36: Go Tell Aunt Rosie

Education, destruction, rebirth, and reconsideration

Lynda Barry tells a story in her intro to one edition of One! Hundred! Demons! about a teacher (at art college) who healed her confidence and taught her how to teach art: that prof quietly wandered the studio, spending real time looking at each piece as it was unfolding on a student’s easel. The end of each of these viewings was simple: she said “Good,” and moved on.

When I was 19 I intended to be, like Lynda Barry, an artist - specifically a writer or filmmaker. I was deeply vulnerable after the experiences of high school, and of years of living with my crappy father in a state of constant judgement and anxiety, and I was very discourageable. A couple of kind English teachers - and one specifically heroic one, Ruth Jensen from St. Patrick’s in Sarnia - saw my inclination and ability and propped me up, helped me develop confidence, marked a lot of my efforts “Good!” and sent me off to university confident and ready to become.

Harry Something, Wrote One Novel

And then my very first creative writing professor, an unskilled, once-published old prick, took it upon himself to crush me, and did it successfully. He publicly accused me of plagiarism on my first assignment, and refused to believe me that I hadn’t done so (I had never cared enough about school to ever fake or cheat, not one time), and publicly informed me I had no idea what poetry was, and over the year, just tore me down. For what? I don’t know. There was something broken about him, I suppose. But by the end of first year I was done, sworn off writing, pretty destroyed. That’s when I luckily - really luckily - found my way into working with weird kids, and then towards teaching, a life raft that has sustained and fulfilled me, kept me alive, and still makes me happy.

While I was doing that, Lynda Barry had moved into the holy artistic phase of teaching, incorporating that idea of setting people up positively and then saying “Good!” as they figured out what they were doing. Then she wrote a few books about it, and I read them, and they altered me - healed me artistically, gave me the courage to try again, and clarified and improved my teaching to boot.

They Fuck You Up

Hurt people hurt people; this clever cliche is true in everything. A friend turned me onto the brilliant Philip Larkin poem “This Be the Verse” in my late twenties (thanks, Jason) and I hold it in my heart still, and am pretty sure this is behind bad art teaching. (Probably all bad teaching.) (Perhaps all badness.)

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. 
They may not mean to, but they do. 
They fill you with the faults they had 
And add some extra, just for you. 

But they were fucked up in their turn 
By fools in old-style hats and coats, 
Who half the time were soppy-stern 
And half at one another's throats. 

Man hands on misery to man. 
It deepens like a coastal shelf. 
Get out as early as you can, 
And don't have any kids yourself.

There Are More Options Than That

One way “out” of this awful cycle is, of course, to kill yourself and not have kids. But the other way - quite effective and less bloody - is to halt the cycle by being conscious of it, of investigating why you feel and behave like you do, and choosing NOT to hand on misery. I think effective teachers (and parents) are morally bound to do this, perpetually, at least to the degree that they are able.

Grading Kids’ Art Is Bullshit. Prove Me Wrong.

I propose that nobody ever “mark” a child’s artistic efforts again.* What are you doing it for? Are you training the next generation of artists? (You are not.) Being given a “C” for a piece you loved is a damage that doesn’t hone or grow or fine-tune an artist. It just lets you know that what you think is art is not art. The only fair reaction to a kid handing you a piece of art is “Thank you!” And if you get a chance to actually BE one of the teachers who really does help shape and hone young artists, you had better have something to add to them, and it ought to follow your love for the work.

(*I know you “must” report something - so just give them all “A”s. When someone challenges this, ask them to please either draw, sing, or dance an explanation for Why. And if they can’t (they can’t) tell them to reconsider their stance. It is an indefensible practice, once you see it for what it is.)

All babies can sing, dance, and draw. Which probably means you can too. Don’t let your (radically unqualified) grade school teachers take that from you. Or rather - as that’s already probably happened - take it back. And pass that on.

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XO

jep