Gardening Practices of Education

Arts education discourse is full of metaphors coming from the botanical world (Martins, in press). We have been interested in understanding how these metaphors (the child as a seed or as a plant) have moral and political implications in terms of the government of children. But not only: these metaphors start from a developmental approach in terms of conceiving the child (see: [[stages of development]]). The educator as a gardener has the task of conducting the 'right' development of the child, as a botanical tutor to plants. The idea of growth was precisely first applied to plants, progressively being applied also to animals and the human person. The idea of development, on the other hand, has a more recent use, but since the end of the eighteenth century, it has been associated with a gradual process of unfolding and an advance through progressive stages. As Kathryn Stockton puts it, the idea of growth presupposes verticality, the idea of development presupposes linearity. The child grows not only in stature but according to a linear behaviour. The willful child would be the one that queerized the idea of a 'natural' gradual and linear development. Developmental theories of the child seek to nullify the child who ‘grows sideways’ and in different directions.

2022 - The 'eventualization' of the creative child in arts education, or, unpacking the layers of hegemony and coloniality (Cat Martins)

Submitted by csmartins on Fri, 05/26/2023 - 19:33

The texts focuses on the colonialities of arts education practices such as developmentalist rationality, the historical equivalence of the child with the so-called 'primitive', the gardening practices and the straightening devices of education. It starts by analyzing the cover of the 1951 Unesco Courier and asks how this image seems so familiar to us?

The text is in Portuguese and can be downloaded here

2022 - The colonialities of arts education: seeds, plants and the gardening practices of education in the making of the nature of the child (Cat Martins)

Submitted by csmartins on Fri, 05/26/2023 - 18:16

The text looks at some metaphors used in arts education discourses, namely the metaphor of the child as a seed and as a plant, and of the educator as a gardener, whose function would be to conduct, without disturbing, the child's growth. These practices are contradictory and carry various types of violence, whether in the ways of imagining a universal child (having the subject European, adult, male, 'white', non-disabled, as a becoming) from developmentalist perspectives, or in the hope of their future.

Workshop The Historicization of the Creative Child: working with and against an archive

Submitted by csmartins on Fri, 05/26/2023 - 13:23

This is a workshop in which we will introduce the Project The Historicization of the Creative Child in Education. We will focus on the archive that is being constructed and strategies to work with and against this archive. We will mobilize archival materialities and work through some questions with the participants: How was the creative child constructed within western arts educational discourses at the intersection of discourses on race, class, gender, and ableism? Which subject positions are being mobilized? What are the colonialities we can name and deconstruct?

1916 - Child Art (Katherine Ball)

Submitted by csmartins on Thu, 12/12/2019 - 07:39

Katherine Ball was the Director of art in public schools in San Francisco. In this article, the naturalization of the child as an artist is evidenced, but not a given. The value of arts education was not to produce artists but rather "to give a training designed to develop the faculties of observation, imagination and graphic expression".

We highlight some of the passages in the text:

1936 - Child Art and Franz Cizek (Wilhelm Viola)

Submitted by csmartins on Tue, 12/10/2019 - 13:14

This book was published in 1936 by Wilhelm Viola and contains a forward by R. R. Tomlinson, author of the book Children as Artists. Viola was one of the voices that most spread Cizek's work in the English-speaking world. In this book, he began by explaining what could be understood by child art. 

1897-1938 - Juvenile Art Class (Franz Cizek)

Submitted by csmartins on Thu, 11/14/2019 - 11:51

The Juvenile Art Classes opened in 1897 in Austria and lasted until the 1930s. The program of the classes was: "Let the children grow, develop and mature". Through William Viola's books on Cizek's methods, we learn about his practices and praise of what he considered the natural creative child. Just for the 'slogan' of the classes, we can see how the gardening practices of education informed his thought. Cizek was a traveling author through the works of art educators like Marion Richardson, R. R. Tomlinson, and Herbert Read.

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