The Gendering of Art Education: Modernism, Identity, and Critical Feminism
Author: Pen Dalton
Publisher: Open University Press, 2001
Dalton's book is a must-read for anyone interested in art education. Her writing effortlessly tackles pedagogical theories, psychology, and social sciences shaping them into an accessible, easy-to-read text. In fact, those interested in learning about the history of art education would be wise to start with this book.
From the Introduction: "The Gendering of Art Education does not claim to survey the whole field of art education, but focuses on those themes that have received less attention in existing histories and which help to explain gender difference. It is a partial account, told from an interested feminist commitment."
The book is divided into six chapters which trace art education chronologically from start of late modernity in the late 1800s to the post-modern era.
1. Theoretical perspectives
This chapter is where the author frames her book with supportive theories and arguments.
Check out this compelling point from page 16 (summarized and some direct quotes).
Feminists work both with and against emotions/irrationality/intuitiveness, because masculine and Enlightenment era values disregard them as illogical. Feminists have to contextualize emotions/irrationality/intuitiveness within the masculine context in order to be seen as making legitimate and valid points.
Dalton points out that art education is subject to "a similar paradox" since, "Postmodern culture and art question and undermine the rational and the progressive, and reject logic and the possibility of civilized and self-aware identity."
"Art education has to teach about art, but it cannot work in the same way and within the same beliefs. Education is a social practice which requires selective and hierarchical value systems, accountable priorities, shared meanings, and aims. Working with children and students, ethical and critical considerations are involved. In planning curricula, designing courses, evaluating chronological processes, theory, logic and belief in progress are necessary in order to take any action."
So art doesn't have to answer to any defined moral codes, philosophical ideas, religious beliefs, etc., BUT since teachers work with kids in the public or institutional setting, educators must be critical of the works of art, theories, and beliefs they are teaching in the curriculum. What is your curriculum really teaching? Is your 'art history corner or lecture' full of dead white guys? What are the invisible frameworks within your curriculum?
2. Nineteenth century contexts
Here is where your history of art education reading really gets a solid foundation. Dalton takes us through the western world context of the dawning of the Industrial Age, the Enlightenment, the move to socialist governance like public schooling for working class children, but emphasizes, of course, the role of art education and it's genderization.
Here's a super short attempt at summarizing: We know that historically art education was for the bourgeoisie. Working class children (girls) experienced art if a well-to-do woman was willing to charitably donate time to the topic. As modernization set in, consumeristic culture shaped the gendering of visual arts and art education. Women's art experiences tended to be textile-based and often from mass produced (leisure craft industry) kits or patterns -labeled as "kitsch" and excluded from "serious" or "high" art. "Their tastes and pleasures were passively formed within a design industry that rendered them dependent on pre-produced patterns and materials specially designed for non-useful leisure hobbies. Women consumed large amounts of materials, and inevitable produced items that were derided in the press and art criticism as feeble in execution and of questionable aesthetic and functional value." (p. 47)...AHEM...Pinterest...AHEM...
Art education in schools was primarily geared towards mechanical drawings attracted mostly boys. "With no recognition in the realities of everyday working class girls’ lives in the 19th century, girls would have shown less interest and been less absorbed (in mechanical drawing) and ‘disengaged’ and less successful in school art." (p. 42)
Gradually, "Women were entering the teaching profession in large numbers not to replace authoritarian pedagogy – which continued in the teaching of older children – but explicitly to add a quasi-maternal nurturance to the teaching of the elementary school child." (p. 57)
3. Psychology in art education
Dalton demonstrates the why the slow introduction of women in the art education workforce primarily began at the elementary level. Not only were the women art teachers intended to be nurturing roles, but also the systems of progress are seen as moving from "feminine" to "masculine." It's explained well on page 68: Evolutionary narratives: "Old paradigm psychology…constructs a notion of the feminine as an earlier, primitive stage of development, moving towards rational, abstract and more masculine cognitive styles as its end aim."
The chapter rolls through big names in educational psychology (mostly male) to demonstrate not only the changing theories, but the gender assumptions and discrepancies found in them.
The author introduces an important concept of "Bricolage" (assemblage-like-artwork) as a form of divergent thinking (in opposition to linear thinking and logic models) seen as "feminine" and therefore often dismissed. Later in the book, bricolage becomes an essential part of post-modern education practices. (p. 75)
4. Modernist art and design education
In this chapter (and some in the previous chapter), Dalton narrates the scientific and democratic attempt to art making that emerged during the modern era. We see the rise of Discipline Based Art Education (DBAE), an emphasis on the elements and principles of art, and even more, the education of women and girls on recognizing aesthetics (and developing "good taste") for consumerist objects.
