Today in London, 50,000 students took to the streets to protest an unprecedent fee hike, which will effectively triple the cost of attending university in England. You can read about the protests, and the issues behind them, here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2010/nov/10/demo-2010-student-protests-live
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/11/10/uk.protest/index.html?hpt=T2
We talked recently about another set of protests in Europe: the general strike in France (google "France general strike 2010" if you don't recall the conversation.) It might at first seem like the student protests don't have anything to do with the strike in France; after all, the French workers were demanding an earlier retirement age (in other words, a shorter working life), while the British students are demanding an affordable education. For your blog post, I'd like you to consider the relationship between student life and the life of workers. Please respond to the following questions:
* Using terms from E.P. Thompson, discuss your own relationship, as a student at CCA, to the temporal conditions of work. In what ways does your "job" as a student resemble that of pre-industrial workers? Are there aspects of your work at CCA that resemble task-time as opposed to labor-time? What about idle-time and leisure-time? Do you expect that your experience of work-time will change when you leave the university? How so?
* How do you make sense of the relationship between university tuition/fees and the work you do as a CCA student? To answer this question, you might want to think about what it means to pay for job training--in other words, what it means to pay so that you're able to do a certain kind of work.
* How, finally, do you understand the relationship of the French strike and the British student protests?
As always, have fun with this. But also: PROOFREAD YOUR RESPONSE BEFORE POSTING!
Blog Post #3
ReplyDeleteRani Khamphilavong
I consider my time at CCA to largely resemble task-time. When I am doing my studio homework, it is both fun and productive. When my friends and I work on our illustration homework together, we still talk and joke around as we complete our assignments. There is no definite distinction between work and leisure to me. Though there is a sense of labor-time at CCA. We have classes at specific times that we must attend during those hours. But when class is in session, the fun and play is not lost. For example, in my Editorial class, the students as well as the instructor discussed a new movie with owls. We discussed the idea that if we can accept that the owls can talk, can it be possible for owls to talk to monkeys? Labor-time and idle-time are more present to me when I am doing my H&S classes. Idle-time is the most prevalent when I am doing my assignments for my H&S classes. I can only get through a couple sentences in my essays before I find myself mindlessly browsing the internet or playing Pokemon. I consider doing these activities to be idle-time because I am not accomplishing anything while I do them. When I am in my H&S classes, all that I am aware of is the time and how much time is left before I can leave. I consider these classes to be labor-time because I am basically clocking-in and clocking-out of class. I do expect my experience of work-time to change when I leave CCA because I will no long have classes or labor-time to make sure I keep doing art. I would have to create my own labor-time, setting time to motivate myself to keep illustrating.
I think that paying such a large sum of money should influence the students to try their best as a CCA student. We are paying to have access to instructors and facilities that can be hugely beneficial to us. Thought there is the draw back of paying so much money and not guaranteed a job afterwards. That is why the short time we have at CCA is so crucial. Students have to network and develop connections and skills so they can survive in such a competitive field. To have these opportunities and to not have to pay for them exists only in dreams. But there should be a reasonable price to pay for such opportunities.
It is understandable for the British students to strike because making the tuition so high limits the amount of people that can get a higher education. They lose the opportunity to build skills and connections to survive in the work force. I read that the teachers’ salary would also be cut and that could relate to the French strike. The people would have to work longer and earn less. The people would have to wait longer for leisure time. Since they would earn less, the people who have to work won’t be able to afford leisure-time as well.
Jess Jakus
ReplyDeleteThe structure of classes at CCA is loosely based on industrial “clock time,” in which students are required to meet at specific times and locations. The purpose of the meetings is to work, but the times we meet have little to do with the work itself; we meet for 3 (or sometimes 6) hour time slots regardless of what we have planned to do with that time. So, the lessons are based around the clock time; they have to “fit” into that time slot. This is in contrast to task time, in which the task dictates the time.
I think CCA perpetuates this clock time because students are used to this structure; high schools, factories that produce obedient workers, are structured this way. As well, the teachers and especially administrators are used to clock time because so many jobs in our society are structured this way.
In my experience the vast majority of work is done outside of class. I run into trouble when I decide to skip one class, in order to stay home and catch up on homework for another class. I do this because my task time spent at work in my studio is so much more valuable and productive than the clock time spent in class.
