Here is a sketch I’ve been working on. Animal anatomy is not my strong suit, so I had to study a bit to be able to pull this off. Every time I get a request like this I get a little better.

That’s probably the best thing about collaborating with Marines on these designs: I get forced out of my comfort zones constantly as an artist.

College is out. That means OCS is in.

Here is one of the designs we finished today. I can claim almost no credit for this. Someone at OCS came up with the idea. I did the pencilling and inking and Kyle Tobin did the coloring.

The local recruiter here in Harrisonburg, Virginia invited me to PT with him and his poolies. We go out Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for a good ol’ Marine Corps thrashing. It’s been so long since I’ve worked out with a group that I’d forgotten how much support comes with it. I don’t hit the snooze button when I know someone is expecting me. This is our fourth week of PT and it’s neat to see how much everyone is improving already.

The design below was adapted from a rejected design for Crossfit Quantico (see links on the blogroll to the right). I’ve only PTed with the Crossfit group once since I’m so far away, but if you’re in Quantico and want to get in shape you should get in touch with them. You don’t need to be a Marine and it doesn’t cost anything. It’s just a bunch of Marines doing a good thing for their community.

The risk of sports became very real to me personally when I saw a boy’s neck get snapped in football practice when I was in high school. I have since asked myself why he put himself at such risk. For that matter, why did we all? The answer is very simple: We struggled and risked injury in practice for the chance to play in the game.

The game. That’s when it mattered. At the game the crowd cheered. At the game scores mattered. At the game each catch, tackle and yard gained or lost went into the record books. Some of the better athletes earned scholarships by what happened in the game. But not by what was done at practice. Practice didn’t count. A ninety-nine-yard touchdown, no matter how spectacular, did not get recorded in practice. Without the games, there would be no need for practice. There would be no desire for practice. Indeed, without the games there would be no practice.

The psychological underpinning of this is important. It explains why we prepare — not just for sports— but for anything. It explains why we learn. It explains why we don’t learn. Effort, in short, must be tied to a compelling purpose.

This is where our public education system runs into problems.

In an effort to tie learning to purpose, high school was presented by my teachers as the academic practice for the game — college. Learning in high school didn’t count except as a means to get to the higher education that did count. There was no other reason presented to learn chemistry, biology, Spanish, or algebra. This was never the intention of the public school system, but is an unintended byproduct of the university system’s power to award credentials.

Why the education system is the way it is
The first high school, named the English Classical High School, was established in Boston in 1821. It was established, not to prepare students for a university education but as a result of a university education’s limitations. In Public Education in America, Cressman (my great grandfather, by the way) and Benda write about the university system that:

1. It was not making secondary education available to all youth.
2. The curriculum was not practical enough to meet the changing times
3. It was necessary for too many children to leave their homes and board at or near the academy they wished to attend.
4. It was not an extension of the public school system but rather something separate from it.

The chief purpose of the first high school was not as a prerequisite for college, but was to “fit [students] for active life or qualify them for eminence in private or public station.” Universities responded to this apparent competition. To return to my great grandfather’s book, the authors write” It became clear, however, as the years were passing that the function of college preparation was becoming a controlling factor. The colleges through their entrance requirements, it was alleged, were dominating the entire high school program.”

Because colleges control the credentialing process, they can make students go through an inherently expensive process to achieve a particular credential. Even if a high school teaches the exact same class that a college teaches, it cannot award college credit for it. The fact that a student would get the same thing intellectually out of either class is irrelevant in the current system. The system is based, not on what is actually best for the student, but rather on what is best for the university’s survival.

Cressman and Benda write that “Education is preparation for life.” In other words, life is the game, and education how we practice for it. Through positioning, and the controlling of credentialing, universities have rewritten the maxim to mean “higher education is preparation for life; high school is preparation for higher education.” In this manner, universities have limited access to the game to only to those who could afford it.

Cressman and Benda go on to say that “The goal of public education should be to make the best of education available to every child on completely equal terms.” Completely equal terms — if we take this as a given, then we must recognize that our current system is tragically failing children on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder.

I’m very careful in my writing to focus on the benefits of learning instead of the importance of any particular credential. Tying effort to purpose can dramatically change a student’s academic achievement. I’ve been through this personally. I went from nearly straight ‘F’s in high school when I thought college was unattainable due to expense, to straight ‘A’s in college using my G.I.Bill benefits. Having the perspective of experiencing the psychological effects of being excluded from the game, and then overcoming it, I believe that the problem of hopelessness in our education system is rampant, but also entirely solvable. Here’s how:

The solution
The first thing to do is digitally record the lectures of the best teachers in the public education system. With several million teachers employed by tax dollars there is valuable instruction that, once recorded, posted and organized, could produce the best online university the world has ever seen. As long as there is enough diversity in the schools to ensure schools are not all teaching the exact same thing, just about anything worth learning could be taught that didn’t require special equipment or materials (like an airplane for instance, or cadaver in medical school).

