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Governor Granholm and Cheesy Portraits

  • Posted on May 7, 2011 at 12:25 pm

Governor Granholm

Former Governor Granholm has just had her portrait revealed to the world or at least to the state of Michigan.  I could mention all of the forced symbolism that seems to have been so important for her to include in this painting, but I think I will focus on the complete lack of emotion I feel when I view it.  This is of course the woman/man that was our first woman governor here in Michigan.  I always find it so interesting that women in politics feel they must look like men to govern.   This portrait of Jennifer shows us nothing of the soul of the woman that was our governor.  I have no feeling for this person.  It has been stylized to essentially make us feel that she has her pulse on the world and she has done everything she can to keep Michigan moving.  Of course while she has to look like a man, she did it wearing pumps that make her somewhat superior to any man.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110507/NEWS06/105070334/Former-Gov-Jennifer-Granholm-s-official-portrait-full-symbolism

I’ve been disappointed with all of our past recent governors.  They all profess so much love for Michigan, but they just can’t leave our state fast enough once they are finished “governing”.  As you can see, Jennifer now resides in the state of California.  Michigan is just a distant memory, something she can simply add to her resume.  Like her predecessors, she will probably become a part of that revolving door of corruption that is the politician/lobbyist.  Looking at OpenSecrets reveals our last two former Governor’s penchant for making money and using their political clout.  Here is John Engler firmly enmeshed in the world of business.  http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=32185

Here is also former Governor Jim Blanchard also exerting his political clout in Washington D.C. as a lobbyist.  http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=13806

You may think I am just being critical and these guys have to work.  My feeling is this.  If you thought enough of Michigan to want to be governor, why would you ever leave it?  Truthfully, Michigan was just a stepping stone in their resume life.  There are those of us that love Michigan and will do everything we can to promote it, educate it and live in it and there are those that will just use it and go on to their next job.

As for that portrait of Jennifer, I find myself looking from that left hand firmly planted on her hip to those shoes and all I end up thinking about is Napoleon.

How did that come into my head?  I think it is because they both have that look of pomposity that is supposed to tell us, the “little people”, just how important they really are to history.  If Governor Granholm wants us to remember windmills, cars, shovel ready projects, education and the global impact of Michigan, maybe she should have left us with the feeling that our young people could stay and live in Michigan to work all of those new found jobs.  Unfortunately, mine, like thousands if not millions of other young people, have fled our state making us look like an uneducated society.  The statistics imply that proportionately few people here have a college degree, just 24%.  We are 37th in ranking with the other states.  We educate them here in Michigan.  We have great schools and universities. http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bac_deg_or_hig_by_per-bachelor-s-degree-higher-percentage

Trust me, our colleges are not just educating out of state people.  Our young people get their degrees.  Once they get that sheepskin, they leave the state for greener pastures, just like Governor Granholm recently did.  Imagine that!

Teaching in a Disconnected World

  • Posted on January 9, 2010 at 12:59 am
Global Children

Let's Embrace the Creativity in our Children

The word we always hear about today is “global”.  We are either “going global” or we’re standing still.  However in the American classroom my life as a middle school art teacher has probably helped to make me a bit skeptical of new government educational plans.  We seem to be pressured to make our children “global” beings that will “beat” all the other “global village” people as the government keeps telling us our children are not quite up to par.  The arts are always the first to be cut because greater minds than mine have decided that they must be a “frill”.  I always think those people simply must have absolutely no talent and imagination.  The arts are far more than a “frill” and serve a far greater good than most people can even imagine.  If you are wearing beautiful clothes, driving a highly designed vehicle or live in a fabulous home thank the artist that brought the design to fruition.  I know that many people have absolutely no idea of how most items are created and even brought to market.  If it wasn’t for the very artists that create the cool designs that make us all want to buy the next great thing, we’d all be driving around in box shaped cars and still be computing on the old box shaped computers.

Artists have been treated poorly in this old educational process of teaching for a “test”.  I think picking a, b, c, or d on a test is basically pointless.   The truth is no one will really know the end result of all this testing until these test takers become productive tax paying citizens that the government and business clearly want to be the next little worker bees.   I, on the other hand, believe that a true education will encompass all aspects of our intelligence.  This fight for the “core” subjects is disheartening to those of us that are on the cutting edge of embracing our creativity.  It is through real creativity that we all can find our true purpose in life.  Creativity allows you to learn how to think and make decisions based on realizing that there might be more than one answer to a problem.  Test taking makes us believe there can only be one answer and it is the “right” answer.

In life we all know that sometimes things aren’t easy for us.  Sometimes we actually have to think our way out of problems.  The answer isn’t covered on a test.  I think it’s time that we taught students how to think and make creative decisions.  Many children are lost in this test taking mold.  Many have shut down because their exuberance is not appreciated.  Sometimes teachers are so busy teaching for the test that they can’t see the marvelous gifted mind of the student that may be simply struggling with the test taking process.  I don’t blame the teachers or even the administration.  I blame a society that allows arbitrary politicians that promote programs that are just a boon for the test taking industry and a peril for the poor student confronted with all of the tests they have to take.

I think students need to spend much more time using their hands and brains in the classroom whether it be a core subject or my art class.  Students today are spoon fed information and then given countless hours on the computer where things are really quite pointless in many ways.  It’s just a click here and a click there browsing through things but usually not really reading them all that clearly.  We are in such a hurry today that I think we have forgotten the true wonder of education.  It is a joy in my art classroom when I watch a student that didn’t think he or she could draw figure out the drawing process.

Education used to be a wonderful thing to embrace.  Students need to feel that thrill that comes with the discovery of new intelligence.  If we want students to be excited about learning then we have to embrace the creativity that the arts empower in individuals.  The true joy of learning comes through self expression.  While the arts are a power onto themselves they can also enhance the learning in the core classes as well.  It is the individual we need to embrace and cultivate to be the creative adult they are meant to be.  It is not the test taking process that is going to build the next “greatest” generation.  It is the almost innate creativity we all have within us when we are a child that has been suppressed through years of “drill” type instruction that needs to be embraced and nurtured.  If the government wants us to be a “global village” then we should empower our children through creativity in all of their classrooms.

Below I have included an excerpt from Eliot Eisner that I think needs to be examined further.  The truth is number 10 is what I have really been talking about.

10 Lessons the Arts Teach

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.
Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.