the Hunter debate

The thought occurred to me personally in a recent 8-hour meeting on lesson planning. Madeline Hunter was once again touted as the goddess of all lesson planning. From all I recall in Art Education, Madeline Hunter's format is of the devil. I can see the value for linear planning, and addressing standards that are so conceptually deconstructed that anyone could walk in and teach the prescribed standard; check, got it, you've shown your proving behavior, now let's move on to the next to-do item. However, does demonstrating a trite proving behavior actually prove learning? So, because Hunter's format is "of the devil" in ArtEd., we avoided it.

At this meeting, though - with our WASC process beginning this year, I asked myself "why?" ... "Why does Hunter break everything down to the millionth iota of information?" "Why are other content standards written like checklists?" and the most dangerous one from the Art Ed perspective... "Why doesn't Madeline Hunter's format fit for Art Ed?" I feel like I'm painting myself in a corner with questions. Here comes the great debate over the Art lesson plan - lessons plans are supposed to be for a say/week - this is for a unit of instruction, you're teaching too many things at once: color theory and how to hold a paintbrush should be different lessons." All these thoughts and questions... and the great Hunter debate has not yet an answer for me.

teach me to think

I've discovered that most of my students share my disdain for being 'told' by an authority what is good, and what isn't - what's good art, what's not. Mine is not the voice of approval for style, or legitimacy of an image as art in the classroom. Excellent! We begin with a victory, a grand neo-post-modern victory.
Now, to get the fourteen-year-olds to say what's what, and back it up.While teaching people to make and support a judgement, often younger ones will want to take the lazy way out; "I just like it more than the other one, I don't know why." I adore using Visual Thinking Strategies to assist in creating narratives and risk-taking without judgement. A few good rounds of VTS will usually break the ice in beginning to recover imaginative thinking skills and evidence gathering. Now, to take that and bring it to the next level of creating an argument and backing it up.
I'm hoping that my new strategy of collaborative blogging will help inspire the students to really drum up some good discussions and thoughts about how we value what we see, and experience.