COMMUNITY NEWS
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Students ‘Sculpt’ Blackout Poetry
n Mount Madonna School’s ninth grade Creative Expression class, students have been experimenting with different creative processes and ways of constructing that require them to stretch outside of their comfort zone and work with unusual methods and materials. “Working in this way can lead to new discoveries, happy accidents, flexibility and refreshed curiosity,” commented Angela Willetts, who co-teaches the course with Haley Campbell. For a recent project students explored a process known as erasure, or “blackout” poetry. They began with a “found” text - printed language from any source, and using this text, the students “sculpted” a poem using only words from within the text. Students were given pages torn from a 1950s magazine, and they all went in totally different directions. “The artist must find a way to visually obscure or subtract all the other language so only the words of the poem are emphasized,” explained Willetts. “This can be as simple as crossing out all the unnecessary words, but what a missed opportunity that would be! Instead, our artists were challenged to find ways to emphasize the poem in more visually interesting ways, perhaps even ways that relate to the meaning of their poem. One of the things we try to encourage in the Creative Expression class is the development of artists’ ‘habits of mind.’ Letting oneself play, experiment, and try new processes are skills essential to growth in the art.” n
Attorney General Sues Over Rule Helping Predatory For-Profit Colleges
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n Jan. 15, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced a lawsuit against Acting U.S. Secretary of Education Mitchell Zais and the U.S. Department of Education over its “last-minute” effort to ease oversight of questionable forprofit colleges at the expense of students and taxpayers. The department’s recently finalized “Distance Education and Innovation” regulations allow colleges to bypass requirements set out in the Higher Education Act intended to prevent federal Title IV funds, including federal student loans and Pell grants, from going to low-quality educational programs and predatory for-profit institutions. “Regulations that hold for-profit schools accountable were created to protect students,” said Becerra, contending the education department’s “new rules harm California students by steering them away from our excellent
public college and university system and into educational programs that are questionable at best, and outright scams at worst.” He added that this “last-minute attempt to dismantle oversight regulations on for-profit schools will not go unchallenged by California.” Under the Higher Education Act, colleges and their educational programs must meet eligibility requirements to participate in Title IV federal student-aid programs, including certification by the Secretary of Education that a college has the administrative capability and financial responsibility to receive federal funds. Becerra alleges the new “Distance Education and Innovation” rule illegally eases this review to benefit for-profit institutions. The new rule helps predatory institutions in at least two ways.
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“Predatory” page 10
www.tpgonlinedaily.com Aptos Times / February 1st 2021 / 9
