Models of Critical Discourse and Classroom

Abstract

Models of art criticism in the educational literature are, by and large, models of critical discourse. Typically, they prescribe a series of activities such as describing, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating, activities that are linked to the performance of different types of statements. The widespread acceptance of such models raises a number of questions which have yet to be addressed in the literature: What are critical statements? How are they individuated from one another? How well do such models mirror actual critical discourse? And how are they to be translated into classroom instruction? In this article, I consider each of these questions in turn. I argue that these models of criticism distort the actual discourse of critics and they force educators to rely upon a problematic instructional method: classroom recitation. After critiquing this method, I suggest that critical inquiry, rather than critical discourse, is a more fruitful concept for structuring art criticism instruction. I conclude by sketching a model of instruction based upon this idea.