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• Students will explore the relationship between collective and individual identity. • Students will identify how yearbooks define both individual and collective identities particular to time and place. • Students will look at the form of the yearbook as a representation of the individual and collective identity of a school community.
Art:21 Web Site • Wrestlers Love America – Collier Schorr interview & clip • Some/One – Do-Ho Suh interview & clip Additional Web Sites • http://www.brownielocks.com/graduation.html How the school yearbook has evolved • http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/inter-natlinks/refs3.htm United Nations statistical data and yearbooks • http://www.whoa.org/yearbooks.htm Wagner High School at Clark Air Base, Philippines yearbooks Classroom Materials • Enough copies of current Yearbooks from your school for class divided into teams of 4 (1 per team). • Equal number of copies of different yearbooks for comparative purposes. These could be from the same school but different times (25 years ago, and 50 years ago), yearbooks from schools in other communities, or yearbooks from parents and grandparents. (Note: Students will need to interview a representative from each yearbook) Books to use as additional resources: • Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau • Lord of the Flies by William Golding • 1984 by George Orwell • Atlas Shrugged and/or Anthem by Ayn Rand
• What is the appropriate balance between the needs of an individual and the needs of a society? • Should high school yearbooks reflect primarily the interests of a school or its students? How are those interests the same and how are they different? • When is it important or necessary that an individual subsume their personal interests? • When is it important for an individual to assert their individuality? • What does a comparison of yearbooks from different times tell us about changes in our society? • What does a comparison of yearbooks from different communities tell us about those communities?
Do-Ho Suh: The Individual & The Collective Have students watch the Art:21 Season Two Do-Ho Suh segment and look at his art work and interviews on the Art:21 Web site. After viewing, begin a discussion about the role of individuality in the public sphere. Point out that the artist is from South Korea where every man must serve in the armed forces when they turn 18. • How is Do-Ho’s background reflected in his work? • In High School Uniform how are individuals represented? • How does the artist symbolically indicate the relationship between individual and group identity? • How do the works Who Am We? and Public Figures address this idea specifically? • Ask the question, ‘Who Am We?’ (Time: One 45 minute session) Collier Schorr & Wrestlers Love America For her project Wrestlers Love America photographer Collier Schorr documents high school & collegiate wrestling matches and practices. These images provide an archive of impressions of the experience of adolescence and the physicality of team sports. After viewing Schorr’s Season Two video segment and looking at her art work and interviews on the Art:21 Web site, have students compare and contrast her images with those found in the athletic sections of their school’s yearbook. Which images portray a more realistic example of the wrestling experience, of the adolescent experience, of the experience of team sports, of the masculine experience? (Time: One to two 45 minute sessions) Current Yearbooks For over 50 years, yearbooks have been a common representation of the high school experience. They mark a life passage for individuals, a class, and an institution. Each year, they document the achievements of particular individuals and the school as a whole. What might a comparison of yearbooks from different types of schools and from different times tell us about the commonalities and differences between students? Begin this activity by dividing the class into teams of four. In groups, have the students spend a half hour reviewing the most recent yearbook from your school. Ask students to begin to record data that might offer a base line for demographic information about the student body. Each team can create their own categories such as the number of females and the number of males, ethnic makeup of the school, types of people participating in special events, sports, and/or certain extracurricular activities, etc. (Time: One 45 minute session) Reporting Back Have each team present their findings about the yearbook. The teacher should make a list that records all of the categories of demographic information. When all the teams have reported, discuss the results: • Do these categories accurately define the school? • Do they define the members of the group individually? Why or why not? • What part of the yearbook, if any, highlighted an individual student? • How much of each students individual identity is determined by going to their particular high school? Where do their friends attend school? • Are different groups, as the students know them, represented in the yearbook? (hip hoppers, stoners, jocks, computer geeks, etc.) Why? Which of the demographic categories identified seem most telling about the identity of the school? • Ask students how the results might differ using a different school (name a school that students know that represents a different community) • How might the results differ if this were the yearbook of the students’ parents? Of their grandparents? • Revisit the question, "Who Am We?" Has the answer changed? (Time: Half a 45 minute session to one 45 minute session) More Yearbooks At this point each team should review 2 different sets of yearbooks (2 members of each team per yearbook). Ideally, they will be able to locate their own from relatives. (These could be parents and grandparents, yearbooks from your school but from different decades—the farther apart the better—or from schools in different communities.) Based on the categories determined above as the most telling, each team should conduct the same data review of these different yearbooks. (Time: One 45 minute session) The Interview Following the compilation of data each team should prepare interview questions for a representative of the yearbooks they have just reviewed. Two students should interview the representative from one yearbook and two students should interview the representative from the other yearbook. The purpose of the interview is to determine an individual’s sense of how well the yearbook captured their high school culture and their perceptions of how that culture might be different from the interviewer’s. Sample questions: How would you characterize your high school? What were/are the demographic characteristics of the school? What were/are the important activities in the school? How would you define the different social groups that attend/ed the school? Is there something that made your school unique? How do you think your high school experience might be different from mine? (Time: after school) Final Reports Following the data gathering and interviews, each team should prepare a final report. The report should compare the factual data gathered from the yearbook with the personal data gathered from the interviews. A key part of the report should focus on the data and interviews as markers of difference, between their own class and high school experience and those in other yearbooks. Students should also determine if the differences reflect a larger understanding of our society. Reports should also include visual clues from the yearbook such as hairstyles, clothing styles, photography techniques, and page layout. When all reports have been presented, the class should return to some of the questions about their own class and how well the yearbook represents them: • What defines the school? Do these same indicators define the students in the school? Why or why not? • How much of who each of the students is today is determined by going to this high school? • Do the students feel they are represented accurately in the yearbook? Why or why not? • Should the yearbook try to represent individuals in the school or the school as a whole? • How would students re-make the yearbook to reflect these answers? (Time: Three to five 45 minute sessions) The UN and Statistical Yearbooks The Department of Economic and Social Affairs at The United Nations oversees statistical data for all member countries. The term they use to describe this data is ‘statistical yearbook.’ How does this term reflect the activity of looking at school yearbooks to determine the demographics of that particular community? What are the similarities and differences in the process that the United Nations goes through to report on its member nations and the process that students went through in deciding on the demographics from the yearbook? (Time: Half a 45 minute session)
• Have students articulated a critical perspective about the relationships between collective and individual identity? • Have students identified how yearbooks define both individual and collective identities particular to time and place? • Have students looked at the form of the yearbook as a representation of the individual and collective identity of a school community? Find out how this lesson plan correlates to your state's education standards! On PBS TeacherSource do a search for "Art in the 21st Century" and click on the Standards Match icon.
Other lessons that could be combined with this lesson to form a longer unit or an extended course of study include: The Face of Fame Honoring Heroes and History Understanding Home Did you use this lesson or generate your own activities based on ideas inspired by the lesson? Submit student art work, new lesson plans, and your comments to Art:21 and have them posted on the site. Help the Online Lesson Library grow!
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