Huffington Post blogger C. M. Rubin published a column just yesterday (7/24/12) entitled “The Global Search for Education: Art in Education” focusing on the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, part of Oxford University.  <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/arts-education_b_1696867.html?view=print&comm_ref=false>.  Rubin spoke with Professor Robert Hewison author of Ruskin and Oxford: The Art of Education, and also with Dr. Jason Gaiger, the current Head of the School and a Fellow of Oxford’s St. Edmund Hall.  I found this blog to be extremely illuminating for several reasons, and so I’m going to present selected excerpts and then share my thoughts and impressions about these passages.

"Ruskin believed that everyone had visual as well as verbal capacities that needed to be developed in order to become a complete human being, and that the apprehension of truth depended on the power of observation," explained Hewison. "His concern for art education applied to the development of the power of the hand and eye for everyone, not just people who hoped to become professional artists."

The development of students’ visual AND verbal capacities is among the key concepts involved in the University of Michigan’s ArtsEngine as they seek to determine best practices for integrating the arts and art-making into the research university.  Actually making art, participating in the practice of the arts, is re-emerging as an important component within higher education.  This kind of thinking, promoted by Ruskin and by his American counterpart John Dewey, is not new, but it is fascinating to me that we are now re-discovering the power of personal experience as a component of higher education.  This same idea is what’s behind the push for Engaged Learning methods, getting students to actively engage not only with their field of study, but to participate in its practical application through community service, internships, and undergraduate research projects.  It’s learning by doing, rather than just learning by sitting while listening-reading-writing.  Of course, there’s still a lot of sit-down activity that must, and always will, take place in the university.  But when intellectual knowledge is grounded in practical experience—in practice—it can become far more meaningful for the student. 

What is it, after all, that artists do better than most people?  They see the world differently, and then communicate what they’ve seen in a visual form.  Cultivating the powers of observation—learning how to see beyond your own preconceptions—is an important element in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the world and in developing creativity.  Art educators have promoted the idea of “visual literacy” for years, and as a photography instructor and scholar, I’ve written about the idea of “reading” a photograph in order to fully comprehend its message.  Visual literacy is not something that is innate—just because you can see something doesn’t mean you understand it, and moreover, what we think we see definitely colors our understanding of what we’re actually looking at.  The relationship between the hand, eye, and brain is one of the most complex and fascinating processes and is not yet completely understood.  But what we do know, especially those of us who consider ourselves to be artists, is that making art causes us to look at and understand the world differently.

…although they study here at the Ruskin, they also belong to one of the colleges, whether it be Christ Church or St. Edmund Hall or one of the others. Students here are being trained to be artists. However, because they are studying at the University of Oxford, their experience is different from that of students at some of the London art schools who can sometimes be trapped in a fine-art bubble where they only encounter other art students. Our students share college facilities with people who are studying a range of subjects across the University. Art is as much about ideas as it is about physical materials, and here at Oxford, students have direct access to a treasure house of ideas. The University is an incredible source of knowledge that artists can draw on and allow to feed into their art practice.

…An underlying question here is whether visual intelligence is valued in the same way as verbal intelligence in secondary schools. The Ruskin is perhaps unusual in that, as well as a strong portfolio, students need to get the same high A level grades as for any other academic subject at Oxford; the same criteria apply whether you want to study fine art, medicine or law. At the Ruskin, 25% of the BFA degree is in the history and theory of art, which means that a substantial part of the program is academic as traditionally conceived. We tend to attract students who are both verbally and visually gifted

I love this model of art education.  The insistence on high academic standards for all students in the University, artists or not, and the expectation that art students will not only make art but study its history and theory to a significant level (not merely a cursory Survey of Art History 101 course) is admirable.  At Oxford, the door to the art department clearly opens in both directions.  Students of other disciplines are invited in to partake in the benefits that art-making can provide, while art students venture out in order to enrich their own education and art practice with knowledge to be found in the wider University.  This is an admirable model and one that American universities would do well to study.

