Essay by Luke Foster
Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
Edward De Bono
I can’t remember when I started studying teaching at Sydney University but I think it was 2008. I had to get some dental work done half way through so over the Christmas holidays I got a job teaching adults English in South Korea to get cheap dental work and pay for it and was going to the dentist on the weekends and working long hours during the week. So, in the second year I was suffering burn out and failed an essential essay and had to drop out. However, I was so all over the shop that it was a blessing in disguise and then I finished my teaching studies at Southern Cross University the following year.
Sometimes I feel I wasted my time and money studying teaching as I never used it and ended up mowing lawns two days a week and working in an op shop for ten years instead at a supported environment for people with disabilities. However, all that time I was regularly having solo and group art exhibitions and residencies at the Big Ci in the Blue Mountains and taking drawing trips once a year for a month around the globe.
However now I realise that my main visual art education lecturers: Libby Bedford and Marianne Hulsbosch taught me a lot about how to write essays and many other lecturers there helped me too. They taught me how to make education interesting and exciting. So, with that skill I have written about three hundred essays starting in 2014 and then again after 2002.
The other most important things about what I learned was win/win situations and about Edward De Bono who has sadly passed who was a personal friend of Marianne. He famously coined the idea of lateral thinking which is a key idea in my life philosophy.
“Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces. It is concerned with the perception part of thinking. This is where we organise the external world into the pieces we can then ‘process’.”
Edward De Bono
I wasn’t going to include this De Bono lateral thinking quote as its quite intellectual and even I found it hard to decipher so if a student is reading this essay ask your teachers to unpack it for you.
I love the following De Bono quote as I feel this is what I need to learn today as sometimes I am to abstract or have lots of creative ideas that I don’t put into action.
“An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”
Edward De Bono
Very sadly Libby Bedford died of cancer a number of years back and everyone that I was in contact with from our class was very sad and shocked.
I also learnt about what Marianne called like the chocolates M&Ms or information for the younger generation in bite size chunks. I try to only have short paragraphs and break down all the concepts in my essays into small decipherable ideas.
At Sydney University I also learnt about using visual aids such as videos and photos to make essays more interesting especially for the younger generation.
I also have to thank Sherryl Bremner my high school ancient history teacher who taught me the importance of using quotes in my essays and how to structure essays. That was at Saint Augustine’s College at Brookvale in Sydney. I really loved writing essays then and back then my hand writing was much neater and my spelling skills were much better too.
For any potential international student’s, I thoroughly recommend studying at Sydney University as it is an incredibly beautiful campus and the courses are top notch and the staff supportive and very intelligent.
This following excerpt is about one of Marianne’s books that I hadn’t heard about until today but when I was a student, she showed us some other visual art resource books she had written.
“Pointy Shoes and Pith Helmets: Dress and Identity Construction in Ambon from 1850 to 1942
Drawing on extensive research, Hulsbosch explores dress and adornment of the Ambonese people of the Central Maluku Islands, in Indonesia, during the last century of Dutch colonial rule. She demonstrates how visual identity formation is a lived experience and an active, constant innovation that is not only a response to society, but simultaneously drives and shapes society. This long overdue text documents sartorial expression of the colonizer (the Dutch) and the colonized (the Ambonese) and investigates previously ignored history of indigenous and Western
women living in a colonial context. This book is a visual feast designed and written to appeal to scholars and the general public alike.”
However, my favourite thing about Sydney University was meeting my life long friend Liam Ryan who is now a teacher in Canberra. At Sydney University we used to meet for coffee at Ralphs café and talk for hours between classes about art, books and movies. Even now we talk on the phone at least four times a week. I thoroughly recommend Liam as a teacher as he is humorous, kind and knowledgeable especially about art and music and loving father to two kids.
In conclusion to reiterate if you want to study teaching especially international students then Sydney University and Southern Cross are fantastic universities. I think what I like most about Marianne is that she knew where each of her students were at emotionally and intellectually and knew exactly what to say to help us as future teachers. Interestingly there was mainly women in our class and just a few guys. However, I think all universities in Australia are of high quality and to be honest each university has strengths in different courses. For example, College of Fine Arts where I studied fine arts was an off shoot of the University of New South Wales and was very strong. Its now called UNSW School of Art and Design.