“The feminine individual constructed by psychology for art education was the same feminine individual hailed as the ideological subject of consumption.” (p. 96).
“Art and Craft discourse in schools colluded in this process of constructing subordinate feminine identities. Girls were positively encouraged in arts and design to develop critical, analytical and moral faculties within feminized discourses of taste and beauty, rather than in the context of academic or intellectual activity." (p. 99).
While art education was educating young girls on matters of beauty and taste, society continued to pressure women to be passive and subordinate to males. In the art room, boys were praised as "more creative," because girls' passivity was seen as less innovative.
"Girls have often been criticized by teachers and educators, even in radical educational discourses, of being passive, conservative and accepting. The vigorous rebellion of boys is regarded as somehow ‘more creative.’ Girls’ art has been pejoratively compared to boys’ art as being less innovative, less creative, weaker in structure, more decorative and ‘pretty.’ But girls had been excluded from the more rigorous forms of technical drawing. Their practice and taste was denigrated to the status of debased kitsch." (p. 101).
5. The feminization of art education
As I was reading, I dog-eared nearly every page of this chapter. Instead of regurgitating all of the quotes, I highly encourage you to get Dalton's book and pay close attention to this (and the next) chapters. To summarize Chapter 5:
Post-modern society began to recognize the importance of inclusion of new and differing ideas. The aggressive boss in the workplace became bad management as business psychology recognized the social effects on the employees were not as economically good for the company as a more open and receptive management style. Workplaces and schools are interested in more team-oriented and cooperative cultures (traditionally thought of as feminine).
As management styles and educational styles changed, patriarchal systems became invisible, but no less powerful. The invisible patriarchal structure is less interested in the actual relationships of colleagues, students, and educators and more interested in the economic benefits of these methods.
Dalton writes:
“At the same time in this picture, there lurks in the shadows an invisible and inaccessible power of patriarchal authority to which this happy relationship of maternal art teachers and their creative children are subject.
This power is exerted in the workings of the state and the continuing influence of industry, and corporate power and their twin interests in consumption.
It is active in the organization of the curricula, in the way that art is packaged and delivered. It is enacted in the everyday process of regulating children, organizing materials, and plans for the lesson, in systems of evaluation and assessment, the meeting of attainment targets, and the marking of examinations.
Teachers and children are both subject to the invisible Laws of the Father. They carry out and their identities are constructed within larger systems over which they themselves have no authority or knowledge. These systems are based in psychological concepts that have been buried over time and are virtually inaccessible." (p. 135).
6 Beyond gendering: tactics and strategies
The book provides a profound argument laying out the history and psychology of the gendered development of art education practices. Dalton brings it home in Chapter 6 where she offers suggestions and strategies for moving forward.
Embrace the bricolage. Feminist studies, queer-theory, post-colonial scholarship and many other post-modern approaches are essential to research because they diverge from the linear narratives of history, psychology, and education. They draw from one another, from sociology, from visual culture, and a myriad of academia to assemble new narratives and new ways of thinking.
"Critical feminism as a strategy for education does not imply a unified force based on a biological notion of a unified notion of ‘woman’ as a distinct category. Instead it bases its action in common ideals and aims – however imaginary – with people working together…on the basis of conscious coalition, affinity and political kinship.
Feminism and art education need not aim to unify all experience into fundamental accounts which apply at all times. It can reappropriate, rework and repair older ideas in relation onto the new." (p. 142).
Create. "Part of art and art education’s purpose is to develop the capacity to negotiate cognitively other ways of being, of imagining different and between ways of living and relating to the world than those offered by the present regimes of power and consumption, and bring them into some kind of creative production.
This sometimes means a suspension or interruption of the existing practices and dominant identifications with fixed gender (or racial or class) roles and a ‘modernist,’ objective, autonomous, and even elitist position where a relative disassociation of knowledges from power can be attempted." (p. 147).
In other words, in our awareness of the (invisible) power structures, we can creatively bend and question the foundations of our field. Art education is unique in that it's purpose (unlike many 'traditional' school academics) is to challenge assumptions, explore possibilities, and examine identity. To Dalton, a critical feminist approach -- one that confronts patriarchal pedagogy like mechanical drawings and "heavier" (wood, metals, shop) materials are for boys while organic drawings and softer materials are for girls -- in developing our curricula and shaping our teaching philosophies will begin the process of a less gender-biased art education experience.
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