Response to Rika Burnham's If You Don't Stop, You Don't See Anything

The more I read about it and experience it, the more I realize that art is a very difficult subject to teach. There is so much judgment about what is good art, what is bad art, what is significant about a particular piece, which the most important artist are and why. The language used in art can be very “mysterious” to those who aren’t around it all the time, which unfortunately, is a growing number of people as art programs are quickly being taken out of schools and curriculum.

This growing lack of knowledge, ignorance if you may, like all ignorance, can create fear within people, as well as their own judgments. SO when a student is presented with a reference to a specific art time period or noted style of painting, and they have no previous context in which they could have learned this, it’s expected that their reaction might not always be excitement. They may become embarrassed by their lack of knowledge; or they may tune out whatever is being said to them because they don’t understand it.

A teacher should never assume that everyone has the same common knowledge about a subject. I remember, when I was younger, I switched from private school to public in middle school. There were some subjects that were taught differently in my previous school system and a few topics that I hadn’t learned. I remember very clearly asking in math class once what a certain idea meant and my teacher snapped back at me saying, ‘you should know that.” Regardless of the fact that the specific idea should have been ‘common knowledge’ for me by this stage in my development, I didn’t know it. Furthermore, as a teacher, one should not make a student feel bad about not knowing something they may not have taught them. Teachers need to be patient and aware that students internalize different topics at different speeds. Sometimes it’s okay to go back, take it slow, and re-teach something, or even listen to you students and learn from them. This idea relates to art as well. As expressed by Rika Burnham when referencing a museum trip with her students,

“It was time for me to stop lecturing and begin listening, not only to what the students had o say about art, but what they had to say about the experience of art.”

The doing and observing of art can be such a uniquely different experience for every person. So putting a lot of per-conceived ideas onto young minds as to what it ‘should’ be can be stifling and not inspirational. The history and previous analysis of art has it’s place but so does allowing fresh eyes to make new observations. “The greatest gift we can give our students in the museum is the acceptance of their responses”. As teachers we must let them find joy in ‘looking and thinking”.