OCAD: Post by Meghan Hers

When I arrived at OCAD after studying at a liberal arts university I took immediate notice of the way that teachers accepted student input at a greater level than I was accustomed to. Critiques offer a chance (ideally) for everyone’s opinion on a piece to be heard and considered, a stark contrast to the two hour lectures in dark, cavernous rooms that I previously endured. In my two years here I’ve encountered teachers who are open to students proposing alternate projects than those specified on course outlines, and working with special requests or areas of interest. All of this was refreshing coming from a large institution where you were pretty sure no one in the giant lecture halls would notice if you never attended class again.

What I like about our INTR 3B05 class, however, is the way that student input is emphasized and integral to how the class runs. One of the aspects of class that I’ve particularly appreciated in the last two weeks has been, surprisingly enough, the return of the use of big chart paper and pens, which I haven’t encountered in many years. Although we may be encouraged to give our input in other seminar groups and tutorials, this way of concretizing our ideas and seeing them at the front of the class has been refreshing for me. As a visual learner I will often walk out of a tutorial feeling full of the connections made throughout a heated discussion, but without a visible reminder of this session, I am prone to forgetting the products of said conversations.

This class (so far) has also heightened my awareness and attention to the way in which we’re being taught here at OCAD. I often go through my time at school with the end goal of a degree or percentage in mind, and simply accept that I must live with the disparate and at times ineffective ways that I am being taught in my various classes. I’m looking forward to being able to dissect the practices of my own professors by the end of this term and use my experiences of being a student at this school to help me when I’m the one at the front of the classroom.

Because I have had the experience of learning at two very different institutions as part of my post-secondary education, the history and environment of OCAD has always fascinated me. Experiences and moments that strike me as being especially characteristic of art-school education or witnessing presentations and assignments that could only possibly be accepted in our context delight me and I try my best to commit them to memory.

With this continued interest, I was immediately enthralled when I heard about a decidedly infamous moment of OCAD’s history which involved the appointing of new-media artist Roy Ascott as President in 1971. It was in my History of New Media class that his influence on our school and radical approach to curriculum was revealed to me in passing, and I have been actively interested in the subject ever since. His time here is interesting not just for its shocking radicality, but for the possibilities for alternate approaches to teaching and curriculum that it reveals.

Ascott’s vision for OCA centered around the idea of a “visual” university, where students “explored themselves and the world in whatever ways they wanted….where learning to think came before learning technique.” (1) While he was President of OCA, staff and students were either for or against him; those favoring a traditional, structured curriculum with scheduled classes and skills like life-drawing and sketching plaster casts, and those who thrived on the openness and energy that Ascott brought to the table. The word “tumultuous” does not even start to describe what that year was like. Plaster casts that students had been drawing from since OCA’s inception were smashed, with Ascott’s support and the proclamation that “ No creative ability is developed through copying” and that “The use of copies can be considered a form of brainwashing.” (2) He dismissed the whole textiles department as craft, and his supporters yelled at ceramics students and instructors, telling them their work was useless and irrelevant.

Things came to a head in 1972, with the arrival of Frank Ogden, who proclaimed that “You can’t teach anybody anything, you just have to set up an environmental climate. Then, if something turns them on, they learn.” (3) The list of things he and his students did as part of his personal curriculum is stunning and intriguing; they explored the AGO blindfolded, plucked chickens, visited the morgue, ate tiger meat, sat in on a Hare Krishna ritual and, my personal favorite, watched the sun come up from the top of the TD centre. Then to top it all off, thier diplomas were printed on brown paper bags. Ogden eschewed illogical thinking, claiming that “logic only extends the known; it never creates the new…” (4)

Reading about this period of OCA’s history, I’m struck by how many approaches were taken to teaching, and how much controversy these methodologies elicited. As mentioned in class, different teaching approaches within the current faculties at OCAD are still a hot and contentions topic, especially the differing emphasis on conceptual and commercial work. It makes me wonder how much of the excitement surrounding Ascott’s measures was due to the political and revolutionary climate of the late 60s, and if the same kind of protests and great debates about the nature of education could ever come to pass in our time?

(1) Morris Wolfe, OCA 1967-1972: five turbulent years (Toronto:grub street books, 2001) 45

(2) Morris Wolfe, OCA 1967-1972: five turbulent years (Toronto:grub street books, 2001) 50

(3)Morris Wolfe, OCA 1967-1972: five turbulent years (Toronto:grub street books, 2001) 57

(4) Morris Wolfe, OCA 1967-1972: five turbulent years (Toronto:grub street books, 2001) 57