Newsweek recently published (June 22, 2010) an interesting article on whether the separation of boys and girls can help to solve the massive problem confronting American public education, especially with regard to the sigificant disparity between male and female high school graduation rates and college attendance/admittance rates. Inherent in the debate are many issues related to the merits of separate schooling for boys and girls on a public policy level; but the largest issue, only touched on in the article by its author Jesse Ellison, is the issue of choice. At the heart of all the efforts to reform public education in this country is choice, including this issue. Proponents want choice, those fighting it don't. When the people have choice, they have power.
Yesterday evening, independent scholar and critic Michelle Marder Kamhi ( www.mmkamhi.com ), co-editor with husband Louis Torres of Aristos , an online review of arts; author of Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts ; and grandmother of two Saint David's boys, gave a thought provoking talk on art for our grandparent community. An advocate of objective standards in arts scholarship and criticism, Ms. Kamhi focused her talk on the ways in which art critics such as Clement Greenberg promoted the shift from representational art to abstraction. Kamhi argues that the abstract and post-modern art prevalent today, which often requires explanation by docents in order to be understood, goes against art's purpose. Taking issue with Greenberg's contention that representation is an expendable convention of painting, she quoted the late art critic John Canaday: "Art is the tangible expression of the intangible values that men live by." ...
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