in general that convince us that we once were and still are. But, what is even more interesting and strange is that the strength and power of . conviction that we receive from works of art of the presence of our integrity, our autonomy, and the wholeness of our being do not seem to survive much beyond the time it takes us to experience the work itself; for we go right on as we were before, broken and continuing to break, continuing to move from one role to anotherseemingly unaware of the disintegration that is taking place within us and all about us, and if we are aware of what is happening, we still go right on, seemingly not knowing what else to do. It is as if we settle for momentary thrills of wholeness itself.

At one moment, we are playing the role of the artist, creating works of art that are to lift both ourselves and our audience from the ordinary world of our hurried, goal-oriented practical __ existence to a special world of concrete, individualized, and immediate sensuous fullness. Then, at another moment, we are playing the role of a teacher of art education majors, mak- _ A _ ing up lesson plans and curriculum guides of behavioral objectives, art *.

games, and aesthetic education kits and packages of techniques and exer- cises for increasing sensitivity and awareness that in themselves are to be * **

helpful in training our students to satisfactorily perform the role of an art teacher which is to guide their students into creating works of artthat are to lift them from the ordinary world of their practical existence to a special _ world of concrete, individualized, and immediate sensuous fullness. And all of this takes place within hurried, goal- oriented practical educational systems devoid of concrete, individualized, and immediate sensuous fullness. Thecon- - ll* l. tradictions, the lie, and the appearance of rationality are enormous.

We are in the midst of a moral dilemma, and the focus is on us and what we are going to do to reduce the A

lack of integrity in ourselves. No com- A *,** * promises are to be made. Trying to devise, arrange, and fabricate ways and means to blend the characteristics of the role of the artist with the role of the teacher in order to make ourselves more whole will not do. Ending up It being a synthetic, artificially contrived whole is no solution. It is finally clear that there is only one way open, and that is to dismiss our ego, give up playing roles, both the role of artist andnni teache~~~~~r,adaltathtetisan IHUi teacher, and all that that entails, and leap into the reality and truth of immediately given wholeness, leap into the wholeness of the work of art and become what the work of art is, become the work of art itself.

Of course, breaking loose from the routines, the bonds, and the entrap- pments of role playing is not easy; but

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the care and communion that we have with works of art demand that we endure the venture. Such care and communion demand that we care as much for ourselves and reveal and admit to ourselves the integrity that works of art have taught us. We can no longer pretend innocence of our cover- ing up, the disowning and oppressing of ourselves, and our going astray. We can no longer pretend that we know not what to do. We must stop betraying the care and love that we give to and receive from works of art because this betrayal has led us to the ultimate betrayal of ourselves, our own wholeness and intrinsic worth.

We have to become the work of art. Feeling guilty and embarrassed about being and becoming the power that the work of art possesses only prevents us from facing up to that power in ourselves. The power is for the good, and in spite of evil, we have to care and love ourselves enough to dance and sing ourselves anew, to burst forth with the power of song and movement and feel ourselves continuing whole and open to new and changing feelings of wholeness. We have to sing forth a new song of ourselves, a song revitalized and regenerated out of the wholeness of ourselves continuously passing past, but never passing past unnoticed, never disappearing from view. The wholeness of ourselves is too much with us. We are too much aware of its passing. We are here before our students being and becoming a work of art, a work of art teaching.

5. "During the first couple days of

classes, I thought that what we were doing was all so strange and bizarre and could never have anything to do with teaching art to children. It seemed like we were making a farce of education and academic tradition. Now, I sit here and watch you move and sound, and I become totally with the sensuousness of your movement and sounding, feeling it inside of me and wanting to let go of myself and get up and moveloo, but the feeling of separation comes over me, and I'm just not able to do it. It frustrates me. I'm amazed that you move with such ease in front of all of us. I wish that I didn't have to be so aware of everyone looking at me and afraid of what they're thinking. It doesn't help me to close my eyes, either, because I can still feel everyone there thinking to themselves how foolish I would look."

"Maybe we should play some theatre games to help loosen us up and feel more relaxed with one another. It seems to me that we have to know one another and feel comfortable with each other before we can let go and spon- taneously move about in a more aesthetic manner, with immediacy and sensuousness."

"I agree. I feel like I'm contriving

spontaneity, and it doesn't feel hon- est."

"I had a humanistic education course the other term, and in it we were learning how to be more sensitive to one another so that we in turn could be more human with our students when we are teaching. It seems related in some way to what we are doing in this class. The teacher gave us different games to play, such as, role playing, mirroring, trust walks, and touch con- versations. These techniques were intended as intermediate steps to ready us and get us more at ease and help rid us of our hangups. Maybe they are what we need here."

