CON • TEXT - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo - AHO

T H E ’ S C H O O L W O R L D ’ A N D ’ A R T W O R L D ’1912; Bull-Hansen and Mæhlum 1932; Digranes 1933; Trætteberg 1934) lostsome of their attraction. Who would need theory at all, if no learning can bederived from education? Why would texts concerning technique andexamples be considered anything but redundant?Anna Lena Lindberg (1988) writes of two distinct attitudes in Scandinavianart education. It seems that even though they differ somewhat in orientation,in my view they can both be seen to originate from a romantic notion ofindividualism and moral growth through art. One view, the ‘lecturingattitude’, is recognised by its need to fill the receiver with useful culturalknowledge. Through this knowledge, the individual will be able to betterunderstand the need for culture and art. It might be possible to say that thishas some links to democracy and the notion that everybody has the right to anequal opportunity to participate in society, here in the form of observing andunderstanding culture. Lindberg, however, does not discuss the ‘lecturingattitude’ in light of democracy, and it is described as a dubious passive wayof organising art education. It promotes the view of the student as a passiverecipient, rather than an active participant in the knowledge field. The‘charismatic attitude’ on the other hand is recognised by its ideology of art asfeeling, not reason. All learning is individual from an inner source. Learningis derived from the inner voice of the individual, and this is what is necessaryto develop society (Lowenfeld 1970). Neither the ‘lecturing attitude’ nor the‘charismatic attitude’ captures the strong craft tradition and the knowledgecontained in the practice, 41 and both are in my estimation in its own way apassive view of art education. Because of the lecturing attitude’s lack offocus on skills as a part of the knowledge base, and because the charismaticattitude considers knowledge that exists outside the individual to be irrelevantto the subject as such, no teaching is possible. This is a paradox in aneducational setting.Remnants of these problems can also be seen in the A&C curriculum of2006, where the practical aspect of the subject, such as techniques, skills andmaterials are no longer linked directly to specific models or projects the wayit used to be. This is seen as hindering the creative processes that will enablethe child to explore their place in the world. Freedom from constants such asmodels or canons is seen as preferred over a base where the pupils solve thesame problem by the same procedure. To draw a comparison to Mathematics,it would mean that the pupils were asked to solve the given problems, not bya set way of working, but by experimenting on their own with no models tolearn from or set tools to use. In any other subject than Arts and Crafts thisway of teaching would be recognised as irresponsible. Experimentation41 This is a problem that deserves a further discussion. I will however not address it at present.63