The importance of going abroad to study/work

The students who travel abroad to learn a new language and new culture, this deprivation and/or alteration of the self comes as with the shock of using the second language. The learner’s self becomes trapped behind the communication barrier that results, and only an altered picture of the self, one filtered through this new, incomplete language, is projected by the learner. Moreover, the cultural frame of the new environment causes the presented self to be reinterpreted through yet another filter of meaning. Learners become disadvantaged in their ability to assimilate new information, develop their social networks and present their self, when their own frame of reference becomes marginalized by the prominent frame of the new culture.

From Pellegrino Aveni, V (2005) Study Abroad and Second language Use Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 9-16

In Intercultural Communication: Identity by Holliday A, Hyde M and Kullman J, p.121

Notes on Art Education

Cultural Sustainability, cultural engagement and visual culture plays a big role in development of values and the transferring of belief systems.

Visual art making acknowledges previous learning, personal meaning making, the real world and audience. It presents a platform for critical self reflection and a space to facilitate the ongoing mediation of society, cultural values and citizenship.

It would have been interesting to explore how art making affirms our consciousness about the world and self through creative engagement and communicative knowing. How can we develop students’ capacities to engage creatively with learning in environments that provide opportunities for thoughtful participatory understanding about self as a citizen of the world, or as a citizen of the world, or as a member of none’s national or local community. It is identifying and reflecting that an understanding of one’s world is dependant on knowing how contemporary society communicates its values and beliefs informed by economic, environmental, cultural and political forces. In a world dominated by the triumpth of the image, multi-modal practices and visual culture (Duncum, 2003), being visually literate is fundamental, and having the skills to creatively engage with communicative knowing within the dominant discourse is essential to the active construction of an individual’s values, beliefs and identities.

Source: Creative Engagements with Visual Culture, Communicative Knowing, Citizenship and ContemporaryVisual Art Education 
Kathryn Grushka, University of Newcastle

The importance of Art Education

Researching into Art and its importance of giving it a significant placement within our societies.

Personal perspective:

The more we travel the more capabilities we have to absorb and critically overlook our world with its people and surroundings. We grow, we learn, we get wiser, but it does not become easier, rather the opposite, to understand this world, humanity in general. Traveling the world and speaking several languages does not solve any problems and cannot contribute to the magic formula of gaining the control over the world structure. It raises even more questions instead, seeing all the complexities of human soul, you cannot but wonder about its similarities, as well is it predictabilities. You become overly self-critical as you recognize some of flaws in yourself, seeing yourself from many perspective sets you in a difficult position of occasional over analysis, which sometimes is critical to our happiness and careless existence. But as much as you would have wanted to turn the clocks backwards and go back to simplicity and childish view of the world, it is impossible. You want to climb more to fill in all the gaps, to get all your questions answered. The biggest challenge in this case is to start moving in the opposite direction: to learn how to stop, relax, embrace yourself in the moment and meditate. Another solution is to stop caring about your own fulfillment, which is very much propagandised by many western societies, but rather start caring about others, which might save yourself a soul and sanity. Such journey can be difficult and it easy to get lost among endless opportunities and ideas.

Here comes the importance of creativity and art. Vision of the world as something that is based on principles, grids and models is rather abstract and to be honest, rather depressing thought. Any creative act, be it traveling, attending an art exhibition, or having a stimulating and challenging conversation, let us start re-evaluating our personal ambitions, dreams, challenges acquired perspectives, values and principles. Art and ‘creative act’ keep our motivation on the high, without letting us to get bored by accepting our life routines. 

Art also challenges our materialistic values. The importance of family and love is evident and yet many people in the western world tend to forget this simple truth. What one might call ‘simple’ life, is one of the richest in reality. What can be more important that being in the company of people who you know care about you, love you in any way. What can be more valuable then a walk or a chat to a person whose words you know will stay with you and become part of your soul forever. All things material age, people die, but their souls, their love and their creations live on. So isn’t it the most valuable thing in the world? Art helps societies, communities and younger generations to find this spiritual connection through creative exercises. Some might argue that this is an overly simplistic, or maybe overly spiritualistic way of looking at things, that we need economic growth, we need stimuli to keep the humanity grow and develop and this is also very right. I believe that everyone chooses how to balance their lives, which consequently creates a balance on the bigger scale in this world between people of all kinds – sky walkers, dreamers, thinkers, painters, high climbers, money and power grabbers. In the ideal world everyone has this balance within one selves, where we have place for love, care, our children, our work, our passions and hobbies. But it is difficult to achieve in the society where arrogance and money serve as main stimuli. We need to rethink. We need to invest more in non-material things, such as education, art, sustainability and communities.  