"We played similar games in an acting class I had because most of us there were also uptight with one another at the beginning. The games did what they were supposed to do. They helped me out; but only in that situation, under the conditions of playing the game. Now, in this class without the structure of the games, I feel just as impotent and just as inhibited about expressing myself with sensuous movements of my body as I was then. It seems like I was merely playing a game of being uninhibited rather than con- fronting my own power and playing with sensuousness directly,- immediately, and openly.

"The structure of the game was standing between me and what I wanted to be doing and was serving as a bridge for me to get to it. But in this class, as I see it, we're to get there without any bridge, on our own power and in our own time. No bridge is provided because none is assumed to be necessary. There are no technical feats to perform. Sensuousness is right there continually waiting for us in the movement of our arms, in the sounding of our voice, and in whatever we see and touch, taste and smell. All that we have to do is to stop holding back, let go, and leap immediately into the flow of sensuousness."

"Well, I don't have any problem doing that. I'm able to let go without any technical gimmicks and move sensuously about. But when I approach someone else who is also moving and I begin to move in relationship to them and they respond to my movements by turning away or acting as if they don't see them, I feel rejected. My difficulty is in letting go of my ego so that I can be immediately and totally with the sensuousness of the movements of anyone else that enters my field of awareness. If I were able to experience in this manner without my ego and with a direct focus on sensuousness, it seems that I wouldn't feel the actions of the other in terms of any rejection or acceptance of me. I would simply be feeling the sensuousness of their movements as undifferentiated from mine and not needing to relate to them. In fact, I've noticed that it's the

relating itself that seems to break the wholeness already present."

"Yes, I know that you're saying. When I see the moving arms of the other person, I can feel the sensuousness of their movement moving my arms. It's as if the sensuousness of each of our movements were an inte- gral part of one another moving and being moved. There's no relating going on between us; we're simply moving one another along immediately and sensuously. We're freeing one another. It feels good. There is nourishment in it. I feel that I am nurturing and being nurtured at the same time."

"That's how it should be with teaching."

"I think it's great the way we're talking now. I don't feel like I'm a student anymore in the way I do in other classes. And you don't seem at all like a teacher. I guess we're getting away from playing the role and just letting ourselves be what we are and treating others the same way. And interestingly enough, we're doing it without playing any role playing games of taking the role of the other to learn to empathize with the other's role. Role playing games just get us to be more effective in playing our role in relationship to the role of the other. Certainly, within the context of role playing, that is valuable; but it doesn't get us away from playing roles. By simply being ourselves and drifting away from roles, we're discovering that we're equal in each other's wholeness."

"Well, it wasn't that way at first. I can remember how angry you would make me, or, rather, how angry I would get at what you were doing or, better still, not doing. I thought you were being irresponsible. I wanted you to be playing the role of the teacher and meet my expectations of telling me just what I was supposed to do and of showing me every movement that I should take. How else was I going to learn? How else was I going to be able to play my well-learned role of student?

"There were days when we'd all sit here doing nothing. Once we sat for almost a half hour just waiting for someone else to take the initiative to say something. We all seemed to be afraid to look within ourselves and see that the responsibility for ourselves was ours to take. It was painful to see the results of being conditioned to the oppression and rote learning of struc- tured classes and authoritarian teachers."

"And you would just let us sit here being whatever we had to be, whether confused, angry, threatened, or appearing all-knowing. Not one of us would speak up to say anything about what was happening. The silence was unbearable. I thought I would never be able to endure the waiting. How were you, as a teacher, able to keep from saying something to us for that long a


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time? There were times when you seemed to be off in another world completely oblivious to what was happening here, and then at other times I was very much aware of your seeing right through the space that was dividing us just as if it weren't there and compelling us to see right through it with you. Did you always teach like this?"

"I've been thinking about the students who were turned off by you and walked out and dropped the course at the beginning of the semester. I realize they never gave themselves a chance to learn what you were up to. They weren't able to trust you or themselves. But, on the other hand, I know one.girl who would have really liked what we're learning and would have had a lot to offer our class, but, at the time, she wasn't able to make any sense out of what you were doing. I wanted you to do something to make her stay. It's still hard for me to understand how you were just able to let them walk out. It's another example of when you're appearing irresponsible.

"But, I suppose as long as we have choices and we have the freedom to do our own choosing, you have to allow us that freedom and the consequence of our choice, whatever the consequence; otherwise you make our freedom into a lie. As it turned out, some of us did choose to stay."

"I know. That was my choice, and I really am experiencing the consequence. I can't believe how oppressed I am. Maybe going out of doors and sitting together under a tree would be helpful. This classroom with all of its institutional drabness does nothing to inspire me toward the aesthetic."

"And having to turn on just because the clock says it's time seems rather absurd."

"Well, I feel oppressed and res- trained too; but I don't want to go outside. I still get embarrassed and feel some guilt about doing wrong merely at the thought of someone standing out in the hall peering at us through that small window in the door."

