[iDC] sharing "new media" curricula/potentials

[Ryan Griffis]

On Jan 26, 2007, at 8:18 AM, idc-request at bbs.thing.net wrote:

> Along these lines I'd like to briefly address Kevin's question
> regarding whether we as educators have a responsibility to our
> students to help prepare them for life past school. Why else does one
> attend school in the first place? If my students are paying a sum
> greater than most American's annual salary to attend the institution
> at which I am teaching (and even if they are not), I expect to give
> them something that will allow them to feed themselves outside of
> school.  They don't have to be upstanding citizens or join the
> corporate workforce, but at the very least they ought to be able to
> get a job which will get them food and rent with what they learn in
> school. I don't buy the premise that the life of an artist should be
> any different or more or less difficult than the life of any one
> else, and I certainly don't buy into any notion that an academic
> institution has the right to a student for five years in which the
> student will not receive any real world skills which they can
> continue to practice, and be paid for, in their chosen discipline.

i think we have to be careful about the collapsing of consumer-rights/ 
economic responsibility and equitable/responsible education practices  
here. The high cost of education is a problem that needs to be  
separated from what our responsibility as educators is, or rather, it  
has to be connected differently. Unless you think "the Market" really  
will solve everything, and that the problem is that students - sorry,  
consumers - are not getting their money's worth (based on classical  
economics and risk analysis), anyway. If that's the case, then i  
don't know why we're discussing the role of art education at all. Oh  
right, the MFA is the new MBA. "The creative class" as management  
philosophy... finally artists can contribute directly to the  
investing class, not by proxy!
It seems to me, IMHO (which i don't mean insincerely, as i know i am  
not the most experienced on this list), we can be arguing for  
accessible education (if anyone still believes in the right to  
education as much as consumer rights) AS WELL AS education that is  
not simply training for an industry that changes with every  
graduating class. This would also go along with discussions about   
disconnecting wages from privilege, so that higher ed would not be  
the index of wealth disparity that it is. So, sure, the life of an  
artist shouldn't be any more or less difficult than anyone else. The  
ability to pay rent shouldn't be attached to such roles to begin with.
Academic institutions should have no rights, much less the right to a  
student's five years. Students should have a right to the university.  
But that university cannot maintain any semblance of autonomy if it  
is inextricably bound up with "real world skills" that are defined as  
how we understand a "job" to function. Otherwise, we can do nothing  
other than replicate the structure that currently exists, further  
subsidizing the privileges already unequally distributed (which is  
mostly what education has always done). We should be discussing how  
people not even attending institutions of higher ed are paying for it  
as much as we discuss how much students are paying for it. Why don't  
they have as much to say about what students learn as the industries  
we're training them to work in do? i don't hear anyone calling for  
town hall meetings to discuss university curriculum.
Sure, this is all "idealistic" and somewhat based on my own sense of  
privilege in the economy, but the false opposition of "realism"/ 
pragmatism and idealism is weak. If you can't be idealistic in  
education, where the hell can you be?
Am i saying universities/colleges/art schools have no responsibility  
for what happens with students post-education? i don't think so... i  
think that to take that responsibility seriously requires a critical  
response to the notion of education being about buying jobs/ 
privileges and escalating a system that, i think, only increases  
inequity. If we want to "train people for the real world," i sure as  
hell hope that we're considering what we mean by the "real world" and  
if that's the world we want or not.
What is at stake in teaching software and programming to potential  
artists as a discipline? Can a coherent and responsible (again, to  
what, is a value question, not a technocratic one) methodology be  
distributed that allows for differences in skills and interests, but  
also provides room for a general body of knowledge to exist? In other  
words, can an artist who works with digital media have a basic  
understanding of how to make something work (enough to be working  
with a more skilled person even), but not be so indebted to a  
production process that it is all consuming and over determined?
Andrea's example of the browser project for example. Even if those  
students produced lousy code (not saying they did :) ), is the  
understanding they develop of both how digital networked media and  
its politics function not worth more than them becoming efficient  
code writers? Personally, i'm not training people to be web-artists  
or digital artists, or usually not even artists (most of my students  
take my classes as electives and often as a one-off because they want  
to learn how to build a web site either for professional reasons -  
graphic designers - or personal ones, most everyone else). There is a  
critical value to becoming fluent in a production process, but there  
are also critical limitations. The symbolic realm is as complex and  
challenging to understand as the technological one (pragmatically  
speaking), and there is a compromise that happens in bringing those  
skills together in one setting. Should more detailed knowledge of  
both be included in their education as well? No doubt. But i also  
believe that it is important that they see these knowledges utilized  
in the same space (as Andrea's example does).
as Patrick said, "this is meant as a slightly polemic stance, meant  
to invite positive and reflective discussion."