Lili Krakowski on tue 18 mar 08
Kelly:
No you are not "making this more complicated than it needs to be".
But you are placing the "complication" and "ethical questions" in the wrong
spot.
You have signed on to an "academic" track that involves a whole lot of
"ethical questions."
A lot of these are deja vus. Which all boil down to the old,
if unpleasantly true, adage that he who
takes the king's shilling wears the king's livery.
This current "problem" is
making you ask, in essence, whether you want to play the game.
You write: "To photograph [student work] seems a bit presumptuous.
It seems based on the assumption that somehow their work is a product of my
instruction, which itself seems based on the notion of education that
pictures student minds as empty buckets to be filled by a teacher."
Although my skepticism about Academia is infinite, I do think
there is truth to the empty bucket theory. Perhaps it is
more a pigeonhole effect. When anyone faces a new viewpoint, or is made
to see an old viewpoint in a new way, there is a tiny pigeon hole in the
brain that gets filled. So your students' minds might not be empty
buckets, but by encountering YOU and YOUR viewpoints they
either added to, or modified what was in their minds. Do think
of how influenced potters, inter al, have been merely by traveling
and seeing what other potters in other places do....
You write what sounds like a variation of the Four Sons example
in the Passover liturgy. How do you instruct a wise son, a bad son,
one who is slow-witted, and one too young to ask? [ There is some
dispute about the translation of the "slow-witted". Please: we are
doing clay here, not Hebrew!]
Like any teacher, you have an assortment of students. The people who want
those photos know that. You may even have some students who
know as much as you, and take the class so as to have studio space
and access to a kiln. The people who want those photos know that.
In fine, the ethical question you are raising is a broader one than
those pictures. I think that if you ask the students may you take
photograph, and use their work for this project, if you write a brief
explanatory
tag for each picture--if that is allowed--and select what you photograph
honestly and frankly...then the ethical question (vide supra) is
about the entire system --not its fragmented parts.
And while discussion of religion is seriously banned from
ClayArt, may I wish all of you, yours, etc a blessed Easter.
Lili Krakowski
Be of good courage
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