Working Within the Box
People often talk about "thinking outside the box."
All too frequently, they fail to consider the conditions, parameters, and necessities within that box - the school.
History has shown us that creativity is stimulated by the challenges of limitation. Examining, defining, and addressing the needs and goals of educators within this country's public education system is the philosophy behind "Working Within the Box."
This philosophy has evolved through an understanding of human development. We and our nearest primate relatives, the chimpanzees, differ in only 1% of our gene structure. But, as a consequence of that difference, forty to fifty thousand years ago humankind became able to do something that no other primate, no other organism on the planet could do. This mammal could imagine. She could imagine herself being somewhere else. He could imagine himself being inside the mind of someone else.
According to Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, this was the "Big Bang" of our intellectual development. This, in turn, corresponded to the evolution of our anatomical structures which permitted the evolution of complex speech which led to the development of language - our ability to communicate intricate ideas, concepts, and events. Language then evolved through the exercise of our imagination and imagination expanded through the use of language.
Professor Whiten has demonstrated that, around five years of age, children achieve this capacity to attribute the actions, motives, and beliefs of someone else, which enables them to far outstrip the ability of our chimp relatives. Jean Jacques Hublin, of the University of Bordeaux, postulates that portable art artifacts, fashioned through the imagination of our prehistoric ancestors, were themselves used as a medium of communication.
When it comes to students, especially those between the ages of 12 and 16, arts-infused approaches to education enable us to reach them in order to teach them, for you cannot teach a student who doesn't want to study. When you stimulate a student's imagination, you engage their emotion and if you can get a student to feel you can get them to learn. The arts' primary stock on the shelf is emotion.
Therefore, all of our programs abide by the following guidelines:
- Have students think, create, and communicate
- Engage students' imagination and, consequently, their emotions
- Correlate with the school's mandated curriculum
- Fit within existing school curricular and scheduling structures
- Demonstrate artistic principles which have application in everyday life.