Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Race in America 841
To introduce the specialized argot that comes into play when describing and analyzing artwork,
students were asked to describe a painting as if they were reporting a car accident. This aided them
in achieving objectivity. I converted my classroom into a gallery, Faux 215. On the walls, I hung
replicas of: mosaics, frescoes by Giotto and Fra Angelico, and paintings by Van Gogh, Duchamp,
Monet, Picasso, Magritte, and Pollack. As they examined these pieces, I provided an overview
of the principles governing realism and abstraction. Before entering the new gallery, students
crowded in the hall in front of the gallery to review museum directives designed to guide their
behavior. In Faux 215, students had fun applying their new vocabulary and their newly acquired
insights as they attempted to review a painting in the manner of an art critic from The New York
Times. Students were required to review two paintings, applying the seven key categories of art
criticism, and to present their reviews to the class. The simulation required students to consider
how we arrive at opinions, and it made them active, often enthusiastic, participants in a new
arena—guided analysis to reach an informed evaluation. Further, students were obliged to leave
the comfort zone of a more traditional social studies class and to envision themselves in a new
role, that of art critic.
Gradually, the students began to feel comfortable with their new “palette.” The next investigation
was an examination of the monuments that have helped shape the United States landscape.
Students read and analyzed the article, “Lies We Tell Ourselves,” by James Loewen. Among
other things, Loewen describes how historical markers “distort our understanding of the past and
warp our view of the world... [because] Americans like to remember only the positive things,
and [because] communities like to publicize the great things that happened in them” (Loewen
2000, p. 20). By asking students to think about an essential controversy—“Who gets memorialized
and who gets ignored?” (Loewen 2000, p. 20)—I was, in effect, asking them to become
aware of a pervasive mode of thought—the Eurocentric, patriarchal, and elitist viewpoint—and to
consider what might be done to empower and give voice to another perspective, that of the non-
Eurocentric, non-patriarchal, non-elitist—in other words—the subjugated and the disaffected.
Joe Kincheloe maintains in his introduction to this encyclopedia, that students with their new
lens would be able to remove their ideological blinders and demand multiple perspectives in their
studies.
Students then were asked to consider the function of selected monuments by asking themselves
the following questions:
� What is the difference between a monument and a memorial?
� Why do we build monuments? What are the motivating factors?
� Why do we create monuments that commemorate tragic or horrific events?
� What function(s) does (do) such monuments serve for survivors? For the fallen?
� For society as a whole? For posterity?
� Why do we build monuments to commemorate heroes or heroic events?
� Who should have say in the design and building of monuments?
� Who and what are memorialized by a specific community. Who and what are ignored? Who decides these
important questions?
� How do monuments simplify the past? How do they “sanitize” the past?
� What important messages do monuments convey about the society that created them?
This critical examination enabled students to uncover the human motivations for building monuments
and the ability of monuments to communicate not only to the societies that created them
but also to future generations. These individual examinations, and the ensuing group discussions,