WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM AGAIN?

 

In the college academic arena, educators must be prepared to keep up with ever-changing, ever-growing literacies and be equipped to guide students by limiting the choices to those literacies that will aid in the greatest learning. As author Daniel Keller espouses, this will “Allow people some measure of control over how literacy influences them and how they influence literacy” (p.169). In other words, both educators and students are in need of ways to sort out today’s ever-growing amassing of literacy and knowledge.

 

THE SOLUTION

In order to resolve the problem of the proliferation of literacies available to both students and teachers, educators need to pinpoint which literary will produce the most benefits for both students and teacher.  Art literacy in the classroom will inspire students to think out of the box, cross boundaries, and relate the tenets of art to the tenets of reading, rhetoric, and composition; moreover, this exposure to art literacy will change students' perspective and advance their learning and practice in reading and composition, while making meaning for both students and educators;

Therefore, educators should integrate art literacy into their classrooms.

 

REVIEWING THE SUPPORT

FOR THIS SOLUTION

Art Literacy Narratives

The five video narratives shed light on the differences of personality, of each artist’s literacy, and the way each literacy affected each narration. Watching videos will impact the students in a different way than reading about them. Selfe and Hawisher affirm, “video recordings provide the potential for recording a fuller range of information about human interaction, language, and behavior than conventional observation and note-taking approaches alone” (p. 195). Using these “cultural Rorschachs” can be beneficial in helping students to do the following:

 

          1) Understand what literacy is

          2) Understand how it can be conveyed in unique ways

          3) Understand  how one’s literacy affects the choices a person makes

          4) Understand how art literacy differs from classic literacy (reading and writing)

          5) Understand the importance of reflecting on one’s own literacy

 

Offering students the chance to study these narratives by analyzing the narrators’ rhetoric, and determining how language, movement, and tone affect the narratives, will teach the process of analyzing composition, no matter the medium. In addition, having students create their own literacy narratives will help shape their goals and paths to those goals while, at the same time, giving insight to the educator on how each student’s literacy shapes his or her approach to learning, thus, successfully integrating art into the writing and composition classroom.

 

 

Rhetorical Art

Via rhetorical art, students may find it easier to grasp the canons of rhetoric than by understanding the canons through textuality. Scholars  Arola, Sheppard, and Ball suggest authors use (2014) the five modes of communication texts  (visual, aural, spacial, gestural, and linguistic) to communicate meaning; these tools enable the ability to make an argument or persuade the reader in an artistic, creative way (p. 4).  Students can also learn that the point one is making in a rhetorical composition may not convince the reader of something, but the manner in which the point is conveyed may indeed convince them. Students may incorporate analysis, assessing rhetorical art by using Aristotle’s three elements or Toulmin’s Method of Argumentation; to add to their inquiry, the analysis used when  studying narratives can also be used when evaluating how expenditure of language, movement, and tone strengthens the argument. Unquestionably, the power of rhetorical art shows that the old adage should be revised “Although a picture is worth a thousand words," a piece of art is worth even more. The lessons show that art speaks volumes, and using it in the art-integrated classroom speaks even louder.

 

 

Art Promoting Literacy

Whether at the local or global level, educators, artists, and small, medium and large companies present workshops, seminars, and open the doors of classrooms around the country, all with the purpose of letting art in. If organizations like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Readers, award financial grants to support this movement; if museums establish branches in their institutions, using their funding to promote this movement; if large, well-established sponsors of the arts, like the Kennedy Center, spend  money, time, and resources to reach out to educators and students in order to improve student performance via art; if one teacher occupies her free time developing a video that will help just one student understand a literary concept, and if one student develops a video that gives literary meaning to his peers and got the attention of 164,000 strangers on the internet, it must be that all these people believe that integrating art in the academic classroom will be worth the money, the time, and the energy. This nationwide effort has inspired student and teachers around the country. The knowledge gleaned from integrating art into the classroom will help shape future generations, giving them a greater perspective and empowering them to be creative, harnessing that power via art.

 

IN CONCLUSION

Although technology has opened the gates of knowledge for anyone to access with the mere push of a finger, the enormity of available scholarship boggles the mind. Educators must tread the slippery slope of utilizing technology while battling its negative outcomes. Certainly, in today’s accelerated world, especially in the writing and composition classroom, time spent on sifting through the unending information available takes away from time spent learning. This grows into another problem; the magnitude of information clutter and the abundance of new literacies behind every corner over-encumber students and educators who must wade through the unruliness of it all. Accordingly, students lose the opportunity for learning, cutting corners to everyone’s detriment.  Determining which literacies will produce the most benefit reflects the biggest and most immediate problem for educators. The amounts of choices available make picking seem more like a toss of the dice than an educated decision. Indeed, in today’s digital environment, educators must change the focus, the time, and the energy spent trying to manage the myriad of multiliteracies; instead, attentiveness should be on embracing, benefitting, and sharing the meaning that a particular literacy carries. Putting art literacy in the classroom will have an immediate positive effect on the current situation, helping frenzied students take pause, learn, analyze, create, and grow. These results can happen within one lesson. Therefore, putting this pedagogy into motion now should be a high priority. By integrating art with education, teachers will unquestionably enhance reading and composition in the college classroom. It will offer opportunities for creating lessons where teachers can take the time to teach and students can take the time to learn. The integration of art in the classroom will most assuredly energize students, promote creativity, and result in new literacies. The reward will be an education relevant in today’s world and a learning experience that will be remembered as a literacy that shaped the lives of each participant. In order for art to be successful, it must make meaning. In order for students to learn, they must find meaning. Art in the classroom shows literacy at its finest, unveiling its power as the breath of intellect, the seed of knowledge, and the light of inspiration.