A roomful of city planners

My primary goal as a teacher, at its loftiest and most philosophical, is to create meaningful, living content for students that encourages critical analysis and self-reflection. Unfortunately, this is the first thing to disappear from view when bogged down by assessments, paperwork, classroom management and endless faculty meetings. Too often I let the students try to find their own meaning in a project as I rush through the introduction in an effort to get their hands busy. But now that I have the benefit of a year's previous experience and a semester under my belt in my current placement, I am able to focus more on these overarching goals - what Neil Postman refers to as the "ends of education", not the means. The means are the technical and mechanical aspects of schooling: standardized testing, integration of technology, methods of remediation and so on. The greater issue, the one that determines the true value of school, is a metaphysical one. "It is important to keep in mind that the engineering of learning is very often puffed up, assigned an importance it does not deserve," he writes in The End of Education. "To become a different person because of something you have learned - to appropriate an insight, a concept, a vision, so that your world is altered - that is a different matter. For that to happen, you need a reason. And this is the metaphysical problem I speak of."

My students are halfway through a project that, in the past, was much more technical than metaphysical. It is called Cityscapes, and in this project, students draw an urban street corner scene using 2-point perspective. Linear perspective is one of those basic art skills that needs to be covered in Art I, either explicitly or implicitly. A good project will embed technique into meaningful, student-driven content, but occasionally there are techniques that are more often studied, at least in part, in isolation before being applied to artwork. Clay technique, and printmaking strategies for example. I had always assumed that linear perspective was one of these techniques as well.

For those who don't know, linear perspective is the graphic system for creating the illusion of depth using lines: the tunnel vision-style of one-point perspective, or the street corner-style two-point. Of all art processes and concepts, it is the one that most resembles a mathematical formula or scientific principle: follow a set procedure, achieve a predictable result. The art teacher is usually in the business of encouraging and rewarding divergent, creative responses, but linear perspective produces convergent, similar responses. It is usually covered in middle school, but since art is not a core requirement after the 5th grade, some of my students may not have had art since elementary school. The challenge becomes to teach a relatively dry subject in a new way. Standard linear perspective projects include Dream Bedrooms (design your fantasy bedroom using one-point perspective) and Cityscapes (design a street-corner scene using two-point perspective). Both have the potential to be fun and creative, but on its own linear perspective is fairly rote, dry stuff.

With the help of my mentor and some inspiring passages by Postman and Paolo Freire, I brainstormed a way to give this project real-world problems, a cultural connection, opportunities for collaboration and meaningful critical analysis. After teaching the principles of perspective and letting students practice it for several days on worksheets and observational activities in the hallway and classroom, I proposed a challenge. They would be required to include 10 different entities in their cityscapes - businesses, living spaces, city services, etc - that would be replaced by actual local entities of their choice. The dilemma: some of these entities may be in conflict with each other. Role-playing as City Planner, how would they acknowledge the issues that exist in our city, resolve some of these conflicts, and design a city plan that is safe, productive and equitable?

The 10 entities are:
1. Bank
2. Hospital
3. Apartments (low rent)
4. Condos (upscale)
5. Institution of Higher Learning
6. Sewage Treatment Plant
7. Mom & Pop Restaurant - African-American-owned
8. Chain Restaurant - White-owned
9. Barber Shop - African-American-owned
10. Clothing Store (inexpensive) - White-owned

Our city has a population split approximately down the middle between black and white (with a burgeoning Hispanic population). It is a southern city, and has a typically unsavory history of racism and segregation. There is also an economic disparity split roughly along racial lines, with a giant, glaring symbol of this rift in the form of an elite private college populated largely by affluent white students from outside the community, especially New England. The nation
learned of our city's racial and economic disparity less than a year ago when several of this university's athletes were accused of raping an African-American student from a neighboring, historically black college.

How would my students address these issues? Would they acknowledge or ignore these problems? Would they, all but a handful being African-American, resent discussing these issues with a white teacher? Would they keep things in the city the way they are, if given the power of an urban planner, or would they try to fix problems that they see?

We've gone pretty far beyond a Dream Bedroom in one-point perspective now.

I broke students up into groups and proposed some of these questions. I let them discuss it for 10 minutes or so, sketching some ideas for their city plan, then had them share their results. I circulated the room while they collaborated, and was impressed with the level of engagement in most groups. Discussions were meaningful and often intense. Disagreements occurred, often settled by a debate about the logic of a certain scenario. For example, it was difficult for students to resolve the issue of the sewage treatment plant. It couldn't be put near a living space or a restaurant or a hospital. Where do cities usually place such things? How could they include this urban necessity, while still being fair to the population?

Some sample discussions:

R & E (period 4) decided that the low-rent apartments should go downtown so that those people could have access to the things they need. They also put the bank and the restaurants downtown as well. They placed the upscale condos far on the edge of town, thinking that the wealthier people could afford cars/transportation, while low-income residents would need to walk.

Bright & creative K (period 4) surprised me by designing a city that was essentially the way it is now: a racially and economically segregated city. The chain restaurants ("upscale" by her assumption) were placed next to the college, bank and upscale condos. The mom & pop restaurant and barber shop - both black-owned - were placed near the low-rent apartments, which sidled up to the sewage treatment plant.

A, a distracted kid who is usually more interested in the remote control for my stereo than any art project, asked why there wasn't a library in the cityscape. Together, we decided there should also be a school and a grocery store for future projects.

The students have just begun to produce final drawings of their cityscapes, incorporating all of these themes and ideas. The culminating activity will be a gallery walk, where students observe and discuss each other's work, then produce a written response about the exercise.

As results come in, I hope to record them here. In the meantime, I will look ahead to future projects and redesign them so that the focus continues to be about the ends of education, not the means.