It troubles me when the arts are treated as something supplementary or merely ancillary to the university's core activities. My own view is that the arts are just as intellectually rigorous, just as demanding and just as exacting in their standards of excellence as any other field of learning. The students here at the Ruskin don't feel they have any less standing than their peers working in other subject areas. As I mentioned, there is a substantial academic component to the BFA degree involving the study of art history and theory, but the studio-based component of the degree has its own intellectual value. Art does not have to rest upon the traditional methods of academic learning in order to justify itself as an independent mode of enquiry. Perhaps the appropriate comparisons are not to be made with other humanities subjects. The sorts of activities that take place in the studio are quite dissimilar to the largely text-based research that takes place in the history faculty, for example. But there may be points of commonality with the forms of research that take place in science labs or among mathematicians. We need to recognize that there are many different forms of rigorous intellectual enquiry (like studio art) that don't involve sitting down and writing essays.

I have long been a proponent of the idea that art students should be held to the same standards of academic rigor as those in other departments.  But, as the preceding quote illustrates, this is not because I devalue the thought process inherent in art-making as any less worthwhile than traditional forms of academic thinking.  What I do believe, however, is that artists should be able to articulate their thinking, to hold their own in conversations of history, theory, or philosophy, and to be equipped with the background knowledge and information to make those conversations possible.  For far too long we have left the “thinking” part of art to the art historians, content to keep the “doing” part of art contained within the studio.  We have not sought to share our own knowledge gained through the practice of art in a way that can be communicated to those concerned with more traditional scholarly pursuits.  Written language as found in scholarly research and writing is the coin of the realm in universities.  Yes, the mode of enquiry conducted in the studio does have value, but the artist should then be able to speak and write about the discoveries that have happened in that way.

I’ll end with a last quote from Dr. Jason Gaiger:

One of the advantages of the collegiate system is that it allows students to make connections across disciplinary boundaries and thus to acquire a much broader sense of what constitutes knowledge. I strongly endorse providing greater support for the arts at school level. Drawing and painting are not just about producing beautiful objects. They are also about learning to look, and to learn to look is to learn to understand.

(Disclaimer: in this little story, all characters are cast as male.  This in no way indicates anything but the fact that, in English, there is no gender-neutral pronoun and I did not want to muddy the waters by casting some characters as male and some as female in order to avoid implying any masculine or feminine attributes to the academic disciplines.  If you like, please read this with entirely female characters—it won’t make a difference.)

In University City, Art lives on one side of the quad formed by Knowledge, Theory, Skill and Creativity Boulevards, close to the intersection of Skill and Creativity.  Art is very busy in his studio, but doesn’t often venture outside.  Philosophy, History, Sociology-Epistemology and many of their friends live across the way.  Sometimes they see each other in passing and pause to have a conversation, but they don’t usually go to the same classes.

One day they were all out in the quad when Art emerged from his studio carrying a large cardboard chair.  The others gathered around to look at it.  “Cool,” said Engineering, “we do something similar with trying to invent new designs for shipping containers.”

“Uh huh,” said Art.

“What is it that you’re trying to say with this piece?” asked Philosophy.  “Is it a commentary on the nature of sitting?  On the ephemeral nature of rest and relaxation? Why build a chair out of cardboard?”

“Ummmm….,” said Art.  “I had a lot of cardboard.”

“If you painted it,” said Business, “and made it more eye-catching, I could help you sell it.  You could make more and maybe even start your own factory for making cardboard chairs.”

“No, thanks,” said Art. “This is an original.  Besides, I have another project I want to do.”

With that, Art left the chair outside and went back into his studio.  The others admired the chair for a while longer and took turns sitting in it, but eventually wandered back across the Quad. 

That night there was a torrential rainstorm.  In the morning, the chair was a squashy, soggy lump of wet cardboard.

“See, I told you!” said Philosophy.  “It was a commentary about the ephemeral nature of created objects.”

“No,” said Engineering, “it was just a poor design—a more durable material like corrugated plastic would have withstood the elements better.”

Art came outside carrying a shovel.  He looked down at the remains of his chair.  After sighing deeply and shaking his head, he walked a few paces away and began to dig.  He dug, and dug, and dug.  Finally, satisfied with the large, deep hole, Art went inside and re-emerged with a large metal cube.  The others came across the Quad to investigate.

“What’s that?” asked several of his neighbors.

“A cube,” replied Art.  He proceeded to put it in the hole and began to cover it with dirt.

