Choosing how much Choice...the dilemma

"Creativity takes Courage"

Henri Matisse

I realized that there has been a noticeable lull in my postings to this blog.  This past week was TAKS testing in Texas, so the students were involved in that process for 4 of the 5 school days.  They are working on a project I described in my last post, having to do with a faux stain glass window design in crayon and ink.  It is a rather elementary sort of process with the only real challenge to the student being the skill with which they draw the subject and design the background.  I didn't give them a CHOICE as to whether to do this assignment, which brings me to the point of this posting.

I am currently reading a book titled THE PARADOX OF CHOICE, by Barry Schwartz.  I heard him talk about this subject on TED and became interested in the subject because of the nature of my art curriculum.The base concept of the curriculum is to give the student total freedom of choice over all the aspects of what he/she decides to learn about the subject at hand.  The idea of the importance of autonomy in regard to intrinsic motivation being the driving force.  As you might recall from my first posts, the germ of this idea came from my response to students leaving art work behind that they had created which I praised them for and yet they were not "connected" to enough to want to keep it.  So I built an entire program around the ability of the student to CHOOSE all of the aspects of what he was learning in order to foster that feeling of "caring".  For the most part I am satisfied with how the year has progressed in this manner.There have been only a few of the students who have not been able to "get it" totally, and a handfull more who have tried to "beat the system"  I kind of expected both of these situations to exist  Now that we are nearing the end of the year, as always, I sit and reflect over the year and try to assess what we've done and how I can improve on it for next fall.  I believe, to some degree, I will gain some insight into that process by the time I am finished reading this book on Choices.

In the meantime, here is a copy of the last "lesson" format for this year.  The element of art is SPACE and the principle of design is PROPORTION.  I will be following this post up with a quick series of posts highlighting the work of the students and more thoughts on the program..