National Art School - The mismanaged Institution that at least is preserving drawing and art history in fine art training.
Now that NAS has been saved I thinks its time to be critical of the mind set entrenched at the National Art School. I AM AN ARDENT SUPPORTER OF the National Art School AND ITS CONTINUED EXISTENCE: The retention of the school's focus on the core subjects of drawing and art history is what is worth fighting to preserve....I just think the school needs a major paradigm shift that would also improve these departments. The five major workshops all need better management but this won't happen when there isn't strong management at NAS enforcing educational standards, as these are seen as unimportant by the school's management. Prerequisites that should keep the standards of a university degree high are dismissed even by the integral departments of drawing and art history. The drawing department grades students by a subjective judgement of the work they display for their assessment "show". Standards that are ignored at assessment are: Attendance, which is the benefit of the high contact hours that NAS education offers, is totally ignored at assessment. I have witnessed cases where students have had up to 3 months absent, put up work they'd done in previous courses, and still been awarded good marks. This is true in the other departments too. This is due to ineffectual management of educational standards, and is why management at NAS needs to be replaced with university educators, not practicing artists. The department of art history is also lacking university standards. Essays are not cross marked by other staff and there is some really lapse educational standards with the submission of artworks not essays being accepted for subjective marking. Don't get me wrong, the teachers and artists who work in these two most important core departments are absolutely indispensable and are fantastic at their jobs and have so much to offer. This cannot be said for a percentage of the staff in the other departments. Its just as I said previously that the school needs to more strongly managed by educators, so educational standards can be actively enforced.
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Hi - I've been reading your comments with interest. I'm a COFA student (have been for the last 5 years - studying art history / theory) and I think you have a slightly idealised view of how the uni system works. The only essay that I've ever had "cross marked" as you put it, was my honours thesis (and then after a years hard work I wasn't even told who did the marking). As for the high quality colour magazine promoting students artwork, I am assuming you are talking about the COFA mag which is mostly about staff, promotes official exhibitions and visiting artists and only occasionally promotes current students. Mostly it promotes the work of former students who have 'made good'. NAS obviously has some problems, all art schools do. I have to say that I learnt more about how to draw at my local community college than I did in the course I took at COFA. And in their infinite wisdom UNSW have decided to get rid of all the subject specialist librarians. So now the staff working in the COFA library have no idea about art. Great! Classes at COFA have been cancelled without notice, class sizes have continually increased while the actual teaching semester keeps getting shorter and shorter - currently sitting at 12 weeks of actual teaching time.
At the moment I am trying to enrol for 2007. I can't enrol for second semester because, in their infinte wisdom, UNSW has decided that May will be a better time to enrol for second semster. I have two subjects left to do before I complete my degree. I would really like these to be subjects that I am interested in. Not knowing what is actually on offer in semester 2 means that I have to take a gamble and hope that by only doing one subject in first session there will be a decent choice for second semester.
All of this is to say that the uni system aint all that great either. So there are problems at NAS? Well there are also problems with the standards at COFA. And I think its a great thing that the two wont be amalgamated.
Cheers
Jane
Saying that NAS has poor management isn't exactly a new thing, mind you.
For the past 4-5 years since I've been there and go back there, the lack of management still continues to amaze me but unfortunately there isn't a lot anyone can do about it.
Bernard and Geoff are in control... deal with it.
The double standards relating to letting some students off who've been absent for 3 months and others not off who've only missed a week have too been there since I started.
What you should probably be more concerned about -- from a student's point of view -- is the educational standards that the teachers are bringing forth. While you cannot do anything about the management at this point as it is entirely out of yours or my control, the value of the education you're receiving is something that you can actively complain about if you feel you're not getting a good enough education or being singled out for a reason.
Case in point, I've seen and teachers who were held in high regard in departments like drawing and painting be some of the worst teachers ever. The ones who play favourites are often the ones that -- if you're not very good but yearn to be better -- will be singled out and given less education than one of your peers might. This isn't just a personal issue as it happened to several other people I knew.
Here's the thing. Educators at a University should be able to teach without bias, which is something I imagine that a diploma or degree in an educational field would help to teach. However, many of the "teachers" at NAS are just artists without forms of teaching understanding, so often you're stuck with someone who can't or won't understand or relate to you the way an educator should in order to help you understand principles.
Sadly, simple things like that all help to undermine the National Art School, which is especially sad because many of its teachers, activities, and nature of the campus itself make it one of the better places for learning art in the country, if not the world.
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