“Why are you burying it?  Did it not turn out the way you wanted it to?” asked Psychology.

“No.  It’s just fine.  This is what I planned to do with it,” said Art.

“But…why?  What good does it do buried under your front yard?  Isn’t the purpose of a work of art to be seen?” asked Philosophy.

“Yes, and what social value is there in an artwork that’s not on display?” asked Sociology.

“I’ll know it’s here.  You’ll know it’s here. You’ve already seen it.  I’ll put up a little sign telling people it’s under the ground,” replied Art.

“I don’t understand,” said Business.

“That’s okay,” said Art.  “Your understanding is not my concern.”  He finished refilling the hole, then laid a small metal sign on top of the dirt.  The sign read: “Earth Cube. Hollow Anodized Aluminum, 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot.”

“So, did you bury the cube as a contrast to leaving the chair out in the open air where it was eventually destroyed?  Are you making a statement of oppositional interrelatedness?” asked Psychology.

“Yeah, the chair.  I wish I’d remembered to bring it in last night.  I’m bummed about that,” replied Art.

“So, are you saying that the two sculptures bear no relationship to one another?  It seems that the metal and cardboard demonstrate a juxtaposition of intriguing materiality and insubstantiality that you are allowing to remain unanswered,” proposed Philosophy.

“Interesting,” said Art.  “I don’t want to talk about the chair.  But, the cube is about the idea of cube-ness.  The concept of cubistry.  The essence of cubiosity.  But the idea of cubistry is more important than the cube itself, so if it’s removed from view, then you have to think about cubistry instead of the cube-ness of the actual object.  The artwork is the idea, not the object.”

“I don’t get it,” said Business.

“I know,” said Art.

“You know,” said English, “that was a lousy explanation.  Didn’t you ever take a writing or rhetoric class?  Your use of the English language is awful.”

“Un-huh,” said Art.  “whatever.”

Lately I’ve been thinking about the benefits of higher education in the arts.  This has come under fire frequently over time, but in this age of economic hardship, the mythos of the starving artist has become all too often a harsh reality for people with art degrees.  There are those who call for the end to university art programs (indeed, to any university department that can’t pull its own weight financially or that doesn’t produce immediately employable graduates)[1], but this kind of crass, shortsighted thinking also overlooks the tangible benefits that an arts education can provide.

So, what are these benefits, you might ask?  Studies have shown that there are intellectual tasks at which artists excel, beyond the creation of works of art.  For instance, in a problem-solving situation, artists have an advantage in several areas.  They have a keen ability to identify the problem, to intuitively get to the heart of the matter, to revise and adapt their thinking, and to accept diverse perspectives.  They have a superb ability to find numerous solutions to a problem rather than fixating on the idea that there’s a single correct answer.  They can also communicate complex ideas in engaging and compelling ways—to present information in a way that captures the audience’s attention, giving a tangible shape to an intangible concept.  Skills like these are not only valuable in an artist’s studio—they can apply across the range of human endeavor from the corporate board room to the scientist’s lab.

In 2010, IBM published a now-famous survey of CEOs[2], who reported that creativity was of greater value in the business world than rigor, management discipline, integrity, or vision.  Other studies have shown that immersion in art-making is beneficial to students’ creative, analytic, and adaptive capabilities.  They have also shown that involvement in the arts increases the chances of academic success for at-risk, low-income, or ESL students.  Innovative programs have pioneered cross-disciplinary coursework, bringing together art and design, engineering, and other diverse fields of study, engaging students in solving problems by accessing multiple ways of thinking.

Okay, you might be saying, I understand that creativity is good.  It’s the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of the world who can engender brilliant, creative ideas and find ways to make them work.  But what does that have to do with the arts?  Why should we bother teaching art in the university?  I mean, can’t we just teach creativity, instead?

Well, there are (at least) two reasons that art should continue to have a place in the university.  First, it has become increasingly clear that education in the arts can foster innovation through collaboration between artists and those in other university departments.  Secondly, just as the university can provide a safe haven for pure research, unconstrained by the demands of the corporate sector, it can also provide a nurturing climate where artists can push boundaries of expression and experiment with ideas and forms apart from the mandate to please a prospective buyer.  In both research and artistic expression, the university is the primary breeding ground for the advancement of knowledge.

