Whitney Price

June 17, 2014

Teaching Philosophy
Personal Philosophy
As a graduate student, new to the teaching mindset, the question of personal
philosophy proposed a difficult task of narrowing down all these novel complex ideas
into one generalization. Days worth of struggling between personal artist philosophies,
and the philosophy in which I want to instill in my classroom, became a contest of
serious regard. That said, I do not think you are limited to only one way of thinking. As
a teacher you must remain flexible and accommodate your needs to that of your
classroom. Art, being a growingly substantial field, has immeasurable value and it is
your job to teach our youth understanding of this worth and the relationship they have to
this limitless subject.
Relating your innermost thoughts to the world you live in is the basic meaning of
expressing yourself. That is the most essential thing in the art world and should be the
main objective of every artist and child. For if you cannot relate to the world, how can
you ever truly know yourself? With that in mind, educating students on art and its place
in history and its ever-changing qualifications, the postmodern philosophy best caters to
the uniqueness that comes with this subject. For the practicing artist, it is important to
understand art on a formal basis, but when children are growing up art is necessary on a
deeper level than that of the products they produce.
Postmodernism lends itself to the differentiating circumstances within a
classroom and the possible methods in which art can be taught. The student will always
have a certain amount of knowledge they need to know for it to qualify as an educational
subject, but this philosophy values the individuality of the art teacher and the practices
that come with personal values being met with necessary curriculum. Art teachers learn a
large range of information on a formative level and a personal level during their own
school years, and are then asked to dilute this knowledge into lessons that are both
insightful and beneficial to their students. In a postmodern era, the art teacher has the
freedom to deduce their knowledge based on the context of the classroom. Practicing this
philosophy also empowers reciprocity between the blossoming intellect of the student
and the open-minded teacher. The postmodern ideology recognizes not only the surface
of art as an individual alley but as a body of water coming from the multifaceted
branching system of complex cultures and histories rich with dimension that deserves a
place in art education. That is not to say that western-based formal art should be
discredited or left out, but the postmodern education emphasizes the cohesive study of
both cultural interactions with art and the bureaucracies in the structure of design. Judith
Simpson summarizes this perspective effectively by saying, A world of fine art that is
outside of life is meaningless.
When met with the choice of aesthetic viewpoint, it seems impossible to not
associate them as a necessary grouping. The freedom in expressionism will seemingly
always take president in the creation of art, but should it in the teaching of art? I want to
instill in my students the importance of context, not just in art, but also in their
understanding of the world. Many students will not become artists but that does not
mean they do not hold a valuable place in the art world. The referentialism viewpoint of
meaning existing outside of the work itself represents the context viewers should consider
when identifying with art. Meaningful art is not a set of objectives quantitatively
measured and put in a particular box, it is a questionable and insightful vastness that
evolves as cultures and norms change over time. It is so imperative that educators and
community members accept and implement this mindset when considering the
immeasurable importance of the multidimensional subject of art. Adults and children
alike, continuously strive to depict meaning in their world. Fehr surmises best by saying,
Postmodernist feel that wisdom is generated less from producing the right answers than
from formulating the right questions. There are no right answers in art, only the
understanding aspects of where it comes from and the inevitability of its continuous
evolution.

Annotated Bibliography
Whitney Price
Fehr, D. E. (1997). Clutching the lectern, or shouting from the back of the hall: a
comparison of modern and postmodern arts education. Arts Education
Policy Review, 98(27-31).
Dennis Fehr writes this article about the meaning and differences in modernism
and postmodernism and how each relates to previous and future art education
policies. It was written to explain the value in both philosophies and how they
can be used together. Fehr defines truth as contingent and that the teacher must
ultimately decide what knowledge they will instill in their students.

Daichendt, G. J. (2010). Redefining the artist-teacher: The role of modernism and
postmodernism. Artist Teacher, A Philosophy for Creating and Teaching.
1(143-145).
Daichendt writes this book on the evolution and future of the artists place in
education. This section was written to describe the role modernism and
postmodernism play in education. He explains the formalism of modernism and
the openness of postmodernism.

Jagodzinski, j. (2012). The terror of creativity: Art education after postmodernism.

Journal Of Social Theory In Art Education, 32 (14-28).

Jagodzinski addresses the question of creativity in art education and the
aftermath of postmodernism. He writes this article to address the uncertainties of
pluralism and the need for an established structure in an information society. He
writes that terror of the unknown strives so much of our basic need to know
things that may not necessarily be classified as measurable truths.