Letting Art Teach

Gert Biesta is one of the most important theorists working in educational discourse today. He has defended the unique value of education against economic rationalization and its normalization through the ‘language of learning’. In his key works; Beyond Learning (2016), Good education in the Age of Measurement (2010), The Beautiful Risk of Education (2014) Biesta has questioned the extent to which the ‘language of learning’ has supported a redefinition of the student as consumer. Central to the consumer model of education is a conception of ‘lifelong learning’ which reduces educational attainment to lifelong ‘survival’ in the global economy. Innovation, creativity, adaptability, and resilience are the current buzzwords mobilized to define student needs in the face of economic volatility. Under the conditions of such economic pressure, art and its teaching are instrumentalised in new and insidious ways.

In his new book Letting Art Teach: Art Education After Joseph Beuys (2017) Biesta explores the various ways that art and education are instrumentalised in educational discourse and policy. For Biesta, the teaching of art should enable students to have a unique dialogue with the world beyond its closure by rationalization. Replacing the over-emphasis on ‘student-centered’ learning with a call for ‘world-centered’ education, Biesta affirms the value of art and teaching as an ‘event’ that opens up spaces for the student to be addressed by the world, and in turn, to address the world back.

Letting Art Teach at the Hugh lane Gallery on the 6th Feb will expand on the ideas developed in Letting Art Teach. Education After Joseph Beuys (2017). To enable a broader discussion on these ideas three art educators from three different art institutions have been invited to respond to the presentation, they are: Dr. Brian Fay (DIT), Prof. Brian Hand (NCAD), Dr. Tina Kinsella (IADT).

The discussion will be chaired by Dr. Sharon Todd (Maynooth University).