I can’t take credit for these thoughts (although I fully support them): all of these ideas were published recently in the University of Michigan’s ArtsEngine: Art-Making and the Arts in Research Universities Strategic Task Forces March 2012 Interim Report.  But, I have held these beliefs myself for quite some time without having previously been aware that the University of Michigan was undertaking this landmark work.  For instance, not too long ago I was involved in a discussion with some faculty members in the Texas Tech University College of Business, who asked me if I felt that the MFA was—as some had said—the new MBA.  While this does touch on that IBM study placing a premium on creativity, I had to say, No.  I have an MFA, and I have been a business executive, so I feel that I can address this issue from both sides.  My business experience did indeed require creativity and innovation, and these abilities were enhanced by my arts education, but study for an MFA is very much focused on just one thing: making art.  Fully 75% of my MFA coursework was spent in the studio, with a mere pittance in the classroom where, not surprisingly, we only talked about art.  If I hadn’t personally possessed a background in business administration prior to participating in that program, it wouldn’t have done me any good as a business professional at all.  But, knowing that issue from both sides, I proposed to those business professors that conducting a course in creativity for their MBA students could indeed be an excellent thing. 

I’m intrigued by the idea of art faculty members co-teaching and collaborating with professors from science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  The fusion of art and science can produce amazing, astounding, even breathtaking results.  But…I can also see a problem that thus far no one has voiced.  Those STEM professors all have a doctoral degree, which means they’ve all conducted original research and written a dissertation about it.  And, because they work in fields that undergo relentless change, they have to continuously keep themselves up to date with innovations in their fields.  Those art professors, on the other hand, have an MFA, which they feel is a “terminal degree” on par with a doctorate.  Having earned both degrees, I have to disagree.  My MFA, as I said, was completely practice-based.  I did produce a body of artwork of which I’m justifiably proud, but all that was required in terms of a scholarly document to accompany that artwork was a brief artists’ statement (overachiever that I am, I wrote an 80-page research paper anyway).  In contrast, for my doctoral degree, I wrote a qualitative research-based dissertation that included case studies, historical analysis, aesthetic philosophy, and sociology-epistemology as well as a great deal of original thinking.  It was nearly 400 pages long—a far cry from the 2-page enigmatic artists’ statements produced by my fellow MFA peers.  This is not to say that it doesn’t take a great deal of intensive, original, creative thinking to produce an MFA project.  It does.  My peers produced some amazing artwork involving materials engineering, paint chemistry, and biological research, among other things,…but all of this was done on a far more intuitive level than research conducted by those in engineering, chemistry, or biology.  My friend who made heavy metal and glass sculptures appear to float in the air likely could not articulate the physics behind his accomplishments.  He just knew how to make it work.  My friend who produced abstracted paintings fusing nature and the human body searched for visual models to use as reference for her compositions, but did not conduct any systematic study of anatomy or botany.  The work of art was all that mattered, not being able to articulate the thinking or research underlying its creation.

James Elkins, in his 2009 book Artists with PhDs, expresses his doubts as to whether artists are capable of the rigorous study and research inherent in doctoral study, stating that most art students he’s worked with during his long teaching career tend not to be the most accomplished scholars.  I have to say that my observations have been much the same: of the numerous art professors, art students, and working artists whom I know personally, the vast majority do not engage in scholarly research and writing about their field.  Indeed, because the demand in the art department is to continue working as a practicing artist, instead of the mandate to research and publish common to other university departments, art professors tend to remain stuck in the theory and philosophy that was in vogue at the time they attended graduate school themselves.  There is no professional expectation to engage in continuing education at the same level as their STEM peers.

Opening the doors of the art department to students from the university at large will most certainly benefit those students—increasing their capacity for creativity and innovation.  But this door must swing both ways.  It is also time to bring the art department up to the standards of research and scholarship found across the rest of the university landscape.  Art historians might argue that this has always been the case in their little corner of the world, but I’m not talking about them.  What I mean is the corps of faculty members who teach the work of the studio—the painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers, metalworkers, glassworkers, ceramicists, digital media artists, and all of my fellow art-makers.  We must be capable of holding high-level intellectual discussions with faculty members from the STEM departments, to conduct research, to write, and to think analytically as well as heuristically or intuitively.  If we want to share the benefits that we know so well are intrinsic to the making of art, we should also open ourselves up to the possibility that it’s time to emerge from the cloister of the studio and participate in the greater work of the university, using the same language, the same intellectual tools, and holding ourselves to the same standards of continuing education and scholarly publication.

