Education and the arts

I’m reading I’ll Take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition slowly. Very, very slowly. This is a reread, since my reading goal this year is to read again a dozen books that have had a major influence on my thinking. I don’t remember when I first read it—it’s not on any of the lists I’ve kept since 2003, but my 2005 list is missing, so maybe it was that year. Certain essays of the book are heavily underlined, but the second one didn't have any underlining at all... until now.

Here’s a fairly long passage that leapt out at me just now:

Education can do comparatively little to aid the cause of the arts as long as it must turn out graduates into an industrialized society which demands specialists in vocational, technical, and scientific subjects. The humanities, which could reasonably be expected to foster the arts, have fought a losing battle since the issue between vocational and liberal education was raised in the nineteenth century. Or, they have kept their place by imitating the technique of their rivals, so that one studies the biology of language, the chemistry of drama, the evolution of the novel, and the geological strata or fossil forms of literature and the fine arts. That is, they abdicate the function by which they were formerly able to affect the tone of society. So far as they still maintain this function, they still face a dilemma. Either they will appear as decorative and useless to the rising generations who know that poetry sells no bonds and music manages no factories, and hence will be taken under duress or enjoyed as a pleasant concession to the softer and more frivolous side of life. Or, the more successfully they indoctrinate the student with their values, the more unhappy they will make him. For he will be spoiled for industrial tasks by being rendered inefficient. He will not fit in. The more refined and intelligent he becomes, the more surely will he see in the material world the lack of the image of nobility and beauty that the humanities inculcate in him. The product of a humanistic education in an industrial age is most likely to be an exotic, unrelated creature—a disillusionist or a dilettante.
(“A Mirror for Artists,” Donald Davidson)

[emphasis mine]

That’s something to think about, isn’t it? How do we guard against that—our children becoming unhappy “disillusionists”? I know I struggle against cynicism.

Leisure

~William Henry Davies (1871-1940)

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Unstooping

~Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Low on his fours the Lion
Treads with the surly Bear;
But Men straight upward from the dust
Walk with their heads in air;
The free sweet winds of heaven,
The sunlight from on high
Beat on their clear bright cheeks and brows
As they go striding by;
The doors of all their houses
They arch so they may go,
Uplifted o’er the four-foot beasts,
Unstooping, to and fro.

Imagination, wonder, and science

(Follow the discussion of Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education, by James S. Taylor at Mystie's blog)
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“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I’m doing something new this year: teaching science to my young children from a textbook – astronomy, to be specific. A couple of weeks ago we were reading about Venus, and in the chapter’s concluding paragraphs, the author says, “It’s a burning hot planet with lava and heat-trapping clouds made of sulfuric acid swirling madly around.”

I snapped the book shut and said, “That made be what Venus is made of but it’s not what she is.”

Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility who arrives across the sea fully grown and unclothed, her parents unknown, and is clothed by the gods. Venus is the wife of the deformed Vulcan—blacksmith, and god of the fire, patron of craftsmen and artisans—but forever enamored of Mars, the handsome god of war and agriculture.

Venus is the Evening Star that blesses the night with peace and comfort.

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,
  Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
  Like a fair lady at her casement, shines
  The evening star, the star of love and rest!
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Venus is the Morning Star that brings hope of the rising sun.

Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The Flowry May…
(John Milton)

The Ancient Greeks originally called the Morning Star Phosphorus, the Light-Bringer, which is Lucifer in Latin, and the Evening Star was Hesperus, Vesper in Latin, from which we get the name of our Evening Prayers. Later they adopted the Babylonian view that these stars were one and the same and named the wanderer Aphrodite, after the Babylonian Ishtar. And since the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, He is now the Bright and Morning Star.

That’s the kind of thing I want to come to my children’s minds when they think of Venus. There is so much to learn about Venus, and when you know all that, you see how fitting it is that the goddess of desire and passion is made of erupting volcanoes and swirling clouds of sulfuric acid. It’s as though God Himself named her. Well, the Psalmist does say “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.”