"For me it doesn't matter where we are or what the time is because I am realizing that the time of the aesthetic isn't what the clock says anyway. The feeling I have when I'm sensuously involved and nothing is mediating my experiences is a feeling of openness. I'm not in any definite space. I lose all sense of space and time about me. It is more like I am space itself moving. I am the openness of the space and time of sensuousness. I'm not bound or limit- ed by anything. I could be anywhere, and it could be anytime. I could be in this room, or another room, in another building, walking across campus, or anywhere in the University, in another course, in another curriculum, another system, structure, another university. It could be this semester, last semester,

or no semester at all; right now, or tomorrow. Wherever you would place me, I wouldn't be there anyway."

"That's the way it is when I'm listening to music."

"I have had classes inside of all kinds of classrooms and out of doors in the quietude of a forest of exalted pine trees and the open spaces and lawns of a golf course, and the students still had difficulty in letting go and experiencing aesthetically. In the presence of other students, there have always been those who were too inhibited to leap into the immediate and sensuous wholeness of their living body and the world. Aliena- tion goes with us wherever we are.

"When we come to know our experiences aesthetically, we come to know when education and learning are occurring and when they are not. We know that the open space of learning and education does not have any loca- tion. We know that learning only occurs when we do not view ourselves in relation to any place or limits. We are totally and sensuously with what we are viewing. We are open. We move openly and continuously, extending and spreading, changing and varying, in spite of any spatial or temporal limits or any limits whatever."

"Why has most, if not all, of my education been just the opposite to the way in which we experience aesthetically? Why does learning in most classrooms oppose the learning that it takes to experience a work of art aesthetically? I'm beginning to understand why it is that I don't get as involved with what I'm supposed to be learning in my other courses as I do here. I do all that is required in them. I study, I read the text, I attend classes, listen to the lectures and discussions, get good grades on the tests; but something is missing."

6. "Just listening to us evaluating what

we're learning is a learning experience in itself for me. Each one of us, being an active creative participant in the class, has his or her own individual and authentic estimation of what value and significance the course is having at this particular moment in the term. But each evaluation, alone or together, is not a view of the whole. When we take time to reflect upon the sensuousness of our experiences and describe and analyze them just as they are immediately lived by us in the clarity of their concrete fullness, I am amazed how the vividness of our struggle with the con- frontation between wholeness and separation is so directly open for all to see.

"There certainly is no need for any actual measuring, counting, or testing out the reality and truth of our experiences as we live them in this class, if indeed we could or should reducethem to such quantified abstract generaliz-

ing. In the same way, there is no need to measure, count, or test for our successes and failures in our struggle for wholeness. It is all personal and individual. And in yielding to the wholeness of ourselves, we contribute creatively to the wholeness of all of us. It makes no sense to mark the degree of wholeness we have completed, accomplished, and acquired when wholeness as a way of being can never be complete or exist totally at a point on a scale, and, certainly, can never be something to be accomplished or acquired at the end of a semester or four years of college. Wholeness seems to be continuously evolving, actualizing, and becoming itself."

"Also, we can't hold one another accountable by asking each of us to give an account of ourselves, because it would imply the imminence of a lack of trust and confidence in one another. In here, we are friends, treating everyone as responsible and free and learning to see each of us as we are, trust- worthy or not. When we're evaluating, we're not giving an account of ourselves and what we're learning. We're not asking each other proof of his or her trustworthiness. We're not giving statements explaining our nature and conduct. We're not checking on each other or ourselves to see if things do or do not balance out. And we're no less responsible for our actions simply because we do not give an account, an- swer, or explain ourselves and our actions to one another. It might be that at times our actions are not explaina- ble, let alone measureable, but, nonetheless, real and responsible."

"Then why does the University expect us to be graded on our successes and failures in our struggle for wholeness?"

"Well, the University probably cares less about our struggle for wholeness and our being friends and learning to see persons fully as they are and is more concerned with the idea that the way to get an education is simply to complete, accomplish and acquire some ready-made body of knowledge in a major field and get grades to indicate that we are or are not ge - ting it.

"You see, it all depends on what view the University wants to take toward education. It, quite obviously, takes a technical view rather than an artistic, aesthetic, and creative one, so, logi- cally, the approach for getting an education has to be technical and mechan- ically planned. And we, both faculty and students, must be presumed to be simple and capable of being easily led and controlled. However, conflict and confusion arise when the University shows itself to be unclear about its own view of education by publicly speaking of the education it offers as being democratic and aesthetic and a process for freeing the creative mind of the

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individual and developing the whole person through the love of wisdom without making the necessary changes in approach that can allow for getting such an education. It is worse that the University is not able to recognize when such an education is taking place despite the barriers it sets up.

