vocate for
identity-specifically, howwe thinkabout it, talkabout it, and teach it. Atthe same time,
t
emergingplatformsofcultural production have been made possible by newtechnologies.
I
I
t
Shiftsin oursocial and cultural milieuand emerging platformsare farfrom beingtwodistinct
"
arenasofintellectual production. They equallyaffectways ofthinkingaboutartas charted by
contemporaryartistsand by those seekingtoshape thefutureofAmerican classrooms, and
17
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PART I: ON EDUCATION
create a dynamic relationship among contemporary art, cultural production, and progressive art
education pedagogy. We can begin by taking cues from our recent experiences, as well as from
our goals for the future, to sharpen our own analyses as art educators ...teachers, and artists.
These kinds of analyses, including that which I present in the remainder of this chapter, translate
into tactical strategies that can be implemented in the classroom to substantively address the
needs of today's and tomorrow's students, strategies that are flexible enough to accommodate the
multiple directions in which our global cultures continue to evolve.
Immigration, Migration, Melting Pots, and Rainbow Underclasses
Many of our aspirations as practitioners of progressive pedagogy and cultural production have
remained constant over time: fostering student-centered learning and open-ended questioning
strategies, pushing for truly integrated and interdisciplinary models of learning, and illuminating
multiple perspectives on cultural frameworks at the core of curriculum development. So what
has changed, and how can we respond? The first step in crafting a thoughtful pedagogical
response that is attuned to the current moment is to look at the ways technology and
mass media now contribute to our understanding of cultural identity, and at the different
terms that describe contemporary notions of culture and identity. Before our current age of
technology and globalization, most people in the United States gained knowledge of non-
American/"other"!"foreign" places through direct exposure to people who were from elsewhere,
or had traveled there, and through printed material. Similarly, most of what the children of
immigrants learned about their parents' country of origin came from partial, fragmented, and
anecdotal informatiQn shared by members of their family and community.
Today, we can flit from screen to screen to access newspapers from any country online,
double click on myriad websites, watch news shows, and listen to radio.stations. More often
"-
thap not, reports about South, East, and Central Asia will headline the day's news in the United
States. The growing mainstream visibility of people and places outside the United States and
Europe contrasts sharply with the rampant confusion among terms such as "American Indian,"
"Indian," and "Oriental" that was prevalent when I was growing up in New York in the 1970s
and 1980s. Now movies like Sfumdog Millionaire dominate the Oscars, while both hip-hop and
reggaeton artists in the United States and abroad regularly sample Indian music and da\k:e in
top-forty videos. These are everyday examples of how the many populations that intersect in this
country are growing, changing, and interacting on vastly complex social, cultural, and economic
registers.
Language is also shifting as it attempts to describe today's uneven political and
technological changes. For example, the terms "Global North" and "Global South" are replacing
18
growing s
a matter,
a shift-f
FIG. 1: EMI
prints and VI(
Courtesy Ale)
reproduction
"First WOI
disparity
earth on t
133 out (
HemisphE
the distin
Africa as
term. Sin
of, and el
terms sue
essive art
I as from
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er, translate
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lmodate the
on have
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. ent
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lon-
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en of
ed, and
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! often
:he United
Ites and
J Indian,"
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jance in
;ect in this
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d
=replacing
FUTURES FOR THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM
..-,.- ..... "'.., .......
"<f.,gc"
FIG. 1: EMILY JACIR, Where We Come From, 2001-03,detail (Munir). American passport, thirty texts, thirty-two chromogenic
prints and video, text (Hana); 9
1
/2 x 11,> inches (24x 29em), photo (Hana); 15x 20inches (38x 50.8em). Emily Jacir.
Courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York. Photo: Bill Orcutt. Also see artist entry for Emily Jacir in Part" (p. 131)for larger
reproduction of this image
"First World" and "Third World," which were coined in the 1970s to describe the economic
f
disparity between Western Europe and the United States on the one hand and the rest of the
earth on the other. The term "Global South" is gaining currency and now includes "some
133 out of a total of 197" countries, which lie primarily (but not exclusively) in the Southern
Hemisphere and have lower human development indices.! The term "Global South" understands
the distinction between Euro-American nation-states and those in Latin America, Asia, and
Africa as primarily geopolitical and economic-it is a political, rather than a geographical,
term. Similarly, the concept of the "melting pot" once used to describe the racial diversification
of, and eventual assimilation into, American culture has now given way to equally dangerous
terms such as "rainbow underclass," used in a recent New York Times article to describe the
growing swell of disaffected immigrant youth.2 Becoming familiar with such terms is not simply
a matter of updating our political correctness. The conception of a "rainbow underclass" reveals
a shift-from seeing immigrant populations in America as people who want most of all to blend
19
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PART I: ON EDUCATION
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happilyintothefold, to acknowledging an overwhelmed and fearful response tothe growing
t
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numbersof.childrenofimmigrantsand migrant laborers intothe suburbsofthe United States.
