Working hard...or hardly working?

"He was sent to school, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him"

Thomas Love Peacock (born this day, 1785)

Most of the students are working really hard and dedicated to doing a good job on their artwork.  I find much more so than last cycle.  That's encouraging.  It still disturbs me when I have to keep at those students who haven't quite "gotten it".  Probably my impatience.  I have to remind myself that this IS a "whole new mind" and that for many it will take time to accept it as a way of learning.

I told them of an occurrence on Sunday evening when a few friends went to dinner.  We got to talking about a young man who had been in our pottery class at the community college where we take a class together.  It was recounted by one person that this young man had bemoaned the fact that his instructor was not interested in the "throwing on the wheel" process as much as the "hand building" methods of working in clay.  So he didn't feel as though he was "learning" as much as he otherwise might, if the opposite were true.  I didn't bring it up at the time, but in thinking about this situation, I discussed with my students that it was probably because he, like them and almost ALL students in today's education system, had been "spoon fed" his education up until now.  The teacher told him what to do, how to do it, how large, in what media, what expression, and when it was due.  He hadn't been taught how to think for himself.  The world today is an "information rich" place with more avenues to find out what you want to learn than ever before in history.  All that is missing is the DRIVE to make yourself go out and get it and not wait for someone else to hand it to you.  THAT is what this year in THIS class is ALL about!!

I have no videos or photos to share today, but I promise that Thursday's blog will be rich with them.  A number of students are just at the verge of finishing  up one of their artworks, so I decided to wait and take pictures of them on Thursday.  They will also be putting their grades into the computer on that day.