” In academia it’s considered a virtue to frame questions that yield clear, concise and demonstrably correct answers – answers that remain unchanged no matter who responds to the question. But equally, there exists another entire universe of questions in which the answer ALWAYS changes as each new person engages the question. You can measure to a clear, concise and objective certainty the color of the sky above your head- but what is the color of the sky INSIDE your mind? For Maxfield Parrish the correct answer was cerulean blue; for Albert Ryder it was midnight black; for Beethoven it was F major. Questions that introduce shades of meaning and degrees of certainty and value judgments into the equation engage entire fields of human endeavor that fit poorly (if at all) within the prevailing educational framework. Like the arts, for instance. Making headway in the arts is a process of navigation without numbers. How do you measure what is GOOD? What happens when there are many correct answers to a given question? And what happens when some of those answers are profound, other superficial? Or when some are intellectually abstract, others searingly personal?
Your teachers provide introductions to ideas, to people, to processes-simply put, they provide you with the opportunity to make discoveries.”
The View from the Studio Door – Ted Orland