The work of the art student is structured by task time. You can set down in your studio space and say, “I'm going to work on this painting for four hours today.” But the process eludes clock time; the painting is done when it gets done, whether it takes four or twelve hours. I think the process of craft is antagonistic to clock time. You can spend a limited time on a work of art and get crappy quality, or you can spend endless time on a work of art and get something valuable, that will be treasured. Artists and craftspeople are intimately familiar with task time.
On the other hand, I find the sadistic deadlines of school to be primary motivators. Personally, I need that pressure in order to get anything done at all. Speaking to professional illustrators, this is an atitude that doesn't end when one leaves school. Deadlines are what gets you paid.
I have thought about what it means to me to pay an insane tuition for art school/training. It's especially important because, although school can be helpful, it is not a necessary step to becoming an illustrator. Artists don't need degrees (*most of the time*). For me, the tuition represents my commitment. There are students who leave CCA and do nothing with their arts degree. For various reasons, they don't pursue art as a career. A career in the arts is pereceived as a risk. I hope that I will be more willing to take that risk knowing that I spent thousands of dollars and countless hours to get there.
Still, I do sometimes imagine what it would be like to study as an apprentice to an artist, which was the system for learning crafts for centuries. Apprenticeships are rare, but there are artists assistants and internship positions.
If I wanted to look at it, I could think of my time here at CCA in many different ways. Taking in consideration that pseudo cyclical time is spectacular time – the time spend consuming images – all the time I spend analyzing movies and criticizing photographs in my classes can be called spectacular time. For my father, reality of my time has been replaced by the publicity of time, as he never sees the work I produce and continues to pay full tuition in order for me to attend my classes. For me, there is no connection to the money being spent on the time I spend making art - and it is simply task time.
ReplyDeleteIt is only when my teachers ask for a specific quantity of work that my task time becomes labor time, and I start to look at homework more as work than play. Homework that requires me to sit down in front of my laptop further pushes it to be labor time as I’ve recently began to think of it as time being wasted in front of a screen. Yet, as this is how I receive and turn in the majority of my assignments, it is the only way to complete my labor-tasks. During this labor time, whenever I’m unmotivated to produce work - I am idling. When I begin to enjoy idling, I call that leisure.
It is when I am letting myself be creative that I do task time. I do this with my thoughts while analyzing ideas and themes, or with my hands while taking photos and printing. I also do this physically while riding my bike to get materials or presenting my work.
As for the relationship of the French strike and the British student protests, keeping tuition for a higher education enables a larger group of people to receive similar training to get jobs - and thus letting them all retire early.
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ReplyDeleteAs a student at CCA, I would say that I mostly follow cyclical-time, because it depends on the cycle of semesters, like the seasons of pre-industrial workers. Like the rural workers, I run on task-time, completing assignment after assignment, until finals marks the end of the season, similar to the tasks undertaken up until the harvest. My (school) day is divided between task-time and labor-time. During a class, it is labor-time, the amount of work I do depends on how much I get done between the allotted times of the class. Outside of class, however, I operate on task-time, working on an assignment until it is done, and then moving in to the next. I spend more idle-time in class, and more leisure-time out of class, because in most circumstances, it is not suitable to work on projects in class, so one must sit, and be idle. Outside of class, however, when one is not doing homework or some other task, the spare time can be spent on leisurely activities.
ReplyDeleteWeather or not my division of time between these categories changes once I am out of school is hard to say. It depends on what I go on to do. Assuming I get a job, the type of job will dictate the type of time I have. Some jobs require one to run on labor-time, show up at one time, and leave at another, and get up the next day to do it over again. This type of job can allow for both leisure and idle-time, similar to that of a class at CCA. Some jobs will allow you to work on other things (leisure-time) when not working on a specific chore, but some might not give you this extra leisure-time and lead to shorter breaks in work resulting in idle-time. Either way, work ends at the end of the work period and the remainder of the waking day can be spent as either leisure or idle-time. With a job that requires one to take work home, or to be on call, time would be more task-time. There may be an hourly schedule to be present at the place of work, but there would still be tasks to complete before, during, and after that time frame. Depending on the person, this might dictate if their free time is spent as idle-time or leisure-time. In a job like farming, the time would be task-time, and there would rarely be any free time but when there was it would again depend on the type of person if it were spent as leisure-time or idle-time.
