"Art is not the application of a canon
of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any
canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs."
(Pablo Picasso, Picasso on Art: A
Selection of Views)
Punch (1998) discusses qualitative and
quantitative research and their merits or what I would call the 'How
of Things' or the 'How Much and How Many of Things'. Picasso gives, what I consider to be, the most brilliant argument for qualitative evaluation over
quantitative in the quote above and is a perfect acknowledgement of
why some things can't be measured in numeric terms. Trying to measure
success or achievement or anything that tells us about an individual
in terms of numbers can be a false economy with so many hidden
variables.
Numbers
Numbers can tell us nothing about the
person, yet we apply them all the time.
- We categorise by age, restricting our children's lives to experiences of their peers.
- We categorise by test, exam and assessment levels, when someone who has done a degree in a subject like youth and community work may very well be an excellent academic but not a good youth and community work practitioner.
- We categorise by income and class and if it were used to right the balance of equality it would say something but instead it is merely there to fence it off and maintain the capitalist status quo.
- We categorise by metres, cms, feet and inches whether in terms of height and shape and by numbers...as soon as we are born – everything is counted – from limbs to fingers and toes.
Yes, we may say someone has 2 eyes and
two ears. What does that tell us about the person? Not that they can
see or hear or are colour blind or like music. Or love to watch
romantic movies or that they wear their hair to hide their ears. Or
that their eyes change colour like their grandmothers. Or how when
they hear the sound of a cuckoo it makes them sad. Or how they love
to read under the blanket with a torch. Or how they love camping for
the sounds of the night.
A person should not be defined by a
number, unless infinity could be a number. We are all infinite. Our
possibilities are infinite.
Every individual is so different from
the next, with attributes so varied and vast they are far past
anything that can be counted or even understood.
Does a song sound better if you know
the time signature or number or crochets, quavers or minims or
whether the notes are FACE or EGBDF?
My IQ, income, age, height or number of
body organs or limbs do not define me. Numbers do not define me. I am
infinite.
"Everyone wants to understand art. Why
not try to understand the songs of a bird? Why does one love the
night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand
them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If
only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity,
that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more
importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things
which please us in the world, though we can't explain them."
(PABLO PICASSO, Picasso on Art: A
Selection of Views)
Picasso,
P. (1988)
Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views, ed. Ashton, D., Da Capo
Punch,
K.
(1998) Introduction
to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches,
London, Sage
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