The Uses of Beauty

Back in the saddle of music teacher, I was interviewed on a Zoom podcast today. Here’s a little bit of my answers to two of the questions:

1.    From your experience, how can creativity impact education today? 

Creation is the final exam of true understanding. Whether it’s the science fair, making up math problems, making art, composing music, choreographing dances, writing analytical essays or poetry, creation reveals what we understand about the subject and what we need to learn next. We are also most motivated when we create, most enthusiastic when we get to try things our way rather than just be a bit player in someone else’s script. When we can bring the full measure of our character and our unique and peculiar way of thinking and doing to the project at hand, everything changes. School becomes  meaningful and memorable. 

No one remembers the perfect score on the math sheet or getting all the dates right on the history test, but they can tell you about their 3^rd grade science experiment or show you their sculpture from 5^th grade art class. None of this suggests we stop taking math and history tests, but simply suggests that we put them in context, as steps that help us climb the ladder of our own creative genius.

2.    For those who argue that the arts are superfluous to education in the 21^st century, what do you say to that? 

First, I would tell them I’m so sorry that no one—their school, their family, their culture— gave them what they deserved— a transformative experience through the arts. Had they had that experience, they wouldn’t have to ask that question. But following Tom Robbin’s statement that “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood,” I am obliged to say something to help them consider why art is so terribly, terribly important. 

The pandemic was Nature’s time-out to humanity. “Go to your room and don’t come out until you can show me you understand what it means to be a human being!”

During that sheltered time, we were lonely, cut-off, isolated. So the first lesson we should have learned is how much we need each other, how we need to do better connecting with each other. No finer way to do that than to sing together, play together, dance together, create together. 

Music also had the power to comfort us, to heal our sorrows us and sing our joys. When a loved one dies, no one starts filling out math sheets. We turn to poetry, to music, to art, to literature. Those things that help us feel we’re not alone, that others have expressed what we feel and that we have the capacity to express what others feel. 

A third answer is that we need beauty in our life. 

The Italians singing on balconies during the pandemic. Those who in the midst of our isolation picked up their guitars or their paintbrushes again. The way some danced in the privacy of their room to their favorite music. 

In Victor Hugo’s extraordinary masterpiece Les Miserables, there is this notable exchange:

“You are always eager to make everything useful, yet here is a useless plot. It would be much better to have salads here than bouquets.”

…the bishop replied, “You are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s pause. “Perhaps more so.”