It’s largely because I don’t want my children to turn out like poor Eustace, who had read only the wrong books, that I’ve avoided science textbooks in the early years, focusing mainly on nature studies, but, as I’ve mentioned before, I love the night sky and I wanted a more systematic way to pass on my love and knowledge to my children, thus the textbook.

Naturally, being a mom, I’m second-guessing myself. As good as this book is, should I be using any science textbook at all with young, impressionable children?

Reading Poetic Knowledge assures me that I’m right to be cautious. Taylor says that poetic knowledge is “knowledge from the inside out, radically different in this regard from a knowledge about things. In other words, it is the opposite of scientific knowledge.”

You see, there are two ways to learn about something. If you wanted to learn about roses, you could watch the rose bush in your own garden, day after day observing a particular flower as it progresses from bud to bloom to fruit, noticing how long it stays open, how it smells, what pollinators it attracts, what pests and diseases it is susceptible to, what weather it likes best. You could study roses in the wild, in other people’s gardens, in art, poetry, and music, and in folklore.

Or, you could cut off the flower, take it inside and pull it apart, naming and counting each part—sepals, petals, stamens, stigma—cutting open the ovary to find out what’s inside. There’s a time and place for that sort of thing, but you have to realize that in order to gain that knowledge, you’ve killed the flower.

Poetic experience indicates an encounter with reality that is non-analytical, something that is perceived as beautiful, awful (awefull), spontaneous, mysterious... when the mind, through the sense and emotions, sees in delight, or even in terror, the significance of what is really there.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t want our children to learn real, scientific facts about the creation—we just need to be sure that love for the creation comes first and isn’t killed by the way they learn the facts.

For me, that means I need to share with them the poetry and stories I mentioned above. As I was writing this I realized I’ve never told them any of that, and I don’t know why I haven’t. It also means that I can keep on using the science book as a framework and reference book as long as I am myself giving them “ ‘The One Thing Needful,’ that is, the kind of knowledge that derives from the love of a thing.”

Address to Venus

Venus and Mars
Sandro Botticelli c. 1485

~Lucretius
(ca. 99 B.C. - ca. 55 B.C.)

Delight of Human kind, and Gods above;
Parent of Rome; Propitious Queen of Love;
Whose vital pow’r, Air, Earth, and Sea supplies;
And breeds what e’r is born beneath the rowling Skies:
For every kind, by thy prolifique might,
Springs, and beholds the Regions of the light:
Thee, Goddess thee, the clouds and tempests fear,
And at thy pleasing presence disappear:
For thee the Land in fragrant Flow’rs is drest,
For thee the Ocean smiles, and smooths her wavy breast;
And Heav’n it self with more serene, and purer light is blest.
For when the rising Spring adorns the Mead,
And a new Scene of Nature stands display’d,
When teeming Budds, and chearful greens appear,
And Western gales unlock the lazy year,
The joyous Birds thy welcome first express,
Whose native Songs thy genial fire confess:
Then savage Beasts bound o’re their slighted food,
Strook with thy darts, and tempt the raging floud:
All Nature is thy Gift; Earth, Air, and Sea:
Of all that breathes, the various progeny,
Stung with delight, is goaded on by thee.
O’er barren Mountains, o’er the flow’ry Plain,
The leavy Forest, and the liquid Main
Extends thy uncontroul’d and boundless reign.
Through all the living Regions dost thou move,
And scattr’st, where thou goest, the kindly seeds of Love:
Since then the race of every living thing,
Obeys thy pow’r; since nothing new can spring
Without thy warmth, without thy influence bear,
Or beautiful, or lovesome can appear,
Be thou my ayd: My tuneful Song inspire,
And kindle with thy own productive fire;
While all thy Province Nature, I survey,
And sing to Memmius an immortal lay
Of Heav’n, and Earth, and every where thy wond’rous pow’r display.
To Memmius, under thy sweet influence born,
Whom thou with all thy gifts and graces dost adorn.
The rather, then assist my Muse and me,
Infusing Verses worthy him and thee.
Mean time on Land and Sea let barb’rous discord cease,
And lull the listening world in universal peace.
To thee, Mankind their soft repose must owe,
For thou alone that blessing canst bestow;
Because the brutal business of the War
Is manag’d by thy dreadful Servant’s care:
Who oft retires from fighting fields, to prove
The pleasing pains of thy eternal Love:
And panting on thy breast, supinely lies,
While with thy heavenly form he feeds his famish’d eyes:
Sucks in with open lips, thy balmy breath,
By turns restor’d to life, and plung’d in pleasing death.
There while thy curling limbs about him move,
Involv’d and fetter’d in the links of Love,
When wishing all, he nothing can deny,
Thy charms in that auspicious moment try;
With winning eloquence our peace implore,
And quiet to the weary World restore.

