Herman and Effland Reading Reaction

Visual Culture

In the article by Effland, I thought that he was insulting fine art, writing about how art education should lessen the traditional ties on painting, drawing and so on. Instead, art education should focus on visual culture. That made me think, “What is visual culture?” I wasn’t exactly sure what visual culture was referring to until I read that visual culture relates to various form of popular culture, folk traditions, industrial, interior and graphic design. Things like packaging, photography, illustration and so on is all a part of visual culture. By understanding my opinion on the arts, and that all of these things are included in the arts, it made me realize that art education does need to integrate visual culture as much as it does the fine arts. With new technology and advancements in the world around us, art is everywhere, and educated designers are the people who are creating our visual world. My opinion is that visual culture should be taught in the art education classroom, but it needs to be based on the fine arts like drawing, painting, and art history. These basics provide a solid foundation to what art is, and what we can push art to be in the modern day.

In Herrmann’s article, I also felt a negative undertone. This time it was based towards teachers hindering students, and doing so through lesson planning. It’s like she was saying that teachers are forcing the students to think a certain way, rather than giving them a chance to explore everything they can in each lesson plan. I think that the example of the narrative created by cutting out photocopied images was a fun lesson plan that made the children analyze the problem at hand. The students had to find an appealing way to create a narrative using only certain materials. Herrmann said that it confined the student’s choices, which was the teacher’s way of limiting the student.  I agree that art is changing. I just think that art education is changing with it, and is not stifling the students like Herrmann said teachers do today. I want to prove Herrmann wrong and show her that all art teachers are not just teaching the way we were taught, or that we are controlling the way students think, not allowing them to develop their own ideas.