The reasoning for most people to attend a university and receive a “higher education” is so that once they are in position to begin a career, they can get a better profession and receive a higher pay. The catch being that in order to receive this “higher education” and to better your future, you must pay the price. It will cost thousands of dollars to become “qualified” for that better job. And it is not simply purchased either, but a door price in order to access the tools and do the difficult time-consuming work required to obtain the credentials for these jobs. The irony of being a student at CCA is that you must pay the thousands of dollars knowing that the likelihood of earning a higher pay is slim to none. Our door price is just giving us access to the rides we still have to buy tickets and wait in line for. But, obviously, if you made the choice to attend a university, you believe that those tools and people you’ve gained admittance to will personally benefit you.
The student strike in London against tuition increase relates to the strike in France, where workers protested for a shorter work-life in that when tuition triples, less will be able to afford an extended education, and less will be able to continue on into a high paying, ideal job. That means more people will be influenced by the retirement age because they will have those jobs to which it matters. Both strikes were about people being able to work hard and receive something worthwhile in the end, and having that ability to enjoy it.
Emily Cunningham
ReplyDelete11/14/10
As a student I feel that school is divided between labor-time and task-time. To graduate I am expected to both spend a certain amount of time in class as well as work on projects on my own schedule. I see homework as being under the category of task-time because although there is always a due date, the project can be completed at anytime between that date and the date that it was assigned. There is also no specific amount of time that must be spent on the project. The amount of time spent on a project is mostly determined by the amount of time it takes to complete it. This amount of time varies from one assignment to another, based off of a variety of factors such as amount of research needed to put into the project or difficulty of subject matter. In this way the task-time aspects of school resemble those of the pre-industrial workers. However, since my day revolves around both the task of homework and the time I must spend in classes, I can’t look at my “job” of being a student as only task-oriented. The specific amount of time spent in class can easily be seen as labor-time. The student may be expected to participate or complete assignments in class, but because it is so time specific it can be considered labor-time.
My idea of leisure time is difficult to explain because it is defined by both the task and labor time put into school. Without homework I could define my leisure time by saying that it consisted of the time outside of my classes, which meet at a designated time. With homework, my leisure time becomes more blurred with the time needed for working. I am able to decide when to make the transition from leisure time to work, but at the same time my day may become structured around an assignment. It is also possible for work and leisure to be combined. I do not know if my experience of work-time will change when I leave school. It will most likely be determined by what type of work I am able to receive. If my work more closely resembles labor-time than my leisure time will be determined by the hours of the day when I will need to be at work. It is possible but probably less common for me to get work that does not have specific hours where I need to work.
Determining whether my education at this specific school was worth the money I put into it might be difficult to do at a time when I’m still attending the school. Since I do not know where my education will take me job wise or through the progress in my art I feel like I can’t make a complete decision. At this moment I feel that the amount of money it takes to get into this school does not seem worth what I get back from it, but I am trying to think of it in terms of job training.
The main connection that I see between the French strike and the British student protests is that they both have a strong relationship to the budget that controls the outcome of their protests. There is one specific quote in a video from the second link in which a reporter explains that while Britain had to deal with budget cuts in housing and childcare benefits “France was having massive strikes and violent protests because of their austerity measures”.
Post3
ReplyDeletevenus
Not sure if this is a question you would like me to answer. What I have to say should not be put on paper .so I will sum it all up. This topic can go a lot deeper than I would like. So lets me just put it out there, in my world the temporal conditions of work at CCA. . In short CCA temporal conditions is full of shit. So fare all the teacher I have had expect for a few, yes no more than three, ask for non-realistic things to happen. I have to work, to work. Yes I see school as a job. A job that has way too many supervisors, a different one for each day of the week that I pay to do their job and most are performing in an extremely poor manner, again full of shit.
What ways does your "job" as a student resemble that of pre-industrial workers? To me this is a modern day share cropper the price to leave is unreachable, cited card with a high interest rate, what you bought now cost you 20x what you paid for it, or Vietnam Vet full of skill but no-where to use them.
For me CCA is full of just labor-time all the time. Leisure-time would be my summers in this time frame I don’t have four jobs I have three .the idle time I have is during the commute between jobs, sleeping, and day dreaming in a dull class .I feel this will going after I leave this university until retirement .the only change I hope for is having one boss or being the boss
Yes I do understand the relationship between the French and Brit’s and I could care less. They all just found out their not as rich as they thought they was so now they all are bitching. In the end we all want money but don’t want to work