Radical puppets are puppets with a social message. Radical puppets encourage creative ideas that lead toward understanding global and environmental aspects of society through the "art of the puppet," a phrase coined by American puppeteer Bill Baird (1965). There is a blending of performance and visual art in puppetry. Through radical…

This paper discusses the shift in recent years from a focus on product and method in teaching college composition to a philosophy that values the individual human experience as popularized by Sartrean existentialism. Such a philosophical orientation is viewed as both inappropriate and potentially dangerous because it values the individual as an…

This discussion gives a rationale for providing options for extrapolation within the context of composition topics. Whether topics are specified by someone other than the writer or are self-chosen, they "fructify" according to the composer's sense of purpose and audience. Developing such a sense has not been a prominent part of the typical school…

Getting students involved in the process of heightening, which is really the transforming of experience and self-expression into fiction, is a basic factor in teaching the writing of fiction. This process of heightening involves two devices for communicating "felt life": concretization and dramatization. In teaching these devices, prewrigting…

Reflects on the interrelationship between expression and mechanics in writing instruction. (MM)

The individual uniqueness of every student forms the foundation for expressive activities. Our number one priority as art teachers is to assist our students in identifying their creative expressive potential. (Author/SJL)

Takes issue with the assumed antithesis of processes of the irrational (imagination and creativity) and those of the rational (reasoning and argumentation). Argues that numerous philosophers suggest richer ways of imagining the processes of argumentation. Explores various classroom practices that enable teachers to weave the creative and critical…

Dreams can be used to draw students into an authentic expression of their creativity and to give them some validation for what they are as persons. A "dream seminar" in a writing course could have students read and discuss Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"; log, report, and discuss their dreams during the course; and explore other…

Moving to music may significantly enhance our appreciation of a performance of a music work. Implications for the encouragement of movement in education for music appreciation are discussed. (RM)

Suggestions for teaching improvisational dance in a nonthreatening way are offered. (DF)

Two approaches to the teaching of composition at the college level have evolved: concern with correctness and concern with expression. If the place of the audience in written communication is emphasized, it will be easier to make students see the difference between self-expression and self-indulgence. (MLW)

Ken Macrorie's "Uptaught" advocates a student-centered approach to writing which focuses too much attention on self analysis and exploration, and not enough attention on values beyond the self. (D D)

It is the creative writing instructor's role to help the student turn "twitch" poems into "click" poems ("twitch" being a kind of verbal hypertension that takes shape in the absence of anything humanly important to say on the poet's part and "click" being the finished poem that makes a sound like the click of the lid on a perfectly made box).…

It is argued that a behavioral objectives approach to dance education is dangerously limited because it is dominated by a particular view of theoretical psychology that attempts to understand skill learning in terms of conditioning and reinforcement. This approach is especially limited in the teaching of creative and expressive dance. (RM)

The reader-response journal has proven useful in the literature-based composition class; it is also useful in the literature survey at the sophomore or junior level of college. Survey courses have a standard protocol that students have come to expect. In these classes, the teacher is an expert who lectures on historical background, trends, and…