ap150901 What did you learn in school today?
Notions from the Northwest Print Center
As he begins his daily maintenance work on his patron database, a song runs through his head about schools, taking him on a time-trip back fifty years to when Pete Seeger sang, “What did you learn in school today?” The author’s school will correct errors.
Above: Two examples of older collectible trading cards by the author, ca. 2009.
Database for collectible trading cards
Tom Paxton’s 1964 song ran in my head as I started work today: “What did
you learn in school today?” It was the year I graduated from college, married
Lynda and the two of us headed to California so I could get my MA and teach
college art and thus avoid getting drafted into our dirty little war in
Vietnam. Paxton’s song didn’t do much good, in my humble opinion. When you read
the lyrics, you can only smile—I think the word is sardonically.
As we left San Jose, two years later, me with an MA and a UW teaching job,
I told the department head I planned to be a great teacher—not be a great
artist. He was set back, I think. Now, when I look back over my 25 years in
college—as a student and as a professor—I can see that teaching, real teaching, was, in the minds of most
of the professors and administrators there, a secondary goal.
That’s why, when I plan the Northwest
Print Center and Cultural Arts Technology Incubator, I think about the teaching
components and how to balance real teaching with practical things. For example,
I am working “artistically” on the idea that collectible trading cards (CTC) are
an art form. If one should find CTC being taught in an art class in any art
class today, you will see the teacher’s focus is on the visual and tactile qualities
only—as the industrial versions, i.e., Magic:
The Gathering, have established it.
In my class—the school of my imagination—we study what is not obvious. We begin
with symbols on MTG cards and then switch to our own symbolism. Mine, for
example, are ten colored triangles in a specific position on the cards. Another
six—for a total of 16 colors—stand for other things.
Additionally, there are databases linked to the cards via the Web—hotspots in
the digital versions and QR codes on the paper versions. Therefore, what you
learn in my school is database development and management.
A good school always gives its members a laboratory in which to practice
what they are trying to learn. In zoology, for example, the pickled fetal pig
or frog has served for decades to acquaint students with anatomy. In our
school, the Ritchie Family Collection is given—a preserved collection dating
back over fifty years and including every kind of data that can be used to make
a collectible trading card interesting and a means to invent games.
