Judge 1
Ashley Judge
Marc Pietrzykowski
ENGL 3100
28 July 2006

Mona Lisa Smile: Decoding the Pedagogies of 1953 at Wellesley College for Women During the time period in which this film takes place, it was a progressive concept to have women in the university, let alone having an entire university dedicated specifically for women. The main character Katherine Watson (played by Julia Roberts), however, did not see education as a privilege or a ‘finishing’ prize for women. During her first year as an art teacher at Wellesley, she tries to debunk the notion of female inferiority and subordination. She does this not only for the sake of her students, but for the sake of her work, her teaching, her art. Watson experiences the successes and failures of a variety of teaching methods to educate and counsel students in their lives and their intellectual development. These pedagogies include current-traditional, process, and feminist pedagogies. In addition to reviewing the pedagogy tactics, identifying how they function in the film, and determining the pedagogical accomplishments, a hypothetical syllabus will further explain the tactics, strengths or weaknesses, and the characteristics of the pedagogies.

Judge 2 Current-Traditional Pedagogy Current-traditional pedagogy developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is based loosely on paragraph theory, where there is a rhetorical structure with set conventions that must be met. This pedagogy may be defined in regards to instructing composition by its emphasis on the prescripts of structure and style. Current-traditional is “the manifestation of the assembly line in education” and “the triumph of the scientific and technical world view,” as described by James A. Berlin (Alexander). However, this method has dense criticism in that it encourages the separation of form from content (Alexander). It has also been said to produce the “canned, dull, lifeless student essay that seemed the logical outcome of a rules-driven, teacher-centered, curriculum that ignores student interests, needs and talents,” in other words “dead writing” (Tobin 5). For the first day of her art history class at Wellesley, Katherine Watson believes that she is prepared to teach her students and introduce them to the complex and infinite world of art. She has reviewed her syllabus, according to the approval of the university’s art department and plans on displaying a slide show of artistic works and simultaneously delivering a lecture on the works being displayed. This seems like a logical and simple class structure for a first year course. What Watson was unprepared for was her students being suspiciously knowledgeable about everything she was demonstrating—the works, the artists, and the history. The students knew everything, at least according to their textbook and the suggested supplements that were dictated on the class syllabus. The students had memorized the information, the correct information, from their texts and
Judge 3 were able to answer any and all questions that were asked of them by Ms. Watson. Needless to say, she was in disbelief that her entire class session—thought to intrigue, engage, and enlighten—was over in a matter of minutes simply because the students already knew everything; or so they thought. The syllabus for the class in this scene would have perhaps resembled something like this:

Art History 1010
Ms. Katherine Watson
Fall Semester 1953
Wellesley College

Slide Show: Students will observe slides of works by historical artists. The artists will be derived from chapters one through three of the textbook. This will include ancient works through the eleventh century.

Lecture: Students will observe the slides and take notes from the corresponding lecture by the teacher. Topics covered in the lecture will include time period, social and economic status, technique, genre, style, and credibility.

Objective: Students will be able to identify the significant aspects of these works, the artists, and the impact both art and the artist had on society and culture.

Supplemental: Students will be quizzed at the end of class. Quiz will be twenty multiple choice questions derived from the lecture and chapters one through three of the textbook.

Homework: Students will write an essay of five paragraphs about one of the works viewed in class.

Judge 4 This teaching style creates an environment where the teacher is not teaching and the students are not learning. In this case, the students think that they have learned because they have memorized everything that there is to know, according to one source; additionally, Watson is only offering knowledge that is catered by one source. The students have no desire to question or discuss the art, artists, their techniques, their significance, or anything else for that matter. They only wish to prove their domination of the class, the teacher, and the subject matter. There is no heart in the classroom and both Watson and the students are guilty of allowing that to be the case. While memorization is an educational skill that is necessary to develop an intellectual vocabulary, it is not an advantageous or even legitimate skill to use in every setting. Watson, in this scene, uses a formulated teaching method (dictated by the university, as the viewer soon learns) that produces ‘dead’ students. Her syllabus reflects the notions of current-traditional pedagogy where the class is bound by rules, by a regimen. The students are robotic and conduct their participation in the same manner, where they have no individual voice and each would work according to a ‘logical outcome.’

