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An Artistic Vision of Education Takes Root in a N.Y. School
"People should be shocked into awareness that makes them ask, 'Why?'," says Columbia University professor Maxine Greene, 87, an innovative force behind the founding of Manhattan's High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry.
(By Kathy Willens -- Associated Press)
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On a recent morning, the venue was a grade school on a tiny island off the Bronx, with a view from a first-grade classroom of seagulls soaring above Long Island Sound and sailboats bobbing in the water.
A teaching artist from the institute had come to coach the first-graders at P.S. 175 to find the "secrets" in their lives and tell them to others. It's what Chinese American director Ping Chong did in his "Secret History," a documentary theater piece with the protagonists acting out real-life struggles and whimsical moments from their native Liberia, Iran and Kosovo.
The children already had been treated to a performance of "Secret History." Now, they were creating their own "secret" dramas.
"Tell the person next to you one thing that's the same about you -- and one thing that's different," actor Patricia Chilsen instructed the children.
Like a flock of chirping sparrows, they got busy, facing each other in pairs, examining one another from head to toe and comparing. Then came the "performance" on a piece of white cloth -- the stage -- as each child shone a flashlight over his partner while the other told his or her "secret" truths.
Nicholas Gjonaj, 6, revealed a part of his young life as an ethnic Albanian in war-torn Yugoslavia. "I remember going to the beach, and playing with my cousins. But my grandmother came here because she didn't want to get killed."
His little classmates listened, rapt.
Two other boys announced they had something in common -- big ears.
Such exercises, says Greene, have a bigger aim: "What I want to do is open the box, so kids don't feel so trapped, so they focus on what they feel and love."
She's not afraid of unsettling anyone with realities that shake up hearts and nerves. She prods people to question everything, from why a father sacrifices his child in an ancient Greek tragedy to some people's presumption today that Saddam Hussein was behind the 2001 terrorist attacks -- to why Mel Brooks did this or that.
"People should be shocked into awareness that makes them ask, 'Why?' "
Her own discovery of the arts as a powerful instrument of learning came only after she graduated from Barnard College, married a doctor and had a daughter (who later died of cancer). While divorcing, remarrying and raising a son, Greene earned a PhD at New York University in the philosophy of education.