It also means that students majoring in the arts should be required to take more science, math, writing, and other courses and perhaps spend a bit less time in the studio. Making art is great.  I love making art.  But if I were asked to co-teach a creativity course with someone from the chemistry department, my coursework in chemistry long behind me, I might have a problem.  Shouldn’t a painting student know enough about chemistry to understand the optical qualities of paint?  Shouldn’t a sculpture student learn about physics and engineering, at least enough to understand the properties of physical matter?  And shouldn’t every art major have to take enough English and Rhetoric courses to be able to write a coherent artist’s statement that isn’t enigmatic or incomprehensible?  We need to raise the academic bar for art students just as urgently as we need to invite students from the rest of the university to experience in the benefits of art.

I know, I’m suggesting nothing less than a revolution—an overthrow of the status-quo and the decades-long domination of the notion that the MFA is a doctoral equivalent, of giving art students a pass on math and science and English in favor of increased time in the studio, of emphasizing artistic production over scholarly accomplishment.  Heretics and rabble-rousers like me have been burned at the stake for less.


[1] “To Boost Post-College Prospects, Cut Humanities Departments,” by Peter Cohan, published in Forbes Magazine on May 29th, 2012

[2] http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/index.html

Thoughtful design…balance…fairness…meaningful, relevant content: these are the hallmarks that should identify high-quality curriculum in higher education. 

Thoughtful Design: I believe professors should heed the advice often given to educators at the primary and secondary level and “begin with the end in mind,” [from Steven Covey’s (2004) “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”].  This means that teachers should determine what students should be able to know and do at the end of the course and build an encompassing conceptual framework upon that sound foundation.  Put simply, the course designer must develop a set of outcomes and objectives.  The objectives state what the instructor intends for students to learn during the course.  The outcomes are a set of parallel statements that indicate what the students should have learned by the time the course is completed.  Objectives shape instruction, while outcomes shape assessment.

At the college or university level, course outcomes and objectives should be clearly stated on the syllabus and should be referenced frequently throughout the course, particularly in relation to any given assignment.  If the assignment cannot be directly linked to a course objective, it should not be assigned.  Assessment, too, should specifically and directly assess the course outcomes and objectives. 

Balance: In the disciplines of visual media and visual art, many courses occur in a studio setting, where students receive hands-on instruction and experience with the creation of visual media or artworks.  My ideal visual media production or studio arts curriculum would be balanced between practice, research, and writing.  In this ideal setting, the specific practice of a discipline or medium—including demonstration, guided studio work, and independent work in the studio or in the field, should make up approximately 50% of total hours devoted to a course.  Research (including working with the assigned textbooks or class field trips) and writing should make up another 25%, with the remaining 25% dedicated to discussion, critique, and assessment.  This diverges somewhat from the norm of many studio classes, where there is frequently a negligible amount of research and writing and few written assessments.  Especially in the research-driven university climate of today, I feel that it is very important for students to develop a supportive conceptual framework for their production of visual media/visual art, to be able to write and speak intelligently about their practice, and to be held accountable to academic performance standards comparable to other disciplines in the humanities.

Research: this informs the student’s practice.  Students should seek out precedents for the work they intend to create, asking and answering questions such as: Who has done work like this before you did?  How was this work done?  What were the specific techniques and materials used to accomplish this work?  How are the principles and elements of art (harmony, balance, contrast, etc…) evident in the work?

Writing: in visual art, it’s typical for artists to create an Artist’s Statement, but these are all too often unnecessarily enigmatic, abstract, or simply just examples of bad writing.  In my opinion, a well-written Artist’s Statement should clearly state—in grammatically correct, logical language—what the artist intended to accomplish and what the work means to the artist.  If artists cannot speak intelligently, clearly, and meaningfully about their work, it leaves the field wide open for critics, art historians, and others to impose their own opinions, meanings, and messages.  Those who work with visual media should also be able to write coherently about their subject in general, completing research-based writing assignments to the standards held in other humanities courses.  We must never be content to limit our standards of performance to the creation of visual works alone, but must constantly strive to meet the same expectations found in any other academic department.

