Jasper Johns. "Map" (1971) Museum of Modern Art. New York, NY
The front of the New York Times this morning features an article titled “At Louvre, Many Snap but Few Focus.” The article discusses the behaviors of the modern day tourist in art museums, constantly moving and always snapping photos. The article smartly contrasts this to tourists of 100 years ago who would commit to the grand tour and spend “years learning languages, meeting politicians, philosophers and artists and bore sketchbooks in which to draw and paint — to record their memories and help them see better.”
The reality is that those “tourists” were not the mass tourists we see today, but the few financial elite who could afford to spend the years learning and wandering. It may not be the Grand Tour, but there is a place where everyone does spend year learning, school! Like modern day museum tourists we have created a priority of quantity equals quality, especially in the social studies. The call to charge forward through history in the social studies classroom would be better served by the occasionally pause to take in a painting, sculpture, or piece of architecture. I made it a point to start every unit with a painting and have students examine it, I found students referring to it again and again throughout our study of the particular topic or unit. In my middle school classroom we committed to a complete unit to the art of the Ancient Greeks, and easiest of all my room was decorated with poster prints of my favorite pieces of art and students knew that if they needed me to go off on a tangent all they had to do was ask (This Jasper Johns painting was in my room for years and led to many conversations with students). Making the decision to include art into your teaching will add a depth to your students knowledge that few other things can.