 

Weather

~anonymous

Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not.

Because we had so much weather today: first clouds followed by sun, then rain followed by sun, then hail the size of pinto beans, and now it's sunny again!

The Rainy Day

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
    And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
    And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
    Some days must be dark and dreary.

Education and government

Thinking about something I read yesterday:

No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.

~Aristotle, Politics, Book VIII, 1
tr. Benjamin Jowett

"The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives."

"For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it."

If this is true, then, looking at our government schools, what kind of citizen is our government trying to produce, and what does that say about the kind of government we have? Looking at it in that light the situation is a lot more grim than I'd been thinking.

The lesser of two evils

I'm reading The Imitation of Christ right now and last night I came across something very interesting. In the Third Book, "On Internal Consolation," Thomas à Kempis has this to say "On Patient Wrestling Against Carnal Desires":

1. O Lord God, I see that patience is very necessary for me, for many things in this life do not happn as we would like.
I see well that whatever plans I make for my own peace, my life cannot be without some battle and sorrow....

2. If you say you are not able to to suffer so much, how then will you be able to suffer the fire of purgatory?
Of two evils we should always choose the lesser. Strive, then, on God's behalf to endure the little pains of this world, so that you may escape eternal torments in the world to come.

Leaving aside the issue of purgatory, Thomas is saying that it's far better to choose the "evil" of a hard struggle against sin in this life, rather than to suffer the evil of punishment for your sins in the next life.

Or, for us moms, facing the difficulty of training a toddler can be overwhelming at times, but how much better it is to face that struggle, that "evil," now rather than to put it off until the child is six or twelve or fifteen years old when disciplining him will require far more work and will yield scantier results.

That's very good counsel, and I wonder if The Imitation is the origin of that phrase. If so, its original meaning was nothing like the way it's used in modern politics.

Mummy Slept Late and Daddy Fixed Breakfast

~John Ciardi (1916-1986)

Daddy fixed the breakfast.
He made us each a waffle.
It looked like gravel pudding.
It tasted something awful.

“Ha, ha,” he said, “I’ll try again.
This time I’ll get it right.”
But what I got was in between
Bituminous and anthracite.

“A little too well done? Oh well,
I’ll have to start all over.”
That time what landed on my plate
Looked like a manhole cover.

I tried to cut it with a fork:
The fork gave off a spark.
I tried a knife and twisted it
Into a question mark.

I tried it with a hack-saw.
I tried it with a torch.
It didn’t even make a dent.
It didn’t even scorch.

The next time Dad gets breakfast
When Mommy’s sleeping late,
I think I’ll skip the waffles,
I’d sooner eat the plate!

I love this poem and woke up this morning thinking about it—but not because I woke up late and Daddy made awful waffles. Years ago we belonged to a church that had a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper cooked by the men, and we’ve carried that tradition into our family, so tonight Mike’ll make pancakes and eggs and sausages for us and they’ll be delicious because he’s a good cook.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Some time during the day I’ll take down the last of the Christmas lights in the house, which I keep up through the winter to brighten the short, dreary days, then in the evening we’ll go to our church’s service for the imposition of ashes. What Lenten traditions does your family keep?