Creative Engagements with Visual Culture, Communicative Knowing, Citizenship and

Contemporary Visual Art Education

Kathryn Grushka, University of Newcastle

Article discusses why it is important to develop students’ capacities to engage creatively with learning in environments that provide opportunities for thoughtful participatory understanding about self as a citizen of the world, or as a member of one’s national or local community.

Abstract

New learning in a global society gives attention to the need for learners to engage in constructive, meaningful and transformative processes which have communicative relevance to themselves. It acknowledges the need for cultural sustainability, and the vital role cultural engagement, particularly visual culture plays in development of values and the transferring of belief systems.

Visual art making acknowledges previous learning, personal meaningmaking, the real world and audience while providing authentic learning experiences. It presents as a platform for critical self-reflection and a space to facilitate the ongoing mediation of society, cultural values and citizenship. An examination of visual art curriculum, 5 years of Higher School Certificate art works in NSW and student reflections reveal a rich imagery of how student artists use their art making to affirm their consciousness about the world and self through creative engagement and communicative knowing and is presented as a legitimate site for the negotiation of ones subjectivities and life worlds

The power of today's generation

As a follow up on my previous post on our generation (26.10.11) many coincidences occurred last week as if someone wanted to reassure me and show all the positives about today's world construction and its young generation. What happened had such a big impact on me that I have decided to dedicate more time for its research an write about it as part of my university project. 'Occupy' movement that is. These young boys and girls who went out on the streets on New York first, and then the movement spreading all across the globe makes me rethink about my previous rather spontaneous generalisations about 'hopeless' youth. I do not deny that we all build our assumptions and see the world based on personal experiences and occurrences but when surrounded by an uninspiring crowd it drags one down into pessimistic perspective. But to become overly pessimistic and sad is not a solution here and will not benefit anyone - we have to hold on and try see the best in this world. One has to be rather strong in order not to let the evil' win: ''For evil to flourish, all that is needed is for good people to do nothing'' (E.Burke).

For my future research I will be looking at some striking images and photography of 'Occupy" events and see how it affected media, people's perception of the problems and  most importantly, how it influenced the governmental actions. Will it influence future policies, will it influence the future of our societies? We all know that there is no perfect society, but we as the western humanity will always be reaching for perfection.

Here I would also like to highlight a theory that will probably be the basis of my project research. It reflects perfectly current 'Occupy' events and descibes its causes in a way. The theory of counter-productivity. From the book The Ecological Modernisation Reader (Mol, Sonnenfield, Spaargaren, 2009)

The theory of counter-productivity has many foundations and predecessors, and its central message is: stop growing, start shrinking. A scientific foundation for this was given by the 'thermo-dynamic school of economics' related to N.Georgescu-Roegen, with a transfer of the entropy paradigm from physics to society, which has become the eco-misers' most beloved reference. The idea is that whatever is done uses up energy and resources of a higher order, which unavoidably leads to increased entropy. Each unit of economic value added with each step in the human chain of production equals a step of ecological degradation and destruction of nature. The only conclusion can be : humanity must do away with the existing rationalist, materialist, and outer-wordily oriented pursuits of happiness. We would have to slow down, retire into more spiritual inner worlds, shrinking all the way.

Thinking about our generation

Our generation is well protected and cared for by governments and parents. Parents who lived and worked through dramatic global changes of 60 and 70s, who were brought up by parents who went through the evils of World War, parents who do not want the same painful experience for their kids. They have a house, are able to send their kids to university, and can provide their kids with enough ‘pocket money’ to send them off travelling around the world in hopes they might learn and discover what the real world is. But can kids really appreciate this care without really knowing what pain, fear or struggle means? Many question arise and that I will try to find answers to.

Looking at our western youth makes me wonder if we are going to enter history books of the future as “lost generation”. When lookng around me, I see generation that does not know what pain is, the generation that rely on their governments’ and parents’ support too much, have high expectations of them, a generation that is not willing to fight for a better world, the generation that is rather disconnected from reality.