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As problematic as itis, theterm "rainbow underclass" also reveals an understandingofyouth I'
l'
culturetodaythat is much more diverse in terms ofreligion, culture, location, and class, as
J
I
compared with theoldernotion of"innercityyouth," which is applied almostexclusivelyto black
I
and Latino populations in major urban centers. The shiftsexpressed in language arefindingtheir
l
way intotheAmerican classroom as well, as highlighted by anotherrecent Times articlethat
t
includedthefollowing line: "Arecord influxof immigrantshas putclassrooms on thefront lines
i
ofAmerica's battlesoverwhether and how to assimilatethe newcomersand theirchildren."3
I
To Assimilate or Not? Anticipating Changes in Our Classrooms' Future
t
Today's American classroom bearswitnesstoagreater influxofimmigrant and migrant
t
communities, from more diverse national origins, than ever before. This adds linguistic,cultural,
I
and economic richnessto theclassroom, amajorshiftcompared tothe situation duringmy
firstyear as an English as aSecond Language (ESL) classroom teacher in apredominantly
Dominican classroom in 1996,when ESL programswere primarilyfocused in Spanish-
speakingcommunities.
4
Today, ESL programs have expanded well beyond Spanish and Chinese
populations. The most recent immigrant English Language Learner populations Ihave taught
included Polish, Haitian-Creole, Somali, and Bangladeshi students, in addition to Spanish and
Chinese.
FIG. 2, ANNIE
Courtesy Feheley
The need to diversify ESL programs in thiscountry indicateschanges in immigration
patternsin the United States, which in turn indicatechanges in global migration patternsmore
generally. Theflux inherenttocontemporary migration patternsyieldsvery differentnegotiations American po
around identityand locationthan did earlier patterns, even taking intoaccountthose thatexisted segregation,
as recentlyas the 1980sand mid-1990s.Today's migration patterns populationsthat ofAsian, La1
are no longer necessarily rooted orresettled within asingular national border. An increasing been "back
numberof my own studentsoverthe pastseveral years have regularlygone back and forth studentsof(
between Brooklyn and Pakistan or Trinidad, or between Mexico, Colombia, and the South Bronx, been rooted
sometimesspendingmonthsor years at atime in each place. Studentsfrom such circumstances, . college, as v
whilespendingasignificant partoftheirformative education here in the United States, theirchildhc
being "American" in avery differentmannercompared to earliergenerationsof immigrant students lik'
students, in thattheyare not as invested in assimilation or in prioritizingthequestion oftheir All 01
degreesof "American-ness" as theycome ofage. are increasir
Similarly, children ofthefirstwave of immigrantsfrom Third World countries also affiliation, h
complicateour notion ofwhat itmeansto be American, as do African American and Native differences
20
FUTURES FOR THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM
;rowing
ed States.
ofyouth
ass, as
ivelyto black
findingtheir
cle that
front lines
Idren."3
nt
:ic, cultural,
ingmy
lantly
h-
Id Chinese
etaught
,anish and
gration
terns more
legotiations
thatexisted
ationsthat
'easing
forth
outh Bronx,
'cumstances,
es, confront
igrant
noftheir
also
Native
FIG. 2; ANNIEPOOTOOGOOK, Dr Phil (Cape Dorset), 2006. Pencil crayon, 15
1
h x20inches (39.4x50.8cm).
Courtesy Feheley Fine Arts
American populationswho have lived for centuries in thiscountrywith greateconomic hardship,
.segregation, and third-classcitizenship. This includespeople in theirthirties, forties, and fifties
ofAsian, Latino, orArab descentwho havethickSouthern accents, those who may never have
been "back home" because home has always been Yorktown, Virginia, orStLouis, Missouri. The
studentsofourfuture classroomswill continueto include Native Americanswhose families have
been rooted in thiscountryfor millennia butwho are stillthefirst in theircommunitytoattend
.I
college, as well as studentswho live in interracial familiesand may spend significantperiodsof
theirchildhood outsidethe United States, onlytoreturn, live, and work here in theiradulthood-
students like the current presidentofthe United States.
