A Reflective Education Through Art

Looking Back: The Black Mountain College

 Ethan Snyder, English '19

I chose to post my second Self Directed Learning Project because I feel that it is of utmost relevance in today political and educational climate. I hope to show through this post the profoundly deep connection between democracy and education. 

In my reading and research about the Black Mountain College, three things in particular stood out to me: firstly and most importantly is the connection and conflation of education and democracy; secondly, the truly holistic education created when students and professors work together in the administrative duties which attempted to sustain the college; thirdly, the radical pedagogy that the College employed during its time. I found this college not only radical but profoundly important. It not only churned out some of the best artists of the 20th century but also served as a refuge for European intellectuals fleeing fascism. 

In attending to the connection between democracy and education, I find it important to preface this discussion with the acknowledgment that in today’s day and age we are finding ourselves in a crisis. Democracy, which has become a norm in the West is being challenged like never before, from both citizens and leaders. This being said, we are in dire need of reevaluating education. Hence, we have a lot to learn from looking at the radically democratic mode of education practiced at Black Mountain College (1933-1957). 

            At Black Mountain College no grades, formal curriculum, or exams were administered. When a student went to Black Mountain, their education was in their own hands. It can be seen as the embodiment of sentiment that a student makes their own experience or that you get out what you put in. John Rice, the founder of the college branded his own progressive education as something which educated the “whole person.” In the essay “A Progressive Education,” Ruth Erickson writes that “For Rice, education was registered not by grades or other standard criteria but in a heightened desire to learn and question, which would lead students to… a richer sense of self” (Erickson 77). Rice, who ostensibly was influenced by the pedagogy of John Dewey, promoted “experimental and innovative learning through self-directed experience in and outside of the classroom” (79). Hence, in educating its students both in and outside of the classroom, Black Mountain College truly provided an education of the whole person. This was done in part by having students and professors work together to run the school, from simply farming the land to deciding who was going to be hired and how much they were to be paid. 

In an essay entitled “Saving Black Mountain: The Promise of Critical Literacy in a Multicultural Democracy” Rebecca Powell, Susan Chambers Cantrell, and Sandra Adams make a compelling case for the influential connections between democracy and education. Citing John Dewey, they discuss the ways in which both education and democracy depend on “collaborative inquiry to arrive at mutual aims” (Powell, Cantrell, & Adams 773). Today, both of these spheres have moved away from these mutual aims as they have both been eclipsed or corrupted by corporational and hegemonic influences. This is why I believe that turning back to the short life of the Black Mountain School and its educational pedagogy is not only advantageous but necessary in reforming our educational and society. 

One of the most compelling connections for me between democracy, education, and selfhood is the literary genre of the Bildungsroman, otherwise known as a novel of education. This form has been explored by authors such as James Joyce, Charlotte Brontë, Ralph Ellison, Elif Batuman, and Toni Morrisson, just to name a few. This form, in the words of Franco Moretti, explores “the individual’s right to choose one’s own ethics and idea of ‘happiness,’ to imagine freely and construct one’s personal destiny— rights declared in proclamations and set down in constitutions” (562). Here, Moretti clearly draws a connection between the three ideas I am discussing, democracy, education, and selfhood. Education, as Josef Albers says, allows one to achieve a richer sense of self. Education is not a goal he says, but a means. It is a means for us to achieve the happiness and sense of self that in our country is codified in the constitution. Hence, by looking at a college which was run unburdened by corporate and partisan interest we can find reflect upon our own societal conditions as well. Sadly, the Black Mountain College only existed for 24 years, which shows how a place which is arguably very idealistic cannot exist for very long, which then, for the sake of my exploration says something about the state of democracy as well. 

Yet, the most striking thing about Black Mountain College is how to sought to teach its students not what to see but how to see. Josef Albers, a German artist who fled his country during the third Reich became the first leader of the arts program at Black Mountain in 1933. In his speech “On Education and Art Education,” he discusses how knowledge should not be a goal of education but a means of personal enrichment, he says “let us therefore consider knowledge not as a static possession or as a goal in itself, but as a means” (Albers). While this has its bearing on the development of selfhood as I discuss above it also may, in being a means, serve to teach students how to see the world differently. As is said in the film Fully Awake, the Black Mountain College shaped “20th century modern art.” Solely the fact that one pedagogy or educational experience can radically change the tradition of American art goes to show that it also radically changed the way people saw. Without this college we may not have had artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Charles Olson, Ruth Asawa, and Cy Twombly. Further, Albers says in his speech that “life is anything but academic” (Albers). Hence, he is demarcating the realm of academia from lived experience, radically changing the way we view education. Therefore, this puts Alfie Kohn’s observation at center stage. That is that students “are people who have lives and interests outside of school, who walk into the classroom with their own perspectives, points of view, ways of making sense of things and formulating meaning” (Kohn 219). Hence, at the Black Mountain School there were no separate realms of lived experience and education, but education was received through lived experience. Therefore, this school was able to provide a profoundly well-rounded education, one which was unburdened by the institution of academia. 

What I hope to have shown here is that democracy and education go hand in hand. This was proven with the short-lived educational experiment of the Black Mountain College. Hence, in looking critically at education we must also look critically at democracy and vice versa. The pedagogy of the Black Mountain College was radical, just as democracy at one point was also radical, yet they have been corrupted and influenced by the same system. I believe the crises of both education and democracy is a shared crisis and therefore we must fix one to fix the other. 

Citation for Images:

Image 1: Jacob Lawrence, Migration Series, Panel 18.

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/migration

Image 2: Black Mountain College Geodesic Structure

https://archpaper.com/2016/08/experimenters-black-mountain-college/#gallery-0-slide-0

Works Cited:

Albers, Josef. “On Education and Art Education.” The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. 1939. https://albersfoundation.org/teaching/josef-albers/lectures/#tab1

Awake, Fully. "Black Mountain College." Dir. Cathryn Davis Zommer and Neeley House. Danu  Collaborative(2007).

Kohn, Alfie. Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A's, praise, and other bribes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.

McKeon, Michael, ed. Theory of the novel: A Historical approach. JHU Press, 2000.

Molesworth, Helen Anne, and Ruth Erickson. Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957. Yale University Press, 2015.

Powell, Rebecca, Susan Chambers Cantrell, and Sandra Adams. "Saving Black Mountain: The        promise of critical literacy in a multicultural democracy." The Reading Teacher 54.8 (2001): 772-781.