The second thing to do is alter the accreditation/credentialing system. Currently, schools go through their accreditation process and they award their own credentials. There seems to me to be a middleman here that adds expense to the system that is unnecessary. People should learn however they choose, then have their skills validated through a process of review, evaluation or examination that awards credit for a particular block of learning. This should be done by third-party institutions, not the schools where the learning is acquired. The major required expense then, would be for testing, which is much cheaper than attending a school with all its related expenses. CLEP exams are an example of how this could be accomplished. CLEP exams award college credit by testing students for knowledge regardless of where the student acquired the knowledge. If the program is expanded to include a wider array of subjects, the education expense on a per student basis could go down dramatically.

This will restore balance between what a high school education could be and what the university system is.

If all credentialing is conducted by a third party, the collective public education system could compete with universities. Each high school would need to offer only a few college level courses, and pool those courses online, for this to be effective. Right now, I know of a high school in Herndon Virginia that teaches the same computer courses I spent about $15,000 of my GI Bill benefit on. I have college credit for my effort, and the high school students in Herndon do not. In the system I’m proposing this would change.

To not change this is to regulate high school to being nothing more than a four-year admissions process for college. The consequence will be persistently high drop out rates among those without hope of attending college. This is as predictable as it is changeable.

The third thing to do is adapt Nicholas Negroponte’s one laptop per child program to the both U.S. and foreign markets. The old model brings the student to the education. This is based on inefficient (and therefore expensive) ideas relating to geography and oral history. The new model of education brings education to the student, wherever the student may live.

Is art not taught in your school in Arkansas? No problem. You could learn from the art class in New York, or Georgia, or any number of places. Missed school due to illness or a family emergency? No problem. Log online to get caught up. Drop out of high school, but are too old to go back? No problem. Study online to learn what you missed. Want to learn from the best teachers from the past? No problem, as long as the instruction has been recorded. Because education would always be available, it would become a way of life.

This is bigger than providing education to children. This is bigger than providing education to Americans. The technology and resources exist to provide education to the entire world, cheaply and efficiently. This could have a profound impact on nothing less than world peace and prosperity. The technology is in place to start this without spending a dime. It’s simply a matter of will. Once started the funds required to get laptops to children pail in comparison to what current college education costs are. The average college student needs over $25,000 per year to attend college. For a four-year degree that is more than $100,000. With laptops in Negroponte’s program costing $200, we can bring education to 500 students in the new system for the cost of bringing one student to the current education system.

Just like when high schools arrived on the scene, a new system like this would make universities feel uneasy. I have two responses to this:

1. Who cares? If a college must rely on the weight of its credentialing power instead of the quality of its instruction, it deserves to be resigned to the dust-bins of history.
2. The best universities would adapt. While fewer students would be looking for end-to-end solutions via four-year intensive programs, more students would take a life-long approach to learning. Colleges would adapt to this lifelong model and would likely attract students who take fewer classes a year, but attend for many more years than the average current student. Great teachers will always attract good students, and colleges will always likely be a place where collaborators seek each other out.

It’s important to note that not every skill needs a credential. Art skill, for instance, is easily evaluated by those without special training, and therefore requires no credential. The artist’s portfolio is the principle means of finding work, not a degree. The best artists will get the work, regardless of credential. This provides us with a model of a school that does not rely on its credentialing power to attract students.

The Art Student’s League in New York has always understood the importance of learning over credentialing. It has never awarded degrees. Yet among its alumni are Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Al Hirschfeld, Andrew Loomis, Howard Pyle and Will Eisner. Can anyone really picture the editor of the Saturday Evening Post saying to Rockwell, “These paintings are really great Norman, but I’ll need to see a degree just to make sure.” I think not. His ability was evident to all and therefore required no credential.

The Art Student’s League is the model for the kind of schools that would succeed if credentialing were separated from the learning institution. A school would have to focus solely on the quality of its instruction to attract students. On the website, the executive director of the Art Students League explains the school’s guiding philosophy:

Another important aspect of the League’s philosophy of training artists is that the path to becoming a professional artist is one that is carved out by each individual student. The League is not accredited and offers no degrees. No curriculum is dictated. What is provided is a learning environment in which each student, through practice and perseverance and a commitment to learning, can realize his or her full potential as an artist in whatever amount of time they require.

This philosophy would have to be adopted by the university system in order to survive. Not awarding degrees has not hampered the Art Students League’s survivability in the market, nor has it diminished its prestige, which is great.

Moving credentialing to third-party institutions would independently verify the instruction of first-rate schools. This would enhance the reputation of good schools not diminish them. It would also verify the learning of first-rate students of from all walks of life, schools or methods of learning. Not only would the playing field be leveled, but for the first time, everyone would be invited to the field of play. Once invited to the game, students previously excluded from it would start practicing for it. That means learning on a scale we’ve never seen. That would be a game for the ages.

I’m reading the autobiography that Norman Rockwell dictated to his son. Here is one of the passages that I highlighted regarding the effort required for greatness:

I wanted to be a great illustrator. I was so dedicated and solemn that the other students called me “The Deacon.” The lunchroom crowd, students who wore beards and soft wide-brimmed hats and chatted about art all day long over cups of coffee in the lunchroom, regarded me with a mixture of scorn and awe. One of them said to me once, “You know, if I worked as hard as you do I could be as good as Velasquez.” I just asked, “Why don’t you?”