Practice: of course, in a studio-based class the expectation is that the majority of time will be spent on the practice of the medium.  All practice activities should be demonstrably linked to the course outcomes and objectives.  Practice can include demonstration of processes and techniques, but most of the time should be hands-on for the students, with the instructor present to guide and support as necessary.  Practice also includes the hours students spend working on their own in completing assignments. 

Assessment:  in a visual media/visual arts course assessment could include three different modalities:

                Demonstration: if a given process or procedure is important to the course outcomes, students can be assessed on their ability to demonstrate the process or procedure correctly.

                Written Tests:  in any given discipline there are key vocabulary terms, basic principles, historical information, theories, and other types of information that might be covered in the students’ assigned readings and discussed in class.  At the college or university level it is reasonable to expect students to be able to read and understand their assigned readings independently, to take notes during class discussions, and to be held accountable for this knowledge on a written test.  However, this must be fair.  Test questions should not be intentionally obscure or vague in order to induce confusion or frustration in students.  They should assess information specific to the course outcomes, not the minor details that students may or may not recall from their readings or the discussions. 

                Critique: in a visual arts/visual media class, perhaps the most crucial component of assessment is found in critique.  Students must be specifically, deliberately taught the standards of good conduct in critique, how to give one another meaningful, respectful informed feedback, and how to back up their opinions with details and facts.  Every assignment should be assessed according to a rubric, which was provided to the student at the time the assignment was initially announced—at the beginning of the semester, included on the syllabus.  There should never be a mystery as to the criteria that will be used to assess the students’ work.  Indeed, all assignments should be assessed with a rubric that was provided on the syllabus, not only visual works but writing, research projects, and all other work.

Assessments should be more than just a means of enabling an instructor to assign grades.  These should also inform instruction.  Any assessment, regardless of the type, not only reflects the student’s learning, but the instructor’s teaching.  Wise instructors analyze assessment results and learn how they can improve their instruction rather than blaming the students for their lack of achievement.  Especially in a situation where the entire class misses the same test question or botches the same process, the instructor should take special note and make changes to the instructional methods related to the group’s failure.  Assessments can reveal trends, weak spots, or areas where students may need less instruction on material they might already have known.  I don’t mean to say that every assessment is a referendum on the instructor’s competence, but providing the instructor with an introspective, evaluative look at his or her instruction is a function of any good assessment.

Fairness (grading):  it should perhaps go without saying, but grading should be fair.  What this means to me is that students are provided with cogent instructions and expectations regarding the performance standards of the course, which are clearly based on the course’s stated outcomes.  If students meet the expectations, they should receive good grades.  If not, their grades should be correspondingly lower.  This kind of standards-based (criterion-referenced) grading provides the optimal conditions for fairness.  I strongly oppose the anachronistic practice of comparing students to one another, giving the top-performer an A, the lowest-performer an F, and everyone else something in-between.  This norm-referenced grading is inherently unfair, fosters unnecessary and unhealthy competition, and is just plain wrong.  I believe that all students can achieve excellent results, and if they do, they should be rewarded for it.  If that means that everyone earns an A—great.  Just because someone succeeds should never mean that someone else must fail. 

A well-designed rubric provides the instructor and the student with a clear understanding of what is required for the student to earn an excellent grade or why he or she might have failed an assignment.  I had a very wise philosophy professor who pointed out that students should understand that an A is never guaranteed—it must be earned.  The amount of time students spend on a task is much less important than the quality of the end result.  Finally, any attempt at cheating and plagiarism must be met with serious consequences.  In my courses I prefer to state on the syllabus that students found to have committed these violations will absolutely be given a zero on the assignment with no provision granted for re-submitting the work. 

