When I moved out to my farm, I was eager to see deer running around outside my back window. I was disappointed that I never saw them. Then one day a friend who was an avid deer hunter came by to visit and as I lamented the lack of deer sightings he looked out the window and spotted deer on the edge of the trees. The deer had been there but my powers of observation were not trained to see them readily until an expert helped me see. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell recounts an incident where a museum had purchased an ancient statue after doing tests to ascertain that it was authentic. They proudly put it on display, then one day an expert in antiquities came to view the statue. Immediately, she said “It is a fake.” Further testing confirmed it was a forgery. Her powers of observation had been so finely tuned that she could quickly recognize what sophisticated testing initially missed. No matter what subject we teach, there is an aspect that relates to improving our student’s skill in observation.
The day I joined Kat Allie’s painting class, the class was preparing to paint a still life. The skill of observing accurately is crucial in painting so she started off with a fun activity to increase their powers of observation. She paired the students up and gave each pair a small photograph of a piece of art. One student in the pair had just one minute to describe the picture to their partner in as much detail as possible including colors, shape, texture, position and number of objects. Each pair then came to the front of the room. The second student described the painting they pictured in their mind from the verbal description of their team mate. After they described the picture they could turn around to see the projected picture to see how well their description matched the actual picture. Not only did this give students a chance to practice detailed observation, it also helped them learn to convey what they were seeing in a way that made sense to someone else who could not see what they were describing.
Observation is not only important in fine arts. Two criminal justice principles related to neighborhood safety are the defensible space theory and the broken windows theory. The idea of defensible space is that a neighborhood can be designed so residents feel control and a criminal feels that he is less secure in committing a crime. The broken windows theory suggests that graffiti, deterioration of buildings, or other signs of delinquency can increase the crime rate in the area as well as influence the community’s perception of safety in the area. Andrea Jones, a criminal justice instructor has used an observation activity with her class in which students drive through areas of relatively high crime or low crime. They then observe the neighborhood and identify characteristics of the neighborhood that the broken windows and defensible space theories would consider problem issues. If students just hear about these theories it might reach them on a superficial level. When they observe a community for signs and features that an offender might evaluate when deciding to commit a crime there or that makes the residents feel more vulnerable, it reaches the students in a more visceral and memorable way. In your class, what types of observations are integral to the subject? You can design activities to help hone your student’s observation skills so they can spot the ‘deer’ or ‘fake’ like an expert.
Bad joke of the week
What does a wicked chicken lay? Deviled eggs
Last thought
“Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.” Wallace Stevens