Matt Archambault recently introduced me to illustrator Alphonse Mucha (1860-1930). Mucha was an amazing artist that I’m very surprised to have never heard of before. I recognized his influence, though, in comics today — most notably in the work of Adam Hughes.

Apparently Mucha’s talent didn’t completely surface early in his life. Here is a tidbit I found on the Mucha Foundation website:

1878
Mucha applies to the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. His application is turned down with the recommendation: “Find yourself another profession where you’ll be more useful.”

One of my favorite artists, Andrew Loomis, had a similar experience. In Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth, Loomis writes:

May I confess that two weeks after entering art school, I was advised to go back home? That experience has made me much more tolerant of an inauspicious beginning than I might otherwise have been, and it has given me additional incentive in teaching.

If academies and universities are such poor judges of potential, why don’t we just assume potential exists in everyone? Instead of looking for evidence of talent, we would do well to look for a willingness to make an extreme effort.

Loomis goes on to write:

I not only assume that my reader is interested in drawing but that he wishes from his toes up to become an efficient and self-supporting craftsman. I assume that the desire to express yourself with pen and pencil is not only urgent but almost undeniable, and that you feel you must do something about it. I feel that talent means little unless coupled with an insatiable desire to give an excellent personal demonstration of ability. I feel also that talent must be in company with a capacity for unlimited effort, which provides the power that eventually hurdles the difficulties that would frustrate lukewarm enthusiasm.

The first days of my algebra 2 class in high school were easy. I remember Mrs. Davis up at the board going over the lessons, and thinking, “when do we get to the interesting stuff?” Then I went to sleep.

A semester or two later I woke up, looked up at the board and thought, “What the hell is she talking about?” She made no sense to me. Somewhere between those easy first classes and the ones later in the year, the class got hard — at least for me. Those who paid attention found the classes later in the year just as easy as in the beginning of the year.

The key to unlocking the complexity of a subject is to understand that there are layers and layers of simplicity that need to be digested in the correct order. Jump ahead or skip early lessons at your own risk.

I’ve skipped some of the easy stuff in art. I’ve tried to work around it as best I can, but it’s much easier to just go back and learn the basic material.

Below is an exercise recommended by Ernest Watson in his book Creative Perspective. He recommends drawing cubes freehand (without plotting vanishing points) to get a feel for how they look. After all, a box is easy to draw in perspective, but a perfect cube takes some practice. Since a cube is a basic unit of measure for proportion in perspective and since the ability to draw squares in perspective is essential to being able to draw circles in perspective, I’m taking Watson’s advice. He recommends 50 parts practice to one part theory.

This weekend I constructed six cubes out of bristol board for reference and plunged into the first picture. Forty-nine more to go.

Almost by definition, if you set an example worth following, you are leading. You don’t need to be in charge to set a good example. Nor do you need to hold a high position in an organization to set a good example. You simply have to understand what a good example would be and become it.

Being in charge does not always mean coming up with the best ideas. Sometimes it means recognizing the best example set in a group and following it regardless of who set it.

My daughter sets a good example. She doesn’t attempt things — she attacks them. When something gets hard for her, she just gets more determined. She’s only six but we could all learn from an example like hers.

Recently she picked up on some of the perspective instruction I’ve been reviewing. I didn’t intend to teach it to her yet because I would have thought her too young to understand. She is proving me wrong on that count. She was single handedly going through enough paper doing exercises like the one below to make a forest cringe. My wife got her a chalkboard/whiteboard easel to save a tree or two.

She is dedicated to figuring perspective out. She was the same way when she was learning to read. Watching her struggle through the early stages was painful at times. Sounding out every single word was a major endeavor. Simply reading the word “the” would take 15 to 20 seconds and would be pronounced wrong. It didn’t bother her that it was hard, or that it didn’t come naturally. She stuck with it and got better in imperceptible strides. Now, not surprisingly, she reads very well for her age.

As adults, we forget what it’s like to not be good at something. Kids, being new to everything, aren’t expert at anything. They have no comfort zones to cling to. We adults often do have comfort zones and we hide in them very well. No one wants to do something poorly, but when building a new skill we can choose to do it poorly for a while or not to do it at all. Too often, adults choose the “not at all” option.

Kids don’t though. My daughter doesn’t worry about perfection. She seems to understand the futility of that. When she shows me her latest drawing, or even throws a frisbee, she never asks if it is perfect. Instead she asks, “Was that my best one yet?”

Yesterday I told her I wanted to be like her when I grow up.

“But Daddy,” she said, “you are grown up.”

Yes. But as long as I follow her example, I’m not done growing.

I picked the wrong mascot for the picture when I drew this in pencil. Turner Hilliker colored this in and added the text.

We’re closing in on our 1000th unit logo. Here are a few projects we’re working on this week: