Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It's good for walking.
The other night, I went to a lecture on utopian art at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The speaker was Stephen Duncombe, Professor of Art History at the Gallatin School at NYU. Duncombe's talk centered on a growing minority of artists who have abandoned the "truth telling" function of art in favor of seemingly far-fetched utopian propositions. These ideas push against atrophied imagination, forcing the viewer to consider unprecedented societal change. One of the most interesting utopian campaigns Duncombe discussed was Steve Lambert and Packard Jennings' "Wish You Were Here: Postcards from Our Awesome Future." Lambert and Packard describe outrageous (and hilarious) ways to improve San Francisco. Here are some of their suggestions:
- Turn Candlestick Park into Candlestick Organic Farms
-Install a zipline between Coit Tower and Oakland
-Turn the Muni into a roller coaster
The point of the work is to challenge perceptions of what a city can be. Dumcombe says of "Wish You Were Here," "Unless you have imaginative leaps, you're always going to create the status quo."
Duncombe's talk got me thinking about applications of utopian ideas to education. What could we do if we could think bigger about schools?
People like Geoffrey Canada are already doing this in places like Harlem Children's Zone. HCZ provides wraparound social services for families who live in the Zone. Canada said in a recent press release, "If your mission is about all of the students in a community, then dealing with family crises, gangs, drugs, violence, and health all become part of your strategy to support development of the whole child, not just how they perform on standardized tests." I believe wholeheartedly in supporting the whole child and seeking other measures of success than standardized tests. But perhaps we can reach even higher.
So what would I do if there were no limits? How would I change the system, Coit-Tower-zipline-style? What would you do?
(As a side note, I just finished the season finale of The Bachelorette. So so entertaining.)
