Steve Kurtz Essay

Pedagogy and Autonomy, or, Why I Teach at Vermont College

By Steven Kurtz, 1998 


Since reaching that alleged pot o' gold at the end of the education rainbow known as tenure track position at a research university, I have been queried by colleagues and friends about why I continue to teach at a small school like Vermont College in its MFA adult learning program.  After all, the pay is minimal, there is no great prestige to be gained, and most astounding of all to the curious, my already hectic schedule is intensified by even more work.  In spite of these drawbacks, however, I still find teaching here to be not only compelling, but desirable.

I have no easy explanation for why I have formed such an attachment to the Program, and much of my willingness to continue teaching in it comes from nonrational bonds and understandings that I share with colleagues and students alike.  The reward of seeing students, through their own will and desire, become increasingly cognizant of and reflective about their creative processes, and embrace the difficult contradictions (both social and political) of being a cultural producer is often overwhelming.  Since these students are adults, and at some level are already acutely feeling and generally struggling with the contradictions and complexities of their various identities and roles in relation to their art practice, when I see them I find a tolerable yet tentative solution to these struggles, both in their art and in their lives, the impact of a successful candidacy is doubled.

I suppose that all graduate schools would to some degree claim that such success is a primary goal in their programs; however, when I consider the pedagogy of many programs, I become very skeptical of such claims.  So while in this brief essay I many not be able to explain the more nonrational components that make the Vermont College Program rewarding for me, I can enumerate the rational situational components that I believe lead to successful pedagogy for artists.

First and foremost, Vermont College MFA students are evaluated by the richness of their artistic process and experience.  Too often in MFA programs, progress is evaluated by student's ability to produce an expected product.  In that case, the student's experiences are ignored; in fact, the students themselves are ignored, and the focus is shifted to the product.  Creative sovereignty is thus taken from the student and turned over to a set of "experts" in the field who have constructed a predetermined set of expectations about what a passing artwork should be.  Students are then left with a choice of fulfilling a formula for institutional success, or slipping into a predetermined process of failure.  Fulfilling of expectations (formulaic production) is not conductive to the creative process, and in fact is its death in bureaucratization. 

The solution to such stifling structure is for the instructor to take as given the model(s) of production that students choose to affiliate themselves with, and then to consider the process the students use in attempting to implement or challenge the models.  Second, the advisor must observe how the students ground their model; that is, the advisor must determine what specific social situation the students hope to participate in, and with whom they hope to communicate once within that situation.  What is then assessed is how well the students have navigated their selected territories.  The advisor can then go on to offer advice on how the students can better engage their areas of interest.  At all times, the discussion must be centered on the students' experiences, choices, and desires.  Whether a product is actually completed, or whether the completed project is up to "industry standards", is of minimal importance.  The treacherous assumption that the product is the representation of learning is based on the false assumption that fulfilling institutional expectations means that learning has occurred.  Only by reviewing the entire "creative process" that a student uses to arrive at a given point can an advisor come to best understand what has been learned.

Implied in such an assumption is the idea that students are allowed to "fail" in the conventional sense; that is, it is acceptable for them not to create the perfect industry product, because radical experimentation can only occur when the outcome of the experiment is unknown.  Not every experiment is a success, so failure is always a possibility - but it is an acceptable possibility, because the learning process that occurs, regardless of outcome, is always of tremendous value.  Radical experimentation (aesthetic or otherwise) only happens when students are ready and willing to take risks.  Students must know that venturing into unknown territory will not bring punishment if they fail to chart it to their own satisfaction.  Risking a loss of labor in exchange for profitable experience is acceptable to most students, but risking bureaucratic censorship for attempting to meet the challenges of culture is not.

We have thus come to a second key component. Pedagogy must be student-centered.  This belief is implied when enriching experience through the processes of doing and thinking are considered the central principle of value.  To implement that principle, this MFA Program has always maintained a commitment to individualized curriculum.  Every student's program is designed by the student in consultation with his or her advisors.  There are no preexisting expectations about what media a student should work in, or what constitutes acceptable aesthetic or cultural issues for exploration, nor are parameters set that limit the cultural territories into which a student might drift.  Here then is the third key component: An interdisciplinary view of knowledge and practice is encouraged in the Program.  The Faculty wants the students to venture out of the traditional limits of art, not only so they can attain a more complex and broader understanding of the world, but also to allow them to be active in the cross-fertilization of disciplines.

But enough philosophy.  Let me try to explain what occurs in Vermont College MFA Program in more concrete terms.  Let us take the position of a neutral observer, the fly on the wall as it were, and witness a hypothetical critique (any similarity to persons living or dead in this imaginary exercise purely coincidental).  The critiquer tells student 1 to "just let the paint go where it wants to go."  Student 1, who has just finished a study of Zen aesthetics, believes this to be excellent advice, since a sublime aesthetic moment can not be forced, but must emerge out of surrender to the moment.  Student 2 has just completed a study on Cartesian rationalism and the Newtonian universe, and believes that the only place paint unguided by human volition will go is where gravity pulls it.  Student 3, who has considerable knowledge of aboriginal concepts of mana, finds it interesting that the critiquer regards the paint as a conscious subject.  Student 4, who is interested in Surrealist method of automatic painting, considers the statement to be a recognition of the effect of unconscious process on image generation.  And student 5, an electronic media artist, thinks this issue is more evidence for the belief that painting is dead.

Now as neutral observers outside of this critical process, we have to wonder how on earth, in the midst of all this critical chaos and aesthetic diversity can anyone be learning anything?  But I would argue it is precisely this chaos and diversity that allows the pedagogical situation to emerge that presents an opportunity for each individual involved to understand the incredible range of possibilities for finding meaning in our activities in the world.  Each opinion forces opposing or different opinions into a clearer and more substantial articulation.  In this situation, each opinion presents itself as another line of flight through which objects in the world may be approached and considered, and each opinion acts as a potential resource to help us in the construction of our own subjectivity and worldview.  In this Program, we do not fear the contradictory and incommensurate moments of experience; we search them out.  We do not fear moments of confusion and uncertainty; we embrace them.  For it is not in the overdetermined single-minded environment of the academic's court that consciousness is expanded; rather, only in a tolerant, heterogeneous, and fluctuating environment that encourages all views, whether they emerge from intuitive, critical, logical, or metaphysical realities, can consciousness move toward its maximum creative potential.

Based on personal experience, I have found that it is extremely rare for all three of these components to be integrated in an educational program in art.  For this reason, I am all the more interested in remaining in a cultural/educational space where such radical pedagogy is actually taking place.  Art practices flourish best in a context of liberation and of individual autonomy.  In this MFA Program, I believe that we aid students in constructing themselves as individuals and as artists, rather then processing human material into mass-produced agents of the culture industry.  At this Program, we are interested in autonomy not automatons, and so long as this is the Program's mandate, I will gladly teach here.