Nuts and bolts of the project:
Ann: Mary Theresa organized the walk, picking the stations where the students would read their pieces, coordinating food and asking the gospel singer to participate. The morning of the walk youth rehearsed reading their written pieces in front of the group to find their loud public voices. The quieter ones had to stand way across the room and read their pieces to us to generate big voices. As they practiced a few who were still shy started reading their pieces with a friend which helped them speak up. They ended up co-reading pieces on the walk which worked really well. This event was a highlight for me. It was a beautiful sunny day which offset the cold weather. The students did such a great job reading their pieces and the audience was educated by the information in some and moved by the expressiveness of others. It felt really great to move through Troy with this group which included monks from Japan, children from the free school, and our WYRED group. Great day.
Thinking behind the project:
Ann: John Dewey offers an intelligent discussion of what experience is and
how it can be used. When he wrote Education and Experience in 1939,
Dewey was arguing for an alternative to traditional education. New
education would value; learning by living the world over rote learning of
predetermined material desire and motivation instead of passive obedience,
connection to community rather than isolation from social organizations,
preparation for a changing world instead of initiation into a fixed code.
Replacing "new education" with "new art practice" provides a manifesto for
community art practice.
Dewey's ideas for the revitalization of schools hinge on the
relationship between education and experience. Two principles, continuity
and interaction, are the latitude and longitude of experience. Learning is
on-going. Every experience changes the individual and potentially opens
the doors for more learning. "Experience is a moving force. Its value can be
judged only on the ground of what it moves toward and into." (Dewey, p. 31)
Much like the art of Aboriginal video makers, experience does not exist in a
vacuum; it is dependent on the social context.
In order for Dewey's ideas to succeed there must be shared
community. When everyone has the chance to contribute, then everyone
will feel responsibility. With community comes an acceptance of shared
rules. Freedom is not the right to do whatever, whenever. For Dewey,
freedom is taking an impulse and making a plan, pausing a moment to see
how that impulse fits into the world around you, then taking the steps that
are necessary to carry it out. "The ideal aim of education is creation of
power of self-control." (Dewey, p.75) When a person lives each experience to the
fullest, s/he is laying the groundwork for the future.
Looking ahead:
Ann:
The process of writing the Learning Technology grant, fulfilling the conditions and meeting the deadline prompted the adult facilitators to step in and develop the curriculum for the youth. This represented a shift away from the participatory model in which the youth were involved in deciding what projects to do. While the Underground Railroad project was wonderful and generated great work, I am more interested in pursing the participatory model for planning and executing future projects. I don't want to have the parameters of a grant to define how a project is planned and carried out.
Return to Student Work
Description of the Process layer
Index of the Process pages