"When confronted by any of its sub- ordinates of such unwitting display of deception in the disintegration of its view of education and its approach for getting it, the University quickly pre- tends to be innocent of any loss of integrity or presence of alienation within its walls. As a tyrant in a position of authority, it cannot admit to creating a false or misleading impression of itself, let alone deal with the lie openly and creatively, so it has to cover up, disown its own alienation and brokenness, and continue oppressing its sub- ordinates who, by and large, are themselves already . broken and disintegrated.

"Revolting against the authority of the University system for its loss of integrity and deterioration of its values and fighting for our freedom within the system never work. Our concern, anyway, is not to topple the system or replace a technical order with an aesthetic one. Our concern is simply to feel free enough to learn, teach, and express ourselves aesthetically. Once we get in touch with the whole of ourselves and realize that we are already free within ourselves, we can see that the only way to confront the disintegration of the University is by mocking the authority of the system, breaking forth and rebelling out of the power of our own wholeness and integrity. That is how it is with a work of art. Such inspired creation and freedom, wholeness and autonomy, sensuous immediacy and power of being- though not always recognized-live in defiance of tyranny and oppression, fear and conformism, numbness and indifference, despair and brokenness."

"That all sounds well and good; but we still haveto be graded in this course. It is no wonder that some of us have been unwilling to get involved and creatively free ourselves-knowing that we are placed in the vulnerable position of being graded for doing so."

"How are we going to be graded? Do you now assign a grade from A, B, C, D, or F to your evaluation of the one who did the best job of evaluating and the one who learned the most about him- self or herself in relation to the course? Or are you going to let us grade our own evaluation of ourselves and grade one another's evaluation of themselves?"

"While we're at it, we could also grade our evaluation of you and your evaluation of yourself. It all sounds so absurd! Assigning grades would mock and make a farce out of what we're learning."

"Right-but when you put it that way, it occurs to me that by assigning grades we wouldn't necessarily have to be mocking or ridiculing what we're learning, as long as we realized that with our grading we are simply mocking and making a ridiculous show rather than taking grading seriously as we usually do with our conventional approaches and objective attempts to reduce ourselves and our learning to a grade. In other words, within the context of this course, the taking of grading seriously is what is absurd. It's the same absurdity of being serious about trying to come up with a way of grading a work of art or the process of creating it knowing secretly that it can't be done."

"So what you're saying, then, is that the only way to do any authentic grading here is to do it merely as an interlude of farce, a mockery of the sanctity and tyranny of grading itself."

"Right-and one way that quickly comes to mind is to give everyone an A- a gesture of immediacy and sensuousness, a repetition of A's down the grade column of the grade sheet from the registrar's office-a sort of grading by not grading-a grade that isn't a grade-a symbol signifying nothing beyond itself. But then, even without any regard to grading, there is a sense that our focus in this class on the aesthetic is already a farce, a mockery, something ridiculously and impu- dently unsuitable to all the established, systematic, conventional, stagnant, dehumanizing ways of being and learning.

"Can this University or the authority of any educational system-or, for that matter, can one's fellow colleagues, both teachers and students, allow for such mockery, such shocking acts, clowning, outrage, ridicule, and defiance within its walls? Can art and creative expression of the imagination be trusted in the system?

"Does the power of a work of art have a place within schools? Can schools survive the presence of such humanity?"

"Our recent past has shown that they cannot. Nevertheless, this is the risk that we continue to take. If it is true that great works of art are born out of the struggle for wholeness and the chaos of brokenness, we must not manipulate to avoid the struggle or the chaos. Otherwise, we run the risk of not giving birth to the truth of ourselves."

NOTES This view of teaching as craft is

derived from Collingwood's account of

Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1966, pp. 80-83.

3 See Tsugawa's unique account of the relation between love, knowledge, friendship, artists, and works of art. Albert Tsugawa, "Art, Knowledge and Love," Art Education, Journal of the National Art Education Association, April/May, 1972, pp. 3-9.

4 For a more detailed discussion of the phenomenon of playing roles, see Duke Madenfort, "The Arts and Relat- ing to One Another in Sensuous Imme- diacy," Art Education, Journal of the National Art Education Association, April/May, 1975, pp. 18-22.

5 Rollo May, Power and Innocence, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1972, p. 53.

6 Ibid, pp. 220-221. 7 This notion of thinking of grading

as an interlude of farce was arrived at after reading Brown's original penetra- tion of the meaning of farce in chapter III "An Interlude of Farce" of Closing Time. Norman O. Brown, Closing Time, New York: Random House, Inc., 1973, pp. 41-63.

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the theory of craft, the distinction between art and craft, and the technical theory of art. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 15-20.

2 See discussion on unity. Norman O. Brown, Love's Body, New York:

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the work of art, integrity, and teaching

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