All ofthisistosay thatthe contexts shapingyoung people in theAmerican classroom
are increasinglydefined byfactorsotherthan countryoforigin per se. These include religious
affiliation, hierarchical orstratified classor ethnic positionswithin their homelands, and
differences in educational opportunitiesbetween urban and rural schools. For example, the
21
r PART I: ON EDUCATION
rhetoric of the global community of Islam is emerging as a dominant aspect of contemporary
social formqtions across the world, one that supersedes geographical or national boundaries
in creating a sense of community and shaping immigrant students' identities and artistic
'"
interests. At the same time, Islam's historical and regional specifiCities are critical components
in informing young immigrants' subjectivity in the United States. These coexisting factors are
context-specific and complex. For example, students who have been previously educated in a
one-room schoolhouse more than forty students will have a completely different relationship
"-
to entitlement and power compared to their peers from the same country who were schooled
in urban, middle-class environments and whose parents may have been scientists, doctors, or
engineers but arrived in the United States seeking religious or political asylum.
Much of the available literature on multicultural education, including progressive
pedagogical approaches to cultural diversity within the classroom that aim to move beyond mere
"inclusion," still does not account for the growing complexity and geographic and class-based
valences of what it means to be American. Attempts to move beyond a "heroes and holidays"5
model continue to center a binary model in which students ostensibly struggle to negotiate two
distinct cultures in the process of their inevitable assimilation into mainstream American culture.
This model promotes an outdated framework that opposes two modes of culture: "ours" (i.e.
American culture) and "theirs" (a stable set of practices from a country of origin). It also fails
to understand that there can be only "partial, temporal understandings of a culture," never a
"complete, homogenous" one.
6
Using a student-centered model (which draws on lived experience and links the richness
of that experience to curricular material) to engage teenagers in our future classrooms will require
an ongoing examination of many categories we may take for granted-such as "American,"
"foreign," and "non-Western"-and thus use in our teaching without encouraging our students to
question them. The new model demands that we leave behind the linear framework that proposes
to cor:nect identity, immigration, and assimilation, a framework that has implicitly constituted
'"
the core of many conversations around multicultural education in the last ten years. To truly move
beyond additive models of inclusion, we need to let go of the twin notions that (1) "culture"
describes a unitary set of practices, histories, and sociality bounded by a national border, and (2)
identity and culture are organized primarily along national axes, over all other points of formation.
The ongoing upheaval of once stable categories such as identity, culture, and experi.ence
animates the contemporary artists whose work is featured in this book, including those who
are making and showing their work outside the United States. Teaching about their work
to high school students provides an ideal point of entry for thinking critically about today's
economic, geopolitical, and technological concerns. These artists' works, which foreground
institutional critique and move beyond the supremacy of a Eurocentric art canon, address
22
multiple and
use this appr
categories of
and appropri
relations, ani
Shifting Vi
The America
foregroundec
unparalleled
with univerSe:
the Nike swo
urgency of te
interdisciplir
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technologies
These includ
blogosphere,
As a recent
Our s'
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The decline
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thi nking thr<
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ThreE
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mporary
ndaries
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:otiate two
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FUTURES fOR THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM
multiple and intersecting axes along which social formations operate. Teachers and artists may
use this approach in order to stand together as the vanguard of the future, strategically framing
conversations to illuminate how location, power, resources, gender, and race, among other
categories of analysis, intersect with and produce one another, excavating disregarded histories
and appropriating cultural material with a nuanced and critical understanding of context, social
",
relations, and power.
Shifting Visual Cultures, Access, and Democracy
The American classroom's future trajectory parallels the conceptual, formal, and social strategies
foregrounded in contE!ffiI?orary art today. We live in a visual culture whose ascendance is
unparalleled. Dominated by multimillion-dollar advertising, commercial television, and film,
with universally recognizable sign systems such as multinational logos, we are as familiar with
the Nike swoosh or McDonald's arches as we are with the question mark or ampersand. The
urgency of teaching art through the lens of visual culture has gained primacy in art education,
interdisciplinary pedagogy, and curriculum development.7
Young people living in today's "future" are forced to negotiate emergent and shifting
technologies that have become central to their experiences of both communication and visuality.
These include cell phones, MP3 players, cameras, MySpace, Second Life, LiveJournal and the
blogosphere, e-mail, and live chat rooms, not to mention other modes we have not yet imagined.
As a recent study observed,
Our students are not only extremely familiar with visual symbols and communication, but
are often the target of this messaging. Visual imagery saturates their daily existence, and
they are perhaps more likely to learn about history from television, film, video games, and
photographs than from reading.
B
The decline of the analog age and the emergence of the Internet as the primary purveyor of visual
information have a number of critical implications that are worth careful consideration when
thinking through the relationships among technology, visual culture, and teaching cOVltemporary
art in the diverse classroom.
9
Three key factors in such a consideration are capitalism, access, and democratic
address-as well as the generational and experiential gulf that separates our experience of
visual technologies from that of our students. Technologically savvy adults Twittering on their
iPhones don't even come close to participating in the kind of intimacy our students experience in
relation to visual culture, which encompasses the seeming contradiction of both uneven access
23
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PART I: ON EDUCATION
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_.:.,