Monday, 18 November 2013

The King

Elvis Presley is the king of rock and roll. As far as I'm concerned, this is an indisputable fact. When my "art pretension" group was debating on an artist to choose to present on, someone mentioned to me that we should present on Elvis. I argued that we should try to pick an artist that would be appropriate to teach children about. Obviously, Elvis is an artist that all children should learn about (he is the king, after all), but I'm not sure Elvis is appropriate to learn about in school. You know, the whole man-whore, drug abuse, dying on the toilet thing may not fit in with current curriculum. However, whoever I was talking to argued that we could just focus on the positive aspects of Elvis. You know, his awesome sideburns and sequenced jump-suits! ;o) Just joking! Aspects such as his amazing voice and his commitment to his parents. Anyways, my question to you is is Elvis appropriate for elementary school? Thoughts, comments, concerns?


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8 comments:

  1. Unknown18 November 2013 at 17:40

    I think he would be an interesting artist for students to study, and we don't only focus on positive figures in history so why should we do that with artists? If students can discuss the horrors of war (although not too graphically) in social studies, why can't Elvis' drug abuse be addressed? I think looking at a ridiculously famous, and talented person's life, and showing students the effects of drugs would be very valuable. I might leave out the "man whore" bit though. I really enjoyed this post Chris, your thoughts on many matters often get me thinking critically about things..

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    1. Unknown18 November 2013 at 18:03

      If you're making fun of how silly some of my posts are, then touché (did I use that word right?). If you are f'real, then thanks. It is really hard for me to write blogs for some reason so if at least one person is getting anything out of them that makes me feel good. :o)

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    2. Unknown18 November 2013 at 20:31

      Hmm, so I just took a quick glace at a bunch of your posts and I definitely wouldn't describe any of them as silly. I think they are all valid. Do you think they are silly? If so why? I am getting something out of your blogs Chris. I think that may be you need to self-assess why you think blog writing is hard for you, because I think your blogs are genuine and relevant.

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    3. Andrea20 November 2013 at 22:56

      I have to agree with Michael, Chris. I enjoy your posts. I'm glad to see you won our little challenge (I just posted my contribution a couple of minutes ago!) and liked reading about the King. I would have said it was not appropriate to learn about Elvis in school, but Michael, Alex and Cheyenne make some really good points. I don't know that I'LL ever teach about Elvis, but I can see the value in it!

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  2. Alex18 November 2013 at 21:43

    I think you can have students learn about Elvis in school. His music is legendary. His life was interesting. The students in my last practicum (grade 6/7) are doing a major HACE project on various drugs. They're going in depth about their long term effects, side effects, withdrawal, etc... So I think having students learn all aspects of Elvis wouldn't be a bad thing (except for the man whore part, of course). This was a good question; I'd never thought of teaching students about musical artists in school.
    I could go on but my laptop battery is about to die and I'm too lazy to find the charge cord.
    Happy homeworking!

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  3. Unknown18 November 2013 at 23:46

    Great question Chris. I think it's up to you and how you plan on presenting the information. The artist I am doing for art inquiry was an alcoholic when he was younger and used to accept cocaine as payment for his artwork. I wouldn't focus on that, but if it was brought up through the students' own inquiry than I would just make sure I was prepared to discuss that and how he turned his life around. I think there are a lot of artists throughout history that engaged in questionable behaviour and substances. I like Alex's spin on it by integrating HACE PLO's.

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  4. Unknown22 November 2013 at 20:21

    Elvis also took the music industry in a new direction, like Emily Carr did with visual art. I think it would be neat to connect the two and to do a class inquiry project on all kinds of artists who took art in new directions.

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  5. Willow Brown18 December 2013 at 07:32

    We did teach about Elvis in a unit about the History of Rock and Roll. Students did a decade each week and performed a show at the end of 5 weeks - it was a few years ago when Rock was declared to be 50 years old. Yes, we focused on his early life and his music but they also knew that he died young and that his death was related to drugs. I like Katerina's idea to do an integrated unit on artists from various genres who took the trends in new directions. But as a few of you have pointed out in blog posts, children do hear/see a lot about the less pleasant side of life. I don't think it is our job to shelter them but to focus on the positive and answer some of their questions about the issues. Some of their questions may be things they should talk to their parents about and we can tell them that.

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