On the patio area just outside the walls of Hart House, across from the Mini Bar, was a television set up on a stand that displayed a black and white video by John Baldessari, titled “Teaching a Plant the Alphabet”, from 1972. This piece was hilarious! The whole video revolves around the notion of literally teaching a plant the alphabet through drilling and repetition. The entire film looks essentially like the photo I took. All the viewer sees is a houseplant on a table and a hand in the background holding a card that has the letter that is attempting to be learned written on it (which is of course in lowercase and uppercase). We assume that the hand belongs to the instructor, as it appears to male and we hear a male voice repeating each letter, trying to drill it into the plant's "head". This video really made me laugh because I had not previously considered the similarities between myself and a houseplant, however, while watching the screen, likenesses between our education became glaringly apparent! My initial reaction was not “this is ridiculous, a houseplant can’t learn”, but instead was “oh my God…I could be that houseplant…I am that houseplant”! I started thinking about all of the French verbs, the art history dates, and the thousands of bits of information I’ve memorized over my university years for tests, exams, and presentations, using no other technique than repeating them over and over again until they stayed in my memory. For what reason? Nine times out of ten, I forget the majority of the information I’ve crammed into my head after a few hours of writing the exam! So, this was a very effective video in my opinion. Through humour, the artist raised issues surrounding the method of instruction. Why are we taught through extreme repetition? Why must we spend our lives repeating things relentlessly? These things have already been said, lets move on... What are the positive and negative aspects of repetition? Does drilling facts and figures into our brains really result in a higher degree of knowledge-retention in the long-term? Why are we forced to regurgitate information for exams? What’s the point? Are there not more effective ways of learning? Why must we be a society based on tests? These are some of the questions that this artwork encouraged me to consider.
Monday, October 8, 2007
I Could be a Houseplant!....sigh....
On the patio area just outside the walls of Hart House, across from the Mini Bar, was a television set up on a stand that displayed a black and white video by John Baldessari, titled “Teaching a Plant the Alphabet”, from 1972. This piece was hilarious! The whole video revolves around the notion of literally teaching a plant the alphabet through drilling and repetition. The entire film looks essentially like the photo I took. All the viewer sees is a houseplant on a table and a hand in the background holding a card that has the letter that is attempting to be learned written on it (which is of course in lowercase and uppercase). We assume that the hand belongs to the instructor, as it appears to male and we hear a male voice repeating each letter, trying to drill it into the plant's "head". This video really made me laugh because I had not previously considered the similarities between myself and a houseplant, however, while watching the screen, likenesses between our education became glaringly apparent! My initial reaction was not “this is ridiculous, a houseplant can’t learn”, but instead was “oh my God…I could be that houseplant…I am that houseplant”! I started thinking about all of the French verbs, the art history dates, and the thousands of bits of information I’ve memorized over my university years for tests, exams, and presentations, using no other technique than repeating them over and over again until they stayed in my memory. For what reason? Nine times out of ten, I forget the majority of the information I’ve crammed into my head after a few hours of writing the exam! So, this was a very effective video in my opinion. Through humour, the artist raised issues surrounding the method of instruction. Why are we taught through extreme repetition? Why must we spend our lives repeating things relentlessly? These things have already been said, lets move on... What are the positive and negative aspects of repetition? Does drilling facts and figures into our brains really result in a higher degree of knowledge-retention in the long-term? Why are we forced to regurgitate information for exams? What’s the point? Are there not more effective ways of learning? Why must we be a society based on tests? These are some of the questions that this artwork encouraged me to consider.
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