I taught graphic design studio for degree on a private university.
One case that I would like to share in response about children mode of
knowing.
I brought home my student works and hang it on the wall of one our room.
So, my six years old daughter look and gave spontaneous comment on them.
The student's assignment was about making a simplification of an object.
There were four two intangibles and two tangibles) of the objects: water,
smoke, grasshopper, and dragonfly.
On one of the works, my daughter commented,"Dad, why the tree looks like
that?"
I said, "What tree? Which one did you mean?"
She pointed out,"That one, it doesn't look like a tree anyway. What was
that actually?"
I did not want to simply make a judgment on a common sense attitude by
saying," Dear, you're wrong, it wasn't a tree, it supposed to be simplied
version of smokes."
For me, the learning is not about correctnes, but more important is the
truthfulness. And we, as parents as teacher, can not just said that she or
he make wrong statement, or said she or he wrongly mis-interpreted the
smokes as a tree that also not really a tree anyway.
On another situation, I used that experience to explain kind of theoretical
of art appreciation in my discussion on seminar class.
It is not to blame the student because making a wrong visual interpretation
of smoke, and simply said he or she failed the given tasks.
Also, not to simply blame my daughter because making a wrong interpretation
of smoke too, just because she thinks it was a drawing of a tree.
Why is like that? It simply I did not want to substitute the truthfulness
with the correctedness.
The student tried to communicate through his drawing of simplification of
the intangible object such as smoke. It is the way he or she expressing the
'smoke'.
Nevertheless, my daughter tried to understand the picture (the drawing) she
saw, and make a spontaneous co-relation of what she sees n that picture
with the world as she experienced it, in which she found that it looks like
a tree out there in realities as she already experienced ' a tree ' before.
The mode of knowing by student fall into the expressionism theory of art,
and the mode of knowing by my daughter fall into the representationalism
theory of art.
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