Process Pedagogy In reaction to the rule-restricted method of current-traditional methods, process pedagogy spurned from anti-establishment, antiauthoritarian, and anti-inauthenticity (Tobin 4) roots during the mid 1960s. Process enthusiasts viewed academic writing determined by current-traditional as the enemy because it suppressed the individual voice of the writer (4). To those who denied the process notions, they often saw it as a
Judge 5 challenge to literature specialists who controlled English departments (4). Process wants to encourage students to not be limited by the presupposed scholarly catalogue or canon; it strives to find the authentic voice of the student, the malleable mind, and remove the “’transmission’ model symbolized by the podium placed before rows of immoveable seats” (4). Process’ stress on the writer’s voice, form, and technique expects to produce works by students that are engaging, vibrant, and boldly constructed. As said by Lad Tobin, “students actually have something important and original to say and will find ways to say it if [the teacher] can just get out of their way, give them the freedom to choose their own material, and show that [he or she is] interested… It is not so much a matter of teaching a student new rules or strategies but of helping them gain access to their ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ voice and perspective that traditional school has taught them to distrust and suppress” (5). “C’mon ladies, there’s no wrong answer. There’s also no textbook telling you what to think.” This is what Watson says to her bewildered students at the beginning of their second class. She has just shown a slide of what was considered progressive art and the students did not know what to do with it or how to react; moreover, they were in complete denial of the fact that anyone would consider the work, Carcass, art. She asked them if it was any good, and no one responded. They had no reaction not because of boredom or spite, but because they really had none. As a few begin to cautiously speak up, a debate ensues and suddenly there is an open discussion about the qualifications of artworks. Watson then declares that she has constructed a new syllabus: What is art?

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What makes it art good or bad and who decides? Her new syllabus might resemble something like this:

Art History 1010
Ms. Katherine Watson
Fall Semester 1953
Wellesley College

Exercise One: Students will write an informal and reflective essay: What is art? What makes it good or bad and who decides? Student is to answer to the best of her ability formulating her own opinion with no outside sources or discussion. Essay is not to be graded nor considered for technical proficiency.

Exercise Two: Students will identify a work from her life—a childhood piece, art in her environment, anything with a personal connection—and explain if she believes it is art and why or why not.

Supplemental: Students will create a piece of art as defined by her essay(s) and she must also rationalize the choices made in creating the work.

Objective: Students will be able to develop her personal artistic palette and become a more critical appreciator of art and artists.

Though the students are flustered and somewhat distraught, Watson has destroyed the negative dominance that they had over the classroom and fostered a sense of emerging epiphany to the art education and all education, for that matter, of her students. They are uncomfortable not knowing the right answers, but there is no right answer,
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Watson declares. She wants them to formulate their own opinions, their own voices, much like that of process pedagogy. No longer are there any rules or textbooks to dictate their educational journey through art history. This scene in the film clearly identifies the beginnings of Watson’s ‘anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and anti-inauthenticity’ challenge to the Wellesley College and its leaders. Watson also rejects her entrapment behind the podium in the front of the classroom and begins to wander through the aisles and desks; also a characteristic of the process pedagogy following. Instead of Watson telling the students what or how to think, they were beginning to do it themselves without even realizing it. They had critical contributions to the discussion of what makes art, and all they needed was for the rules to get out of their way.

Feminist Pedagogy The feminist movement emerged out of anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. Women were recognizing their unequal treatment on a personal and a global level. Feminism asserts that we all live in a patriarchal society: “men lead and thus essentially control the most important functions of our society—legislatures and courts, businesses, schools, and families—and often that control is not benevolent: that is, it is accompanied by the physical, cultural, and spiritual subordination of women as a group and the closing off of opportunities for full humanity to them” (Jarratt 113). Feminist pedagogy encourages teachers to help their students identify sexist representations in literary works, in society, as well as in the student’s own work. It is not necessarily a conscious effort to subordinate women; this is the essential problem, that individuals—
Judge 8 not just students—are unaware of sexist tendencies. Susan C. Jarratt poses a list of questions that guide the concepts of this pedagogy: “Who created the knowledge and practices in this field? In whose interests do they operate? Are there realms of experience that are left out of this body of knowledge? Who gets to teach this material? Who gets to learn from it? Are there ways of teaching and learning that seem more suitable for one gender or another?” (116). Basically, what it comes down to is that a feminist perspective is devoted to a critical view of a sexist patriarchal society. Skills to assist this learning process include the de-centering or sharing of authority in the classroom, the recognition of students (women) as sources of knowledge, and a focus on processes (writing and teaching) over products (115). There are two scenes that show contradicting angles of feminism and its pedagogy. The first scene is a poise class conducted by Nancy Abbey, Ms. Watson’s housemate and landlord. The students of Wellesley learn how to be polite and hospitable women and wives. They are expected to uphold a certain character as women of society and this class is to teach them all that they need to know about womanhood, motherhood, and, most importantly, wifehood. At this point, Ms. Abbey is setting a scene for the students: their husbands have hypothetically invited their boss to dinner, when, suddenly, the boss has invited his wife and two other guests. The students, as Wellesley women and domestic goddesses, should know exactly what to do satisfy their guests and their husbands. During this session, Ms. Abbey says, “a few years from now your sole responsibility will be taking care of your children and your husband. You may all be here

