Newer Media and the Teaching of Art

Abstract

TIME: The very near future. CLASS: “The Visual Arts in World Cultures.” PLACE: Any American high school. At 10:23, Mr. Dobbs, the art teacher, begins his second lecture to the visual arts lecture group of 30 pupils. (Although the Federal Education Act of 1972 restricted class size to a maximum of 18 pupils, lecture groups of up to 40 students are permissible under the law.) Having dealt with primitive habitations and post and lintel construction in architectural design during the first lecture, he is ready to describe the discovery and uses of the arch as a building principle. As he presents his ideas, he presses the button marked “visual” on his wrist-band instrument panel. The room lights dim and the classroom screen glows with 3-D color images of the Coliseum, the Arch of Titus, the aqueduct at Segovia, etc. The silken tones and fine diction of Richard Burton take over the lecture from Mr. Dobbs with a synopsis of factual data about the structures. At the appropriate moment diagram overlays analyzing the directions of stress appear on the screen. At this point several students tap the photo duplication button on their desk instrument panels: the diagrammatic analysis on the screen in color photocopy form will be a useful illustration in their note book projects. By the end of the lecture session each of the students has selected an individual or small group project for the following study period. Several have chosen programmed sequences presenting architectural history in greater detail, to be viewed on their individual desk units; some will work together on a series of models of arch-structured buildings, others on group murals; two younger students have elected to prepare a sound 8mm film on the “Uses of the Arch as a Decorative Motif in our Community.” Meanwhile, Mr. Dobbs jots down a reminder to request that film clips from the movie set restoration of the Hadrianic Baths at Lepcis Magna (from the Hollywood epic “Goddesses of the Western World”) be stored in the school district computer memory banks. Next school quarter, this lecture will be improved by the extra visuals—though without the goddesses, of course, he tells himself.