Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin is about the impact of standardized test on our educational system.
Our current educational system continues to teach students based on a rigid model, largely unchanged from the last 100 years. This is despite our understanding about different learning styles. Every student is required to learn in the same way and from the same text books, conforming to a expectation of identical performance standards.
Student performance is then measured on a bell curve. Since the tests are nationally normed for average performance, most students are supposed to fit into the center three stanines of the bell curve.
The bell curve is constructed from pencils. It is a sculpture 28 ft. wide and 12 ft. height that hangs from the center of the room like a curtain or barrier. It is a symbol of the focus on standardized testing in our educational system. As we become more desperate to evaluate the effectiveness of our educational system, we implement testing standards that are nationally normed for measuring the average student.
This issue has recently revived during the pandemic.
Click on links below to find images and information:
Visiting schools and working with the public assembling pencils
Videos about education and the impact of standardized testing
The assembly was like a woven tapestry of pencils. The mono-filament fishing line was the warp. The pencils were the weft. This created an abstract zigzag pattern.
Thousands of #2 pencils form an ephemeral curtain that moves with the slightest breath of air. This installation emphasizes material reuse, student education, math, science, and diversity.
Pencils were sent to me from around the world, uniting a community of artists, students, and educators. This installation represents my continuing commitment to make artwork from recycled materials addressing social issues.
"As the number of government-mandated tests multiplies, anger is mounting over wasted school hours, 'testing to the test,' a shrinking focus on the arts, demoralized students, and perceptions that teachers are being unjustly blamed for deeply-rooted socio-economic problems."
This quote from the article "Pencils Down" from YES Magazine, Spring 2014, summarizes my observations and frustration as a parent.
Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin won FIRST PLACE in the Eco Arts Awards for "Repurposed Materials in Art and Design".
The category title was suggested by the juror Lloyd Herman.
Pick UP Your Pencils, Begin at Euphrat Museum of Art, DeAnza College, Cupertino, CA
This art installation of pencils hangs like a shimmering curtain presenting a broad face to the world, yet if you stand at the edge, it is only the ethereal thickness of a pencil. The monofilament warp reaches to the ceiling as if it were the lines of a graph.
Shipping Art Installation
Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin ships in five boxes.
Dimension for these interior shipping boxes: 40"H x 12"W x 12"D.
Weight for the boxes: 26 lbs., 30 lbs., 26 lbs., 25 lbs., and 23 lbs.
Local delivery - I can ship the work in these boxes.
Long distance shipping - I will double box the art work in larger shipping boxes.
Installation and De-installation: A 4 hour Process
Magazine Articles & Publicity
American Craft Magazine Dec/Jan 2012 (click to read the article as a PDF) Dec/Jan 2012
”Pencils Make A Point”
Written by Julie K. Hanus
Palo Alto Weekly March 23, 2012
"Artist Makes a Point with Pencils"
Written by Karla Kane, edited by Rebecca Wallace, and photographed by Veronica Weber.
Student Responses to Pencil Art Exhibition
Students responded to Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin in a variety of ways such as group discussion, drawing, poetry, and photography. Learn more about student efforts and their creativity HERE.
Pencil Symposium: A discussion with San Francisco Bay Area high school students about the impact of standardized testing and their most effective educational experience was video taped on Thursday, March 15, 2012.
This was edited into a short video shown below.
Funding for videotaping the PENCIL SYMPOSIUM and the EOP provided by Applied Materials Excellence in the Arts Grants, a program of Arts Council of Silicon Valley.
Visiting Schools and Working with Students
During the assembly of the project, which took years, I went to schools lectured about my work and the students worked on the pencil project. Asking people to work on your art project is not easy, it was a difficult reality. More than once I had to come home and fix the pencils the students or the public assembled.
Students at Academy of Art, San Francisco, volunteered their time to work on the project. They learned how to thread the pencils onto the monofilament.
It is easy to see that we are at the beginning stages of the project. Working with the public, even with talented art students is very slow in the first hour or two until they build experience.
Art students at Sequoia High School were REALLY great helping with the pencils, spending several hours on a Sunday helping assemble the pencils.
They did a fantastic job catching on quickly to the precise way the pencils needed to be threaded onto the mono-filament fishing line.