Meaningful, Relevant Content: I have sat in many classrooms where I’ve been subjected to all manner of nonsense presented under the guise of academic freedom.  I realize that I might be touching the third rail of university instruction here, but students have every right to expect that a course will present them with the information it’s purported to teach.  For instance, if students sign up for a course in photojournalism, the instructor should be teaching photojournalism, not psychology, religion, or attempting to indoctrinate them with his or her personal beliefs.  As but one example, I was in a graduate course on research methodology in the arts, but the text selected by the instructor as an “example of scholarly research and writing” was a treatise on animal rights and anti-species-ism.  Certain passages in the text featured the author’s close physical relationship with her dogs—an idea that was highly offensive to many members of the class, most particularly two Muslim students for whom most dogs are considered to be unclean and such a relationship represented a serious violation of their system of beliefs.  While I remain a firm supporter of ethical treatment of animals, such evangelizing is inappropriate in a classroom where the instruction is purported to be directed towards a different topic.  Indeed, when I had the audacity to voice the question, “But what does this have to do with research methods in art?” it touched off a firestorm with the professor that led to any number of unpleasant and unfortunate circumstances.  The same was true in a course I taught several times while a graduate student.  The course description stated that education majors would learn strategies and methods for teaching art in their classrooms, but the focus was actually on teaching for social justice.  Indeed, not one textbook on the course syllabus I was originally given addressed teaching art at all.  When I changed the required reading list to eliminate some of the off-topic textbooks and include more relevant materials for the teaching of art, I greatly angered the professor who had designed the course according to his own ideological agenda.  I have no problem with teaching for social justice and I fully support many causes central to these ideals, but this was advertised as a course on teaching future teachers how to teach art, a core focus that was all but ignored in the course’s actual implementation.

Academic freedom, when appropriately applied, gives university instructors the ability to select the materials and methods that will best meet their instructional goals.  I wholeheartedly support this ideal.  But, this does not mean that a course should be allowed to become a professor’s personal pulpit for his or her particular brand of dogma at the expense of the course’s true purpose.  Just as is expected of students, professors, too, should stay on point.  A class on anti-species-ism may well be appropriate as a course offering in sociology or bioethics, but this focus is not at all appropriate as a class in research methodology in the arts.  If a student in a painting class is given the task to write a paper about painting but then turns in a paper about photography, he or she is likely to receive a poor grade.  Why then should a professor be allowed the “academic freedom” to veer far afield in his or her instruction? 

Academic freedom is a foreign concept in the halls of many high schools and elementary schools, where teachers are expected to follow the district’s approved curriculum and to meet educational performance standards on state testing.  Please don’t get me wrong, here—I am by no means a fan of high-stakes testing or other components of the No Child Left Behind mandate, nor do I support the subsequent implementation of canned “teacher-proof” curriculum.  However, numerous school districts have developed cohesive sets of Essential Outcomes that provide teachers with a unified conceptual framework for curriculum development. The same is not true in colleges and universities, where students run a very real risk of paying thousands of dollars for a course that is not at all what it seems to be in the course catalog.  Accreditation standards should drive curriculum development and university instructors should be held accountable for adhering to the published descriptions of the courses they teach.  Educational bait-and-switch is a poor practice at best and this policy needs some serious attention, in my opinion. 

A final word…

It is my firm belief that instructors and professors must thoughtfully construct their courses in order to create balanced educational experiences for their students focused on meaningful, relevant content, teaching according to the principles of fairness and accountability.  Outcomes and objectives designed in accordance with accreditation standards provide a conceptual framework within which students receive a high-quality education, and those who have the good fortune to teach within higher educational settings must not abuse the privilege of academic freedom or disregard sound instructional practice either to promote a personal agenda or simply failing to meet the reasonable educational expectations of their students.  Many college and university departments put up a good front when the accreditation committees come around for their periodic reviews; many professors perform well under scrutiny from tenure-granting committees; but, I believe the impetus for providing excellent education should be internally driven rather than externally mandated.  Even if no one but the students is watching or listening, shouldn’t instruction be consistently fair, on-point, meaningful, and relevant?  This is not an unreasonable expectation, nor is it revolutionary thinking on my part.  The reality of the situation in many colleges and universities, though, would seem to indicate otherwise.  I don’t think that my own experiences run that far from the norm, but it simply isn’t often discussed publically.  Universities, at their core, hold a mission for research, service, and teaching, and the standards for good teaching should be no different for a professor in a graduate school classroom than they are in an elementary school.  At least, that’s my opinion.