Saturday, April 14, 2012
Distinguishing Yourself With Your Own Best Practices
Butts In the Seats: One of the big focuses on college campuses today is tracking student success. It is important that students both earn their degree in a timely manner and have developed appropriate mastery. Classes are scrutinized and numbers crunched to insure quality is being maintained but that instruction is not delivered in a manner that inhibits student success. The students need to master the material, but the way the material is delivered may need to be changed to facilitate the learning process. As you might imagine, there are a lot of conversations about whether standards are being compromised along the way. I hadn’t really seen many connections with the arts until I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week one of the early sections struck a chord.
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4 comments:
There is a fundamental question brought up within this article that I have been grappling with and that is if arts organizations should pander to the masses and make the organization profitable or blame a lack of an audience on external factors and watch the organization go under. Learning and arts are both in need of a change in the format and presentation to continue being effective.
It's nice to know that there are people who are dedicated to focusing on how educational material is delivered rather than the simple fact that it needs to get to students in some undefined manner. My home state has statistically the worst educational system in the country, and arts funding continues to get cut every year. I think that both arts programs and the educational evaluation of those arts programs need to be modified in order to be effective. It would be a lot better than pointing fingers at people and departments who are are just as guilty for the downfall of arts programs in schools are they are themselves.
Well as my mother always said, "you can only change yourself not the people around you". If you are having a problem you should always look at what you are doing before you point the finger at what other people are doing wrong. Theaters need to focus on pulling people in. That should be their major goal with out that we don't have an industry, and even if you are selling out to do that you are still getting butts in seats. Once you have gotten people there once it is easy to get them their again.
This article just makes me think about how fortunate we are to learn in an environment that just gets it. Not everyone understands the arts, and within those few - even less understand theatre. Luckily we have the resources we need to grow as technicians and designers with top of the line equipment. I think that this is critical to who we elect as our next CFA Dean. It scares me that there is possibility of someone being elected that just doesnt understand our bizarre craft as much as those who currently serve. I hope everyone considers this as they participate and follow our CFA Dean search process.
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