My experience working with students, adults, the general public, and art teachers was uncanny and unpredictable.
Some people grasped the concept of assembly and learned how to thread the pencils immediately, others never quite got it right. Age had nothing to do with it. Some people are born to work with their hands.
The Bell Curve
This sculpture made from pencils is about standardized testing in the shape of a bell curve. The bell curve is approximately 12 feet high and 28 feet wide.
This graphic is the model drawing for the bell curve of pencils. Each color represents a panel of pencils. The bell curve is mathematical model divided into nine parts called stanines. The bell curve is how student performance on standardized tests is evaluated.
Below is an actual ACT Assessment Student Report. The name of the student has been obscured for confidentiality.
In these test results, the numbers reflect the bell curve in a nationally normed test where student performance is measured against all other students. (I drew the bell curve in pencil so that you would understand how students performance is measured on standardized tests.)
Standardized tests reflect an increasing influence and power of corporations that have a huge investment in mandating testing. "The Federal government spends some $600 billion a year on education" - and the big business of education profits from a selling text books, curriculum and standardized tests. This is all a formula for rote learning and marginalization of the arts in education. Critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving - all skills of the 21st century are difficult to evaluate with fill in the bubble testing. *Quote from the article "Pencils Down" from YES Magazine, Spring 2014.
What do the different colors of pencils mean?
White, multi-colored, red, purple, blue/green, and black pencils make up the colored stanines on either side represent students that deviate from the norm. The colors represents the diversity of the student population. On standardized testing it would reflect both high and low performance.
Standard #2 yellow pencils will be used for the center three yellow stanines and they represent the nationally normed standardized test where most of all students are supposed to fit into the center of the bell curve. This is why the bell curve humps up in the middle.
Where did you get all the pencils from?
The pencils were sent to me from all over the world. Most were from the United States, but I received pencils from Japan, France, Britain, Italy. The pencils were sent to me from all over the world.
To collect used pencils, I sent out a PDF by email and mail, to everyone I knew for roughly a year. With time the word spread, and school children, teachers, schools, friends, and families collected pencils for this project.
When was the first public event with this project?
The 2008 annual conference for the California Art Education Association, “Art Bridges the Gap” was where the the assembly of pencil project began. In the conference lobby of the Hyatt Hotel in Burlingame, art teachers and I started to assemble the pencils in stanines of colored pencils. We drilled pencils and measured monofilament fishing line for three days straight!
I lectured at the Conference as a keynote speaker, and received a standing ovation for my lecture! The first time I have ever received a standing ovation from the entire audience!
How did you know if you had enough pencils?
I had an idea of how much a square foot of pencils would weigh:
One square foot of pencils = about 12 ounces
Therefore, I sorted the pencils by color, weighing each bag of pencils. When it seemed like I had enough pencils, I crossed my fingers that I had accumulated enough pencils for the whole sculpture. In total, I collected more than 300lbs of used pencils! My calculations worked out and I only had a small quantity of pencils left over after assembly.
How did you get the holes in the pencils?
The holes in the pencils were drilled with a very small micro-drill which my son modified for this project. My son also created a jig so that the pencils have small holes drilled exactly the same way and distance apart.
Drilling the pencils is the most time consuming and tedious part of this project. The graphite from the pencils is not "dusty", but it makes a mess. Each hole needs to be drilled very carefully so that the printing and words on the pencils will show in the final sculpture. I hired art students to drill most of the pencils. Thank you Adam Evan, Adam Klafter and Alyssa Endo.
As simple as this project looked, it actually took two engineers (my husband and son) and me hours to brainstorm all the technical solutions for putting the pencils together.
How did you begin threading the pencils?
The beginning was the most challenging. We taped down yardsticks to the paper and started threading the pencils. We were slow, made mistakes and learned the hard way with experience.
After we started threading the pencils, we realized that the metal ferrule holding on the eraser would start skewing the thickness and balance of the pencils. This is why the pencils change direction every foot.
Did you sharpen the pencils?
I thought that the pencils should be sharpened for the art installation because test takers are instructed to bring two sharpened #2 pencils when taking a standardized test.
Initially, I was using an ordinary electric pencil sharpener to sharpen each pencil prior to drilling. Then, I switched to using my belt sander to sharpen pencils in bulk. This was a far more efficient and time efficient method.
