[iDC] sharing "new media" curricula/potentials

[Sarah Kanouse]

Thanks for your provocative post, Ryan.

> But that university cannot maintain any semblance of autonomy if it  
> is inextricably bound up with "real world skills" that are defined  
> as how we understand a "job" to function. Otherwise, we can do  
> nothing other than replicate the structure that currently exists,  
> further subsidizing the privileges already unequally distributed  
> (which is mostly what education has always done).  <snip> Sure,  
> this is all "idealistic" and somewhat based on my own sense of  
> privilege in the economy, but the false opposition of "realism"/ 
> pragmatism and idealism is weak

Clearly, how a "job" functions has clearly changed in the last 25  
years and is going to change a lot more.  A good argument could be  
made that teaching students about global economic systems is an even  
more necessary "real life" skill than teaching them programming--and  
not just to carve out a comfortable niche for themselves but to be  
able to imagine and realize alternatives, even on a small scale.

Like Ryan, I'm one of the less experienced people on this list, so  
I'm still amazed whenever I go to university-level meetings and  
realize again the incredibly tiny sliver of the overall pedagogical  
and research pie that represents critical or even more broadly  
humanistic inquiry (in either the sciences or the humanities).  The  
result is that any new curricular initiative, in order to get  
approved by the university and ultimately the board of higher ed, has  
to get dressed up in pre-professional clothes.  After it winds its  
way through the approval process, it's often very comfortable in  
those clothes, now a couple of years out of date.  My school is  
talking about starting a gaming initiative, for example, but it's  
been hard to get anyone to discuss openly the question of where  
gaming industry jobs might be in the 3+ years that it'll take to get  
the major approved.

I think the question of our responsibility to students is necessarily  
bound up with the question of responsibility to, for and often even  
against the institutions where we're teaching or moving.  That seems  
to be the only way to wrestle open the reductive equation of  
criticality with privilege and "real world" training with populism.   
If there is critical value in becoming fluent in a production  
process, it exists more in the capacity to recognize that that  
process--as it is embedded in 'real world' systems--is neither  
natural nor determined, and to shape it or find alternatives to it  
when necessary.  That goes for us, too, involved in the "production  
process" of conferring grades and degrees.

Not that I've found that alternative, mind you...

Sarah




On Jan 26, 2007, at 2:03 PM, Ryan Griffis wrote:

> It seems to me, IMHO (which i don't mean insincerely, as i know i  
> am not the most experienced on this list), we can be arguing for  
> accessible education (if anyone still believes in the right to  
> education as much as consumer rights) AS WELL AS education that is  
> not simply training for an industry that changes with every  
> graduating class. This would also go along with discussions about   
> disconnecting wages from privilege, so that higher ed would not be  
> the index of wealth disparity that it is. So, sure, the life of an  
> artist shouldn't be any more or less difficult than anyone else.  
> The ability to pay rent shouldn't be attached to such roles to  
> begin with.
> Academic institutions should have no rights, much less the right to  
> a student's five years. Students should have a right to the  
> university. We should be discussing how people not even attending  
> institutions of higher ed are paying for it as much as we discuss  
> how much students are paying for it. Why don't they have as much to  
> say about what students learn as the industries we're training them  
> to work in do? i don't hear anyone calling for town hall meetings  
> to discuss university curriculum.
> . If you can't be idealistic in education, where the hell can you be?
> Am i saying universities/colleges/art schools have no  
> responsibility for what happens with students post-education? i  
> don't think so... i think that to take that responsibility  
> seriously requires a critical response to the notion of education  
> being about buying jobs/privileges and escalating a system that, i  
> think, only increases inequity. If we want to "train people for the  
> real world," i sure as hell hope that we're considering what we  
> mean by the "real world" and if that's the world we want or not.
> What is at stake in teaching software and programming to potential  
> artists as a discipline? Can a coherent and responsible (again, to  
> what, is a value question, not a technocratic one) methodology be  
> distributed that allows for differences in skills and interests,  
> but also provides room for a general body of knowledge to exist? In  
> other words, can an artist who works with digital media have a  
> basic understanding of how to make something work (enough to be  
> working with a more skilled person even), but not be so indebted to  
> a production process that it is all consuming and over determined?
> Andrea's example of the browser project for example. Even if those  
> students produced lousy code (not saying they did :) ), is the  
> understanding they develop of both how digital networked media and  
> its politics function not worth more than them becoming efficient  
> code writers? Personally, i'm not training people to be web-artists  
> or digital artists, or usually not even artists (most of my  
> students take my classes as electives and often as a one-off  
> because they want to learn how to build a web site either for  
> professional reasons - graphic designers - or personal ones, most  
> everyone else). There is a critical value to becoming fluent in a  
> production process, but there are also critical limitations. The  
> symbolic realm is as complex and challenging to understand as the  
> technological one (pragmatically speaking), and there is a  
> compromise that happens in bringing those skills together in one  
> setting. Should more detailed knowledge of both be included in  
> their education as well? No doubt. But i also believe that it is  
> important that they see these knowledges utilized in the same space  
> (as Andrea's example does).
> as Patrick said, "this is meant as a slightly polemic stance, meant  
> to invite positive and reflective discussion."
>
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