Craft as narrative pedagogy

Craft as narrative pedagogy

Part 1

This is about thoughts and reflections on how craft and pedagogy has woven and unfolded a story belonging to the everyday. Pedagogy and craft opens up both a way of exploring narratives in materials as well as a means to situate these stories within a context. The term narrative both can mean stories describing events and situations in life as well as those stories that narrate processes in materials. Craft traditions can be understood as a perspective

Craft is about ‘making’. That is, it could be understood as a way of how we construct meaning and expression in and through objects e.g. through ornamentation or the function of an object, or in rituals and stories. Craft has a way of opening up new insights into creatively living our day-to-day life. The concept of technique, from which we get the word technology, comes from the Greek word ‘techne’ which means ‘to make by art’. Hence we learn skills in craft by developing a technique that involves the art of making things. This act of doing and making things one could say is the basis of existence.

Craft can be ‘us’ both in how we make artifacts and also by how we reflect and create stories that emerge in the process of making things. In pre-industrial times the crafts-person or artisan was the ‘maker’ of things e.g. the cook, story-teller, architect, blacksmith, potter, weaver, tailor that becomes an integral expression of an identity which present elements of cultural and psychological narrative; verbal, conceptual and material.

Pedagogy in this context can be understood especially in how we collectively evolve systems of communication, expressing and ingeniously experimenting with ideas and materials by tracing stories from the perspectives of planet earth. The question that maybe one could pose is how has this technology thus impacted our environment and whether this has turned out to be the result of both our ecological and financial crisis we face today?

Craft in the modern sense can mean the creation of hi-tech tools and devices such as circuits, computers or rockets. Craft need not only be based on the fact that we have created an object in space and time, but also more essentially it is about the creation of a narrative in how we have devised sophisticated means of surviving with tools of perspective and to think imaginatively. It is interesting to note here Richard Leakey, the well-known paleontologist, made the claim in the 1960's that between the two early hominid ancestors of the human species, the Homo habilis and Homo erectus, we know the H.habilis was a tool-making creature. An associate of Leakey’s who was part of co-discovering human evolution through fossil findings, Philip Tobias, advanced the view that through his observations of H.habilis fossils he noticed the development of extreme brain lateralization i.e. interactions of left to right brain. They found that the human brain increased in size during this period. It is also curious that during this time it is thought that our ancient ancestors H. habilis, also started to process a way of communicating with each other through the use of language. Thus proposing such lateralization of the brain supports the capacity for tool making, linguistic development and cognitive apparatus.

We now know that up to a quarter of our motor cortex in the brain (the part of the brain which controls all movement in the body) is devoted to the muscles of our hands. This suggests that human mental development has been directly connected to how we use our hands e.g. in the way we make tools and use these tools to help us create homes, make artifacts, build roads, create symphonies etc.

Craft, if we were to broadly define it, could mean the mediation between materials and how we communicate and express ourselves as a way of experience and cognizance. Visceral experiences of taste, smell, touch, sight or sound, is a way we construct meaning and ‘sense’ an interrelationship and interdependence we have to this universe in which we live. The idea of work as basic to our existence on earth is indeed universal. From all communities across the globe we have unique expressions in how communities have evolved and adapted to specific types of work in relation to their particular environments and needs. It is interesting to note here that a school, in the Greek idea, was originally understood as a place of leisure. So it is curious to understand and reflect what we mean by work and leisure in context to schools?
By attempting to include craft as work in schools do we find ourselves up against a whole philosophy that contradicts, contrasts and at times contests the very basis of what is understood presently in education? This was one of the issues raised in connection to Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of including craft in schools. At the time doing craft, especially the craft of ‘charka’ i.e. yarn spindling, it was thought as reverting to the old economy of handicrafts and not being ‘progressive’ in the industrial age of a new post-colonial India. Gandhi is quoted, as saying “...handicrafts are taught not merely for production work but for developing intellect of the pupils". Gandhi went to the extent of suggesting that this work done by children could be sold and thus creates a financial support system in schools. This turned out to be problematic in regard to India’s historical social tier system i.e. caste. Most communities belonging to the lower castes were assigned to work related to craft and indeed the material world. The upper castes were considered more intellectual and did not belong to or wanted to belong to the labour class. We must remember pre-colonial schools in India were largely based on Ashram schooling. Already during the colonial period we have tensions of who has the right to education. Hence in post-colonial India a child doing craft work in school was debated on the basis of how it fitted in to the earlier cultural class-caste system?

The dichotomy of work and leisure in schools is increasingly indicative of how institutions try to bypass the problem. A school, presently in the Indian context is accepted as an insulated arena that engages students to study and be educated in ways that are advanced and progressive; primarily in knowledge based domains. The difference between being ‘educated’ and successfully receiving an academic certificate essentially means being knowledgeable, I might add, more reflected in it's cerebral sense. I am aware this view of a school is not a complete picture of Indian education. What seems problematic here is how our mainstream education in the primary and secondary school context is so very alienated from everyday practical life and more so oriented to prescribed text book rote learning experiences. To pass an exam is ultimately based on memory and processing of text and numbers. In schooling we can observe there is very little scope for students to actually experiment and indeed learn by getting their hands and feet ‘dirty’ because of working with materials. The inclusion of craft often added in schools as extra-curricula or a hobby class, still can give an opportunity for the student to figure out how materials and the imagination connects to processes, though we need to envision how craft can be more than this!