By 3rd grade, all California students are required to take standardized tests. This influenced the decision to include beginner pencils.
Preschool teacher, Cathy Tapia comments about Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin:
"I love your concept!! As a preschool teacher I am appalled that I am now REQUIRED to test my 3 and 4 year old students to PROVE their progress. I have worn out many pencils filling in the bubble sheets for the state of Michigan. I love that you included the kindergarten pencils."
How were the pencils threaded together?
Monofilament fishing line had to be threaded thought the holes in each pencil. Threading pencils on the fishing line must be done very precisely, but it is the easiest part of the assembly process. A skilled hand could do one row of pencils in about five minutes.
How did you get the curves of the bell curve to match up?
Emiko Oye, my studio assistant (and friend) helped me work on the top edge of the stanines. It took a great deal of skill, practice, trial and error to get the curve of pencils to line up.
Why did you attach rulers to the bottom of each stanine?
The yardsticks are a metaphor for how student performance is obsessively measured. They also allude to how students used to be hit by yardsticks and rulers to enforce conformity and adhesion to strict expectations.
The yardsticks to give the pencil sculpture a firm, straight flat bottom. Look closely at the photos of the finished sculpture. The yardsticks nudge the floor.
Special Pencils
Pencils used to write and draw as a tool, also convey information. Looking at old pencils we realize that they are an iconic tool of the 20th century. Everyone used pencils. They were inexpensive, easy to carry, and did not leak ink. Before the disposal pen, everyone used pencils, every day. Because of their ubiquity, they were also used as an effective marketing tool for advertising sharing information.
Below is an image of pencils from the Pencil Brothers. They were two men, Ken Cory and Leslie W. LePere, that collaborated for years (approximately 1966-1986) making jewelry and small objects. They were best known in the Seattle and Pacific Northwest area of the United States.
I was very fortunate to be given a number of pencils from the Pencil Brothers from past exhibitions to include in Pick Up Your Pencils, Begin. These pencils are from exhibitions at Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA.; Manolides Gallery, Seattle, WA and a retrospective of their work at the Cheney Cowles Museum, Spokane, WA. Pencil Brothers: Ken Cory, born Kirkland, Washington, 1943; Died Ellensburg, Washington, 1994 Leslie LePere, born Spokane, Washington, 1946 The pencils were donated by Nancy Worden executor of Ken Cory estate.
A close-up view of pencils from the Pencil Brothers (Ken Cory and Lepere) woven into the left center stanine.
These pencils from a 1990 census were used in the black stanine of pencils.
Here are the pencils used in the black stanine of pencils.
More Information About Education and Standardized Testing
Wonderful video with Sir Ken Robinson as he addresses "Do schools kill creativity?" Definitely worth watching.
As you listen to this video ask yourself, "Why are our educational systems investing millions of dollars in standardized testing instead of the arts?”
The arts teach creativity and problem solving skills of the 21st century, but education continues to focus on "back to basics" and quantifiable education that can be measured with standardized tests.
Ken Robinson says:
"When you travel around the world, every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Everyone does matter where you go. You’d think it will be otherwise but it isn't."
"At the top are mathematics and languages, than the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Every where on earth. And pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy with in the arts. Art and music are normally given the higher status in schools than drama and dance."
In this video with Seth Godin describes the invention and purpose of the standardized test and how this continues to impact education with the factory model.
I originally became aware of the impact of standardized testing when my children were in school, and the Bush administration pushed "No Child Left Behind." There is a lot to say about this....but let's focus on the astute observations in this lecture with Ken Robinson. He says,
"Education under No Child Left Behind is based on not diversity, but conformity. What schools are encouraged to do is find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum achievement."
"One of the effects of No Child Left Behind has been to narrow the focus on to the so-called standard disciplines they are very important. Science and math are undoubtedly necessary, but they are not sufficient. A real education has to give equal weight to the arts, the humanities, to physical education."
"The time, energy, and money that are being devoted to preparing students for standardized tests has to come from somewhere. Schools across the country are cutting back or even eliminating programs in the arts, recess for young children, electives for high school students, class meetings and other activities intended to promote social more learning and discussions about current events since some material will not appear on the test."
© Harriete Estel Berman, 2021