1. A Dark Age for the Arts
2. The University and Its Problems
3. University Music Schools and Their Problems
4. The Arts Humanize
5. It's All About Teaching and Learning
6. Solutions
7. Manifesting the Dream: The Academy
U.S. Crisis: Art, Education and Society, authored by brothers Gary and Eric Funk, is a very honest, hard-hitting description of U.S. society as reflected in our culture's deteriorating attitude towards the arts and its arrogant tolerance of significant slippages in the quality of our educational system - a degeneration that occurred extremely slowly but right in front of our very own eyes.
Gary Funk
We live in a culture fed by technology, delivering international news almost simultaneously. Compassion weariness can people to polarizing issues as a reaction, leaping to "right" or "wrong" stances reflecting their values. Opposing positions on a linear axis leave little room for discussion, "value" turned into a noun instead of the verb "value", the latter promoting wonder, questions, and dialog.
ReplyDeleteThinking and speaking in questions creates buoyancy in the conversation and spawns ever deeper and more meaningful questions. Our intention with this book is to trigger the ongoing productive dialog regarding what is going wrong with arts education and society by inviting substantive questions, not immediate answers or pejorative comments that flatly criticize or condemn. We all know the problems.
Getting to the answers is an exciting process of questions that together reveal vectors of entry toward the issues centers. There are no quick fixes. Revamping the mindset of the collective is the ultimate goal and respectfully requires many minds working together to identify and articulate the "disease" rather than being held left of the center of the dialog for erring toward speaking about the symptoms.
Eric Funk
Hearing that my last entry to the blog was not appearing, I tried two more times. Consequently there are now three appearances of the same entry. Consider it a doppler effect.
ReplyDeleteOnce the book is available and people have an opportunity to read and respond, I feel confident that significant dialog will ensue.
As Gary points out, most of what we have said is not new. Rather is remains unsaid. For the sake of status quo too many people remain silent, suggesting that the problems come with the institution. But we believe this is not the case. Social structures may reward a suspension of high neutral and sustained ambivalence, but there is a critical point when looking the other way contributes to the erosion of quality simply for resignation to the tacit agreement that the situation while untenable must be accepted as a given.
Revolution has a deep connection with revolving, turning that which is static toward something more fertile and that promotes growth. Working in an alive space is inspiring and ignites natural human passion. Working in a dead space is not and does not. The terrarium effect forces growth back on itself by simply having an upper limit.
I don't like the phrase "think outside the box". There isn't any box. Once someone says that phrase, they have just put you in one. There isn't any terrarium either. The only upper limit is self imposed or requires the individual to accept the imposition.
Eric Funk