As they handed their projects in, a significant number of students asked whether they would be getting them back, and when. I asked the students why they wanted them back. As one student said, "Other projects are projects - these ones are us and we want them back!" Hardly a week passed without a student appearing at my office door to ask about getting the work returned; they wanted them as things they treasured themselves or as gifts for family members or friends. We asked to keep the works in order to do the research and to come up with the choice for this book. Those students who agreed signed releases allowing publication.

Despite the personal nature of the project, many of the very specific subjects also touched on general social concerns; for example, race (p.15), drugs (p.16), pollution (p.17), war (p.23), and pregnancy (p.38). One student made a painting of poppies (p.42) and wrote about her growing awareness of the relevance of Remembrance Day which she had treated with light-hearted casualness until her entry into college. The work on AIDS (p.27) came from a student who had watched his uncle die from it, but the strength of both his visual and verbal work reaches beyond personal grief. The openness and frankness of the students were amazing, perhaps more understandable when it is considered that these specific issues cut across our society.

Besides the wide choice of subjects, the predominance of the narrative mode of writing and painting was particularly striking. A large number of poems were handed in - a thought-to-be-difficult task but one which seemed to go with the project and put the expression into a verbal format as condensed and artistic as possible. The fluidity and rapidity of their poetic expression reinforced intuitive and spontaneous creations. This fit in with their personal themes and connected the writing and drawing/painting.

For the teaching of art, one result was that with the relaxation of the formal elements, such as design, texture and composition, the narrative elements came to the forefront. In fact, perhaps narrative should be reconsidered as one form of entry into the formal elements themselves. This might provide a balance between the historical narrative tradition and twentieth century formalism.

These observations on personal themes and narrative mode may be important ones for curriculum changes in the teaching of art. To what extent should one sacrifice the personal for the learning of contemporary fashions in painting and drawing? How important is the expression of the personal for the development of the formal elements? Can the two be combined in meaningful ways?

For more definitive conclusions, the project needs to be taken further, and more precise research needs to be done. But the results thus far are, at the least, intriguing and suggest adaptations to the existing art curriculum. As well, the project piqued my own interest, an important lateral finding! The opportunity for a teacher to cultivate his or her own curiosity helps to keep alive the sense of adventure in teaching and learning.

Catherine Young Bates
Montreal, Quebec.
June 1993

Note to readers: Student errors in spelling and grammar were retained as authentic first- draft statements. We believe that given the opportunity, these would have been corrected in the revision process. [C.Y.B.]