Craft in schools has to go beyond it's cerebral core component of learning and make things real. The need for our culture and society to foster the crafts-person within each one of us is about how we learn and engage meaningfully both with our mind and body.

Craft both in the past and present has had trouble in dealing with issues regarding whether or not certain skills and products in craft have ‘higher’ forms of creativity. Craft besides, is dis-associated from the labourer as someone who is the 'other' - a gross subject, to a commodity that is something transient and ephemeral and essentially beautiful. The aspiration in the minds of parents and teachers to uplift children from hard labour seems paramount. Schools that have been modeled around cerebral growth often downplay the value of craft as an extra-curricula activity, which is most often treated as a subsidiary skill and not a livelihood skill.

Added to this Art in schools is considered to be ‘fine’ and requires a ‘specialization’ to be creative. Among different craft traditions too, cultural values are set in depending on how artifacts are used; such as a broom maker has least human dignity as a crafts-person compared to a weaver. This has unfortunately been one of the main issues concerning the loss of craft traditions across India. Hence if craft is introduced as a democratizing egalitarian approach as ‘work’ in schools, it basically harks back to a feeling of either oppression or regression. The confusion also seems to get exasperated by the notion most often believed both in our educational institutions as well as in our cultural context that craft is mundane and requires relatively little intellectual skill.

Another issue with craft is the problem of aesthetics. What is considered beautiful is often not so much to do with what one identifies as an object being beautiful in the ordinary sense but in how extra-ordinary it is. The value system that we presently label as ‘craft’ or ‘art’ seems to be based similarly by way of distinguishing the rare from the everyday object. And thereby we have created a divide between what we experience as the difference between something that has been made by the common person to that of a specialized crafts-person.

‘Every artist is not a special kind of person. Rather, every person is a special kind of artist’. - Ananda Coomaraswamy

Part 2

Added to the dis-junction of the common person being no more valued as a potential maker, and the specialized crafts-person as qualified to make beautiful cultural and aesthetic commodities, craft has increasingly become a matter of status quo. Craft products have been given a new meaning in the market by identifying ‘who has made it?’ The designer in this situation has become a new qualified and specialized maker of things because of his/her ‘design understanding and education’. The trend of craftspeople no more wanting to be identified as a crafts-person but as a ‘designer’ is evident in the urban context. Designers in this sense have been trained to ‘fit’ into the new industrial scene and hence a lot of design happens in connection to industry, fashion and markets. What is evident also in industrialization is how increasingly disconnected and alienated individuals and communities feel about artifacts that in the past would have been made in their local community context and environment.

The crafts-person hence, to fend for him/herself has increasingly tended to find a niche market by selling artifacts that are not for everyday use but are sold as cultural souvenirs often priced at rates that are not affordable for their own communities to buy. The shift of the crafts-person from being a ‘maker of everyday things’ for the common person, to a professional who has specialized in the art of craft business for connoisseurs of artifacts has changed the rule of the game. The relationship of the person to the object made is not out of necessity anymore in the way it is valued for its aesthetics and use. The object in this case becomes a commodity to be sold as a way of investing in culture heritage. Crafts-person's as much as the consumers of the craft object, become more and more subjected to lucrative market economies that is profit driven and most often in situations where tourism is present. Making is not any more a part of a larger cosmological act in the way envisioned as the Viswakarma, but in this case, craft often becomes an artificial commodity. The earthen pot or folk art increasingly in the urban context, is still sold not so much for its use in the kitchen or as a way of story telling, but is bought as an ethnic decoration for homes.

The story I am illustrating here of the earthen pot or the folk art painting is not only an issue to do with craft but of education too. The practice of pedagogy philosophically tries to address our everyday needs. Industrialization has become an essential part of our understanding of efficacy and affordability. More recently the demands of our mainstream capitalist society has laid emphasis on aspiration goals in the way market economies work and is also manipulating systemic market strategies. Increasingly, education has concerned itself with aggressive global economies. It is frightening to see how so many educational centers have taken on models that are very similar to industrial factories. Being a student in an educational institute means money and costs money. Education has increasing become a business i.e. a means to make profit. Human beings, the lot of us, are presently hugely vulnerable as pawns of a cultural and social economic capital. We face the risks of fostering selfishness and individualism in the race for economic success. Our empathy and concern for each other as a humanity, whether it be to do with the haves and the have not, or our consumer lifestyle has alienated the individual from society and people from their environment.

