Choosing to Study Art and Design

Another academic year is about to begin. The number of young people wanting to study art and design is growing. Young people in Pakistan seem to know something that parents and policy makers do not. Subjects that will materialize into successful jobs are usually identified as medicine, IT, business studies, and engineering. School and college curricula channel young people in these directions.

For the last five decades, education has been serving economic development, and public policies reflect this. The term “human capital” developed by economists Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer in the 60s, is overused as an aim to produce labour capable of increasing economic  growth.

But as we know youth has its own recalcitrance, and as society’s elders are less and less able to guarantee pathways to success, there is a growing urge in young people to plan life journeys on their own terms.

Along with business school, computer sciences and pharmacy, a surprising number of students at University of Karachi opt for philosophy, literature, sociology, international relations.  There is an underlying eagerness to understand life.

What is more intriguing is the support young people get, especially those of low income families, to study art. A welder, encourages his only son to develop his good drawing skills by enrolling in art school;  a family living in two rooms give up one precious room so that their son could complete his paintings for his exams. Recently, a second year student, whose younger brother just committed suicide after feeling he had no future, came to discuss his desperation to continue studying fine art, despite feeling the pressure to earn for the family. A young girl, married off before she could start her first term, asked through tears of panic, if she should have an abortion, so she could continue her fine art degree. In fact she was encouraged to take a year off and return to her studies, which she did with her new husband’s blessings.

Sometimes, as I drive up to the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Karachi I am aware of the madness of teaching art and design in times when one of my graduates is killed in a bomb blast; the city struggles on a daily basis for good roads, affordable hospitals, comfortable transport, food, while dodging stray bullets.

How crazy is it to tell young people who live in real despair, to notice the rainbow colours in a dew drop? While a lot of sociologists around the world suggest a growing narcissistic individualism of selfies and video diaries, art and design encourages a more thoughtful individualism.  

Stanley Hall describes youth as a time of “storm and stress” and fluctuating emotions. In fact I find too much is made of the confusion of youth. Young people have great clarity and insight – the storm is created by those who feel the status quo will be disturbed.

I prefer Plato’s description of youth as spiritual drunken ness, as the  verse on a Karachi bus declares: “Aaghaz e Jawani hai hum jhoom ke chaltay hain. Log samajhte hain ke hum pee ke nikalte hain” ( It is my youthfulness that makes me swagger, people assume I have stepped out in a drunken state)

While Pakistani youth have not formed identifiable movements of rebellion - such as the beat generation, hippies, mods and rockers, or punk - social mobility, which defines much of Pakistani society has unraveled the neat edges of social roles. Women work, the son of a mason becomes an architect, a university teacher becomes a pop musician.

In their study “Unable to Conform, Unwilling to Rebel? Youth, Culture, and Motivation in Globalizing Japan”, Toivonen, Norasakkunkit and Uchida,  suggest that the reluctance to conform in a conformist society sometimes creates tensions that lead young people to a place outside of society. In Japan, the Hikomori are socially withdrawn, socially and occupationally inactive youth. In Pakistan they may take to drugs, crime or become pawns in street politics. A contrasting group in Japan, uses creative and integrative ways to negotiate conformist pressures tactfully. Art and Design activities allow innovation, non-conformist ideas to be explored positively, productively and more subtly, without causing what Stanley Cohen calls society’s “moral panic”.

This quiet rebellion is visible in Pakistan, dominated as it is by a young population, by the growing numbers of art and design students, film makers, and creative professionals. Film and breakdance have been added to the love of sports in Lyari, Fine Artists have stepped out of galleries onto the streets, painting murals,  the internet is full of vimeo, youtube and soundcloud contributions.   Young people have realized art not just teaches a craft, but can develop a sense of achievement, self-confidence, relaxation, good communication skills. Yet art as a subject, music, or creative writing remains absent in most schools and colleges.  Even teacher training colleges do not have the instruction of art and creativity as a subject. Policy makers are still not listening.  

Durriya Kazi

January 8, 2018