Here's an analogy. I imagine that in culinary school there are two kinds of teachers. The first kind of teacher says, this is how you make a soufflé (that's the classic culinary school example, right—a soufflé?). So the first type of teacher says, you have to do it like this: steps 1, 2, 3. That's a soufflé. The greatest soufflé chef in the world is chef so-and-so from such-a-place and that is how he makes a soufflé. Do it like he does and put a little twist of your own on it. Keep doing it over and over until you realize that I am right.
The second type of teacher in culinary school says, this is what makes a soufflé a soufflé. Let me teach you what a soufflé is, how it works, why it works, and why people respond to it. Here are some similar dishes that aren't quite the same thing in most people's views. Now see what you can do with this knowledge. This teacher accepts that students will go far afield and rein themselves in eventually, with a complete understanding of what a soufflé is and can be, and what it isn't and can't be. They may even discover something the teacher didn't think about.
Notice the words I used in the first example center on you and me. This teacher says, you need to be like me and we need to be like him. This teacher says, yours needs to be like mine and ours need to be like his. But in the second example, the emphasis is on people and soufflés in general. The first is controlling and the second is free and student-centered.
You can guess which one I prefer. If, in teaching art, we are teaching a formula that gets you to "art," then art education will be pedantic, coercive, and not very lively. Such a teacher will be prescriptive, didactic, and authoritarian—though perhaps not overtly. Maybe that's the tradition.
But, if we provide open-ended tools for practicing art-making, instead of circumscribed rules for performing painting-painting, then we open the possibility of imaginative and rewarding creativity.