This alienation of the individual to its society has also affected how institutions of pedagogy have become more aligned to wealthy and elite communities. Many institutions have become cultural and intellectual mafias. More and more we find migrations of communities from rural areas into cities because what students everywhere have been taught as aspirational is not based on the model to live sustainably and locally but more on financial success. I once read an American article that stated on average if you were to choose to make a livelihood as a artist/craftsperson then you were more likely to be a ‘failure’ in society than if you were to choose other more prospective jobs such as being a doctor or engineer. This was actually statistically proven! And that was the really scary bit. It made me think then, on what basis is this success or failure gauged by? A recent quote by Tenzin Gyatso, the present Dalai Lama tweeted “The planet does not need more successful people. The planet needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kind”.

It appears to me presently, that large populations of our society, even though educated are disenfranchised because of their social, cultural and economic position. Being monetarily successful in the present urban context seems to be, not so much to do with whether an individual is socially, culturally or environmentally concerned, but success seems to lie more in the ability to be ‘connected’ through networks of the business world. Poor and marginalized communities especially in India, both in urban and rural settings have basically ‘learnt’ how dramatically shifting market economies change livelihoods.
The significance of the new game plan that invests in mass production and monopolization of trade is most often alienated and foreign to local communities e.g. the provisions we buy from our local shop has easily up to 80% goods manufactured from a distance of a hundred kilometer radius and otherwise across India if not China and other nations too. This has created a sense of despair and fear for those people who struggle to make ends meet by simple and non-industrial ways. Automated industrialization further has increasingly come to mean unemployment and a cause for inequality in our society i.e. the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. So the whole business of working with ones hand generally has come to mean a lose lose situation! This has become a widening concern for many organizations that work for sustainable development with an underprivileged society who are not a part of the successful rich clique who have over succession periods of time empowered themselves monetarily. In this crisis of humanitarian and ecological injustice we need institutional platforms for distressed communities to question and voice their feelings about how developments happening in the industrial sector are affecting their livelihoods both from an economic basis as well as from an environmental concern. Multi-national and national corporate companies need to take responsibility and accountability for fair trade systems that are ecological, environmental, cultural and economically sustainable.

Many of the artifacts we use today, such as plastic products, are manufactured in often-inhuman conditions as well as a cause for environmental disaster. The transportation of these products over continents is another ecological concern. This complex system of industrial manufacturing and consumerism has created a need for new interventions in both craft and pedagogy that has to address ecological and social sustainable development. In a growing population where we have education as mandatory, we need to create meaningful contexts to learn skills that help develop individuals and communities to engage in craft activities that make connections across a variety of self-efficient livelihood practices.
We are also presently challenged with a discontent population who are aware of the depletion and monopoly over our planetary resources. The ecological crisis we are facing and the system of national and international fiscal strategies has created a trap for individuals and communities to become helpless and victims of the elite whims, utopias and fantasies.

Domestic work in the new neo-liberal economy is considered a menial skill and work done by those who cannot afford getting ‘someone else to do the job’ is considered as not being high up on the ladder to success. More than 70% of work done in households is possible because individuals develop basic skills such as cooking and washing up etc. What we increasingly find in how market economies have shifted ways in which we value domestic work and indeed are capable of doing domestic work is based on how much time you give value in doing something. The culture of eating out or buying processed food seems to be oriented to this issue of whether you have the time (or skill) to figure out how to cook and the trouble of actually interacting with the local market.

We need to find new ways both in pedagogy as well as craft, to build contextual systems of sustainable development and subsistence that connect and enable individuals and communities to make and produce everyday artifacts locally and effectively in an ecological way. We need to find how as human beings our evolution in creation and in nature builds meaningful narratives for our life. We have the task at hand to learn and support each other young and old. We need contextual strategies to form communities that are sustainable through practices of making things both traditional and contemporary. We know now how increasingly we have caused irremediable destruction to our planet by abusing our resources. We are aware of our destiny in this collapse of ecological degradation. We know of the injustices faced by the poor; we know how multi-national and national corporate companies have monetarily succeeded because of corruption and greed and a monopoly of production. The need of this moment, this hour and this era is to create a new meaning of being co-operative, fair and local in a global world. We need to find better ways to co-exist in harmony with nature and fellow human beings and to all other living form.

Pedagogy as we know is not merely an intellectual exercise. Pedagogy is indeed what Mahatma Gandhi envisioned “that which connects the hand, the heart and the mind”. We explore and act in the external world in response to an inner necessity. Our intuitions and perceptions help us in ways for us to begin to understand how interactions that affect both internal change and processes affect those happening around us too. In these moments of our realization, while thinking through ideas and materials that exist in our natural environment, we need to find ways to appreciate the simple joy of making beautiful things and of sharing with each other these gifts.

Craft and pedagogy in this sense is indeed a marriage of mind, heart and physical reality. Craft becomes the means and a way to connect to the world. Craft is a way of learning and developing skills to find new techniques through narratives that transform this life. Craft and pedagogy is this conversation of love and suffering we share with each other. It is an expression of our creative, imaginative and form of aesthetic relationship we have to this vast infinite universe in the making, telling and reflection.