Social/Ecological Caring with Multicultural Picture Books: Placing Pleasure in Art Education.

We live in a fragmented and disconnected global culture, alienating us from each other and our environment (Bowers, 2005; McLaren & Houston, 2004a, 2004b; Orr, 1992). The American model of education reinforces this fragmentation with the discrete parceling of subject matter and students as separate from each other and their environments (Dewey, 1891/1980, 1921; Gruenewald, 2006; Reisberg, Brander & Gruenewald, 2006). While changes in art education have been initiated by visual culture and by social reconstructionist art educators specifically addressing diverse disjunctions (Blandy & Hoffman, 1993; Freedman, 2000a, 2000b, 2003; jagodzinski, 1997; Keifer-Boyd, Amburgy, and Knight, 2007), quality multicultural picture books have rarely been explored in depth as a powerful means for promoting interconnections between social and ecological caring. In addition, the problems and possibilities of pleasure as a pedagogical approach warrant further exploration within art education literature. Consequently, this article adds to the discourse in current art education literature by focusing on pleasure and social and ecological interconnections, offering a practical method for their incorporation into art education curricula.The article begins with a brief description of prior scholarship on social and ecological connections in cultural theory. I provide some key definitions to clarify the meaning and use of various concepts describing my contextualized placing of "pleasure" as a pedagogical tool for art education. I call this approach a "place-based pedagogy of pleasure" (PBPoP). I then provide my underlying theoretical and pedagogical perspectives. Because the "personal is political," I also reflect on my own a/r/tographic experiences as an artist/researcher/teacher (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2005), leading me to introduce a hybrid pedagogy facilitating more connection and caring in art education. This approach integrates visual culture, place-based education, and intercultural art education ideas with multicultural picture books as a pleasurable means to effect positive changes. Finally, because art educators need more resources to utilize methods of teaching that promote social and ecological caring, I provide an exploratory model for art education reform to engender this support.Re:Unity: The False Fragmentation of Race, Class, and EnvironmentKozol's books (1991, 1996, 2005, 2007) effectively document the interconnections between class, economics, race, and environment. He provides example after example of racially segregated neighborhoods and districts with disadvantaged people living in impoverished, polluted, and ecologically compromised areas. Haas and Nachtigal (1998), McLaren and Farahmandpur (2001), and Schlosser (2001) also point out that impoverished minorities, along with lower- and working-class European-Americans, live and work in ecologically damaged rural and urban areas where out of economic necessity they are forced to participate in ecologically degrading practices.However, as noted by scholars such as Bowers (1997, 2005), Gruenewald (2003a, 2003b, 2006), and McLaren and Houston (2004a, 2004b), multicultural educational literature and practice have largely ignored the importance of ecological conditions, presenting "racial diversity and inequality" as the primary focus of critical pedagogy's "multiculturalism" - to the detriment of both our environment and those who live in it.1Having conducted an ethnographic study of the lives and work of six award-winning multicultural picture book artists, including myself (Reisberg, 2006b), I know that some of us consciously embed messages into our images to promote social and ecological caring. Nevertheless, when researching art education literature on the relationships between race, class, and place in the art of multicultural picture books, I realized my lens was one of absence rather than presence. …