Why Teach Ceramics?

Why Teach Ceramics?

Why Teach Clay?

Why Teach Ceramics?

"There is nothing in education quite like teaching ceramics.  Inherently interdisciplinary, ceramics underpin the world economy while students and teachers love the process and results. Addressing cognitive, affective, and psycho-motor domains in a single captivating act, ceramics creates in the learner the compulsion to learn more for intensely personal reasons.  All the research on this reality demonstrates that student scores rise when ceramics motivates them to learn. Why merely study the world when we can hold it in our hands to create new, personal meaning by practicing the ancient arts that gave us computer chips, fiber optics, solar panels, microscopes, telescopes, and cameras? Today’s tech world leads to views from art history, geography, economics, chemistry, physics, and design across the curriculum - all connecting to the earth in their hands. Education thrives when students crave more engagement. The  ceramic arts feed that hunger for more."

Bob Feder, President of The National K12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundatio Inc, Doctoral dissertation: Life-Changing Earth: The Career Choice of Studio Potters, Rutgers University, 1988   

How Teaching Ceramics Encourages Creativity

Teaching clay can reduce anxiety, depression, PTSD, & anger

Here are some studies for reference:

Curriculum Ideas

How to Incorporate the History of Pottery into Your Classroom

As ceramics teachers, most will agree that a hands-on experience, and our students learning forming techniques, methods, and process, is the most important aspect of our teaching. However, forming techniques alone due a disservice to our craft. It is vital to a student’s education that pottery is placed in historical and cultural context. The craft must be understood and appreciated not only as a functional and decorative art, but as an important aspect of a civilization’s development. With limited time, though, the teaching of pottery history too often takes a back seat to our hands-on experience. Years ago, I designed a practice to teach pottery history, culture, and heritage to my students. Each week I would in a piece of pottery from my collection. We call it “The Pot of the Week.” I present the piece with a brief talk about its origin, maker (if known), purpose, historical significance, method of production, and any other important details. The students are given the opportunity to handle it and ask questions. The whole presentation takes 5-10 minutes. The piece remains on a pedestal under a spotlight for the duration of the class. By doing so, we take a minimal amount of time away from making objects. There are no subsequent tests, nor are they required to recall terminology, names, or places. Curiously, as the year progresses, I can observe influences in their work that recall various 'Pots of the Week.'

Steven Branfman, Founder/Director, The Potters Shop & School, Needham MA, Pottery teacher, Thayer Academy, Braintree MA

Travel Through Time with Ceramics

I travel through time and space with my Ceramic students! From Pueblo Pottery and Mata Ortiz traditions to the Silk Road and Chinese forms as well as Ancient Greece, Delftware, American Southern Stoneware, and beyond.......... fired ceramic forms be they purely functional, sculptural, or a combination of both,  reveal the artistic diversity of our world as well as its commonalities through the ages and into the present. The elemental process of formed and fired clay exemplifies our historical and cultural past and points to the future in a way no other media can! 

Sean Burns, Palmer High School, Art Department, Board Member/Vice President The National K12 Ceramic Exhibition Foundation, Inc

Museum of Ceramic Art

The Museum of Ceramic Art - New York (MoCA/NY) advances the appreciation, understanding, and enjoyment of ceramics through exhibitions, research, education, and scholarship. MoCA/NY operates as a virtual museum. Our primary focus is to develop and support the platform Ceramic World Destinations (CWD). CWD increases visibility for ceramics, provides professional exposure, and introduces new populations to the expressive nature of clay. One of the very cool things on this website is a map of ceramic destinations all over the world - a great way to explore virtually and to learn more about the impact of ceramic around the world.

Clay's Connection to History, the Earth, and the Liberal Arts

As someone who teaches clay at a small college, I have seen many college ceramics programs downsized or eliminated, including at my own college. Why is it important to have a strong ceramics offering at a liberal arts institution? I think there are several answers to this question.

First of all, it is really fun to work with clay, and develops dexterity skills, problem solving abilities and an eye for form. It is challenging for sure, but figuring out how to feel your way through the inevitable frustrations can give students a boost in confidence.

Second of all, it is meaningful. Clay is one of the earliest materials from which ancient humans created objects that helped them survive and thrive. Evidence has been excavated from caves in Croatia and China showing human made clay objects from 15,000 to 20,000 years ago! The advent of clay cooking vessels led to advances in human nutritional options, and increased brain size led to cognitive advances in the species. For modern humans to have the opportunity to touch clay and make things is a way of connecting to our ancestral roots, that is, what it is to be human. In an era where we peck at keyboards and “make” things by pushing buttons and adjusting knobs, sinking your hands into clay is a way of reconnecting with our past.

Working with clay is also a chance to connect with our Earth, in that potter’s clay is a refined concoction of our earth’s surface matter. To run clay though your fingers is to feel the earth! In this age where we often feel distanced from our natural world, this is a rare opportunity to embrace it and dive into it up to our elbows. It is this direct experience of our earth that drives me to assign a project each semester in which students make their own clay from locally sourced “dirt”, so they can see how the clay we use really can come from right under our feet.

I am afraid the fun activities in college classes are considered frivolous and unnecessary, but when it comes to Ceramics offerings, these may in fact be some of the most rewarding and transformative ones in the college curriculum. To remove these offerings is a disservice to both students and the institutions themselves.

Willi Singleton, Ceramic Artist, Pine Creek Pottery