Judge 9 for an easy A, but the only grade that matters is the one he gives you.” A syllabus for this class might be as follows:

Etiquette Class
Ms. Nancy Abbey
Fall Semester 1953
Wellesley College

Exercise One: How to be a Hostess
Students will learn what is necessary to be a gracious hostess to her husband and his colleagues. This is vital to a sound home and a successful marriage. Students will learn to gracefully prepare their homes, children, meals, and entertainment to the satisfaction of their husbands in order to optimally represent the family.

Exercise Two: Domestic Upkeep
Students will become skilled at the following tasks: laundry, vacuuming, dishes, décor, and general housekeeping. Students will be proficient at the necessary skills expected of a wife to maintain a desirable home for her husband and children.

Exercise Three: Spousal Etiquette
Students will learn what appropriate behavior is for a wife in a successful marriage. Topics to be discussed will be intimacy expectations, faithfulness, respecting the head of the household, financial dependence, and remaining respectful of a husband’s privacy.

Objective: Students will be groomed to be upstanding wives and members of the social community.

Judge 10 This is obviously in complete defiance of all that feminism stands for. The teaching methods in this class reject any notion of women being considered as valuable, intelligent, or generally unique. It not only justifies but also encourages a patriarchal home and society where the husband is infallible and the wife’s responsibility is to respect and appease him. In term of this class, the responses to all of Jarratt’s questions or guidelines would undoubtedly be in the best interest of the man. On the other hand, this is not the case with Ms. Watson. After being enraged by the dismissal of a noble colleague by the doing of one of her students, Watson unleashes her fury in her classroom. Instead of concentrating on visual arts, Watson shows depictions of women in 1953 propaganda. She yells, “A girdle to set you free? What does that mean? What does that mean?!” Magazine and newspaper ads, marketing ploys, all subjugate the roles of women to only mere housewives. Watson is disgusted by the thought of talented women such as her students wasting their studies and facilities behind vacuum cleaners or stovetops. A syllabus for this class would be as follows:

Art History 1010
Ms. Katherine Watson
Fall Semester 1953
Wellesley College

Students will bring one item of propaganda from any source to class. She will share her item with the class and explain its motivations, if and how they are sexist, and what could be adjusted to make the item more successful concerning gender neutrality and equality.

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Objective: Students will become critical viewers of media and propaganda and be more objective consumers of sexist and anti-sexist products in society.

Watson, being in a rage, does not follow the techniques of enticing her students to become aware of these ‘hidden’ media messages; instead she goes for shock value. Nonetheless, she strives to point out to her students how they are being openly patronized for the roles that they play in society. Though she does not de-center her classroom at this point, she is focusing on the process of how her students conceive their own intellectual value as women on a personal level and on a whole. She strives to open their eyes to realize that they are being fooled by their mates, their community, and their school into thinking that as women it doesn’t get much better than this. Watson believes that the classroom holds potential to make changes in their own lives and the lives of upcoming female generations, and she urges them to push the limits and boundaries of what the patriarchy dictates is womanhood.
Works Cited

Alexander Bain’s Long Shadow: The Current Traditional Paragraph in the Classroom. 8 Nov. 2003. “The Society for Critical Exchange”. 26 July 2006. http://www.cwru.edu/affil/sce/Texts_2003/Hayes.htm

Jarratt, Susan. Gary Tate, Amy Rupier, Kurt Schick, eds. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Tobin, Lad. Gary Tate, Amy Rupier, Kurt Schick, eds. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.