This text investigates the intellectual legacy of “Hand and
Eye Work”, the first art-based curriculum officially introduced by the Gold
Coast colonial government through the Educational Code of 1887. With a nod to
Foucault’sarchaeological and genealogical methods, the text explores the
Pestalozzian- Fröbelian diaspora of technical, manual and vocational training
schemes including the German Gewerbeschule, the Scandinavian Slöjd system, the
French metiers and the British Somerset HouseSouth Kensington “manual training”
system which inspired the Gold Coast “Hand and Eye” curriculum. The study finds
parallels between the manual training curricula, pedagogical models and texts
purveyed in America, India and pre-Union South Africa and other nodes of the
Victorian Empire. The text argues that the “bread and butter” vocational focus
of the Gold Coast colonial scheme displaced the more recondite and progressive
features of the Pestalozzian-Fröbelian system which had inspired it. The
programme became contrived, mechanistic, and embalmed in a frozen time-capsule.
It remained firewalled against contemporaneous challenges cues and potentials
extant in the heritage of African visual culture and Modern art alike until G.
A. Stevens, a young graduate from the Slade School, and inspired by the
Progressive Education movements in Europe became art master in the Government
Training College and Achimota College respectively. Echoing his mentor Roger
Fry's dictum to “get rid of all that South-Kensington nonsense”, Stevens
critiqued “Hand and Eye” training thus: “There was, and is, no provision for the
training of taste, appreciation, criticism, or for the slightest perception of
art history”. This was the beginning of a revolution in Gold Coast art
education.
Author (s) Details
Kąrî’kạchäseid’ou
Author (s) Details
Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.
View Book :- http://bp.bookpi.org/index.php/bpi/catalog/book/215
No comments:
Post a Comment