Growth Story: Exploration of Art and Design Basic Teaching Experiment

Author: Tan Ping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: This year, the number of new students in the design college has increased several times compared to previous years, with 100 students in each class. I remember when the design department was first established in 1995, there were only 12 students in each class. Naturally, teachers and students could get to know each other from acquaintance to familiarity in a short time. Now, facing so many faces, after six weeks of teaching, I couldn’t even remember the names of my students. I often blame myself for this and deeply miss the feeling of having a class with only 10 people. The instructors and students were so close to each other that they could understand each student’s personality, interests, and habits like the back of their hand. Back then, each class was like a family. Today, at the beginning of the foundation course, when students also enter the art academy for the class, I not only listed a dozen or so topics for them but also assigned a topic called "Forcing" students to stand in front of the classroom’s Chinese-facing side and share their short 20-year experiences and the stories hidden in their private spaces that others don’t know. Through a natural and approachable teaching method, this serious professional topic becomes lively. Throughout the process of this topic, we got to know each other better, and thus we became friends. As artists or designers, your thoughts, concepts, every color you use, and every piece of text are all "reincarnations of you." Kafka said, "You are the problem—there’s no need to search for knowledge elsewhere." The words are a bit "excessive," but they hit the core of our art and design teaching. In our realistic academy, we tend to focus more on nature and the existing reality while neglecting to pay attention to our inner world—the eternal topic of humanity.