art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

104 art / vision / voice
teacher was deviating from the practices he had been taught. In each
case, the struggle reached a moment of conflict. In the mica case, the
student teacher simply left. At Columbia, the younger teacher did not
confront the issue of power with his mentor, even when it had effects
on the youth from his community project, and the conflict was ignored
to some degree as all participants got on with the task of producing a
final product. Such cases reveal the complexity of leadership and
decision-making in team-teaching models, where members represent
a variety of levels of expertise, generations, and previous mentorship
relationships. A similar struggle for power is evident in the
intergenerational conversation at Xavier.
ron The most significant principle of the Xavier case is the idea that it
is important to think intergenerationally. It’s important to understand
the differences and the commonalities across generations. The
quality of what Richard Thomas does with his students—in terms
of engaging [youth in constructive] activity is sometimes more
significant than whether those students will be on the cover of
ARTnews. That’s the issue between the two of them. John Scott is
right. There are certain standards you have to have at the university
level. You can see in his words how important that is to him, but
I think [the tensions in that relationship really came] down to
something else—the student did not feel the teacher valued the way
he has taken the lessons he learned and adapted them to teaching
a new generation. At the end there, you can see that John does care
what Richard does, and sees it as important.
Conflicts of Values
Much of the struggle of power is disguised within the inherent differences
in values between cultural communities, community organizations, and
arts education institutions. The examination of values as a factor in the
cases requires us to look at cultural differences and community knowledge.
In several of the cases, we see the contrast between a fine arts model—
emphasizing formal skills—and community-based interests in content,
popular culture, and personal history.
marina We keep touching on the issue of values. The culture in this
context has an undefined value. It’s a slippery entity. These values are
crucial to identity, to forming people. The kids who thought they
couldn’t do good-enough drawings at mica had internalized an idea
of what the standards were. I’m troubled by terms like “high” and “low”
art. [Community arts practitioners are] struggling to redefine where the