There are different types of people but I will identify three main streams as a starting point for my future posts: 1) the careless, 2) the ambitious and 3) the wise.

1. The most common type of youth are the mainstream, the ''average'', the type that you see in everyday life. The ignorant type that only cares about creating one perfect bubble of meaningless toys, gadgets and friends around themselves, and then choosing to live in this bubble, ignoring the complexities of live.

2. There are others who do try to make something of their lives, but they concentrate on their education, future, well-being, careers, i.e.material well-being, and perfectioninng their own lives and spiritual strength to the extent when they forget about simplicities and joys that life offers, but most importantly they forget about people who truly and unconditionally love and care about them. As Leo Tolstoy perfectly put into words : “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves”

3. And the third type are the young who are the closest to the reality, they are confused about the world, they have many questions that they want answers to but have nobody out there who can understand and relate to them. Their best friends are their thoughts, books sometimes- they feel they have more in common with them then their peers. The problem with these individuals is that they find it difficult to start acting, to tell the world about their confused minds, they don’t want to interfere or don’t think they can succeed and win over the wickedness of humanity.

Naturally, it is wrong to generalise but these are my personal observations, based on my personal experiences, feelings and cultural background. Coming from a family where spirituality, love and care were always most important, but where the struggle for peace, material and political stability constantly kept on challenging personal values and belonging. Moving across cultures helps one to find the inner self, but it is often when they find the inner self they lose connection or will to connect to the external world. Sometimes being an individual and, to some extent an outsider for some years, becomes overly exhausting practice and makes you want to go back in time, back to simplicity, where your mind stops wondering, stops asking questions, where one is capable to blend in with the crowd and able to connect and have mindless conversations with people around. But this is another story.. Back to generations now..

The challenge now is to create a balance within our generation - inspire the ignorant, remind of simplicities life can offer to the ambitious, and reassure the wise that everything is in their hands and actions, and actions only is the way to make a difference and make our lives worth living.

Great talk by Ken Robinson on creativity and education

Excellent talk, here are a few most interesting and witty quotes from this wonderful, highly entertaining speaker.

- Creativity is as important as literacy

- If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original

- We are educating people out of their creative capacities

- All children are born artists (Picasso). The problem is that we are educated out of it.

- How annoying would that be, to have a 7 year old Shakespeare in your class : stop speaking like that, its confusing everybody!

- Our son had a girlfriend, Sara, a love of his life.. he has known her for a month. He said: “I will never find another girl like Sara”. We were rather pleased about it. Actually she was the main reason why we were leaving the country.

- Professors look at their bodies as transport for their heads. It s a way to bring their heads to meetings.

- We have to radically rethink our view on intelligence. 1. Intelligence is diverse – we think about the world in all ways we are experiencing it: visually, we think in sound, we think kinaesthetically, we think in abstract terms, we think in movement. 2. Intelligence in dynamic – intelligence is interactive: creativity (i.e. having original ideas that have value) comes through interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

- Women are better at multitasking. This is true: if my wife is cooking a meal, which is not often (thankfully), she is also dealing with things on the phone, she is talking to kids, painting the ceiling, she is doing an open heart surgery. If I am cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, if she walks in, I get annoyed- I say, ‘Terrty, please, I am trying to fry an egg in here, give me a break’.

- If the tree falls in the forest, and nobody seen/heard it fall, did it actually fall. If a man speaks his mind in the forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?

- Most people would describe her (Jilian Lynn) rather fugitive behaviour as ADHD nowadays, but it was in 30s, and ADHD was not invented yet, it wasn’t an available condition, people were not aware they could have that.

- The doctor said she was not sick but she was a dancer. She was taken to a dance school where she met people like her, who had to move in order to think. She entered Royal Ballet School, she graduated and had a wonderful dance career, she was involved in the world-known musicals. She is a multi-millionaire now. Somebody else might have put her on medication (when she was young), and told her to calm down.

- We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.

- "If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." Jonas Salk

KORAKOR

Keveen, the founder of Korakor, is an amazing, inspirational individual, who have great ideas of helping, loving and caring. Everyone should consider helping him out. You can donate him using a link on his site, or you can get involved and join him in his adventures. He welcomes everyone who is willing to give a piece of themselves by teaching children in disadvantaged communities, and spreading the knowledge around. Great ideas!