Art as Education

Fourteen. What could anyone everhope to know at fourteen? At that age,I remember, it was all climbing trees and scuffed knees, and the only knowledge we tried to intercept was the meaning behind the pop songs that reached our rural ears. In those days —and we’re only talking about twenty years ago— if I wanted to know anything that constituted serious information, I would ask around and, when the answer inevitably failed to resolve itself conclusively on the lips of family elders, I would turn to the volumes of a children’s encyclopaedia that rested their broken spines against the bay window of our study room.