“Another way of seeing” education pasts and presents: art, education, and activism

2022 marked the fiftieth anniversary of John Berger’s BBC television series in which he talked about how we look at art and why it matters: “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled ... The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe ... Every image embodies a way of seeing ... Our perception of an image depends upon our own way of seeing.” Berger encouraged his audience to be sceptical. For him, art had power over people and was part of a world where decisions had consequences, but also alternatives: “This is how the picture looks, but it didn’t have to be. This is the government we have, but it doesn’t have to be.” The final page of the book which accompanied the television series contains a single sentence: “To be continued by the reader ...”. Following Berger, “‘Another way of seeing’ education pasts and presents: art, education, and activism” offers a form of continuation, one that focuses on a particular audience and a particular category of visual evidence. The former being historians of education, and the latter the products of activist art. The paper will present historical and material evidence to support the argument that artistic production is a source for another way of seeing and understanding histories of education reform and renewal.