| It is well for something to be known. | |
| The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known |
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| It is well for something to be known. | |
| The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known |
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| NUMBER 1325.— August 26, 1998; |
 ISSN
0882-3731 |
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| Dear Unknown Friends:
The article by New York City science teacher
Rosemary Plumstead printed here was heard first at a public seminar this
May titled "The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Succeeds — and Can End
the Failure in America’s Classrooms!" That title is true. And Mrs. Plumstead
is one of the most loved and respected teachers in America.
The Aesthetic Realism teaching method is an
urgent necessity for our nation’s schools — and it is also beautiful. This
method succeeds where others fail (a fact documented for over 20 years),
because its principles are true and beautiful. They are the greatest
pedagogical principles in existence, and were stated by the greatest man
of thought, and the kindest: Eli Siegel.
In order to end the anguish in our schools
— the pervasive non-learning, the racism and prejudice, the hurt inflicted
by young people on each other with words and weapons — two things are necessary,
both of which only Aesthetic Realism provides. What is necessary is: 1)
an understanding of the cause of these matters; and 2) an alternative to
that cause, of such scope, accuracy, and beauty that justice to facts and
people looks more attractive than injustice.
Eli Siegel identified that in everyone which
weakens our minds — the source of learning difficulties, racism, all cruelty.
That thing is contempt, the "disposition in every person to think
he will be for himself by making less of the outside world" (Self and
World, p. 15). If we see the world deeply as something to dislike and
scorn, we may be unable to welcome into our mind facts about that world,
presented in a classroom. Contempt is what makes one an intellectual snob,
and also what makes one unable to learn. Contempt goes all the way from
ordinary non-interest in another’s feelings, to opening fire on people
in a school yard — people who represent a disliked world.
There is nothing more important in the understanding
of mind than Eli Siegel’s showing what contempt is. But he also showed
what it is in competition with: the deepest desire we have — "to like
the world." To like the world, he explained, is the purpose of education.
In this great principle, as Mrs. Plumstead describes, he presented the
means for education to succeed—and also for people to be kind: "The
world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness
of opposites." Through that principle, an educator, student, person
doesn’t get some tip or technique in the narrow sense. What we get is the
ability to see and feel that every fact in the curriculum is a friend to
us; that the world as large, as having thought and culture, is also warm,
close; that there is no person or thing that cannot be a means of finding
out who we are, and so to understand and be fair to what’s not us is the
most exciting, composing, and selfish thing we can do. I love that means
of knowing which is Aesthetic Realism and its teaching method: the only
thing big enough, true enough, and beautiful enough to beat contempt. Every
child is entitled to it.
Aesthetic Realism is and represents tremendous
respect for the world; and so it has made for fury in persons thirsty to
have contempt for people and things and to run them. Some of these individuals
are persons of the press; and they have boycotted Mr. Siegel’s work. They
have hoped to kill what is as unkillable as science and sunshine: Aesthetic
Realism.
The following short, musical poems mingle science,
mystery, playfulness. They are by the person who made real learning possible
for every child, because his own desire to know was passionate and unceasing.
Eli Siegel explained that "the purpose of education
is to like the world." And he provided the scientific means through which
the world can be liked, in this principle: "The world, art, and
self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."
When I learned of it, after I had taught for three years and was close
to burnt out, I felt something like what Leeuwenhoek felt when he saw microorganisms
in his laboratory for the first time: "Eureka!"
I teach science at Fiorello LaGuardia High
School in Manhattan to students of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Many face
very difficult situations: illness at home, violence in their neighborhoods,
great economic hardship. Jacinta’s* mother told me, with anguish
in her voice, that there were times when she did not have money to feed
her children. I made sure Jacinta got breakfast and lunch at school. But
for her family to undergo this horror because of our unjust, cruel economic
system is unconscionable!
Every day, I see young people like Jacinta
in danger of using injustices they endure to feel the world is a hateful
place and that they should despise it. Early in the term, Jacinta refused
to take notes and do homework. On every test, she got a grade in the 50s;
and though she was clearly distressed by this, she would defiantly rip
up her exam and walk out of the room.
Contempt for the world, Mr. Siegel showed,
is the big interference with learning. Through the Aesthetic Realism
teaching method, every fact in science gives solid evidence that reality
has a logical, beautiful structure of opposites; and when my students see
through the opposites that — with all the confusion, even cruelty, in
the world — reality itself is made in a way they can honestly respect,
they want to learn and they do!
The Heart: Power & Delicacy, To & From
Using a diagram, we looked closely at the heart.
And students mentioned other opposites: thickness and thinness, expansion
and contraction, solidity and space. For example, we saw that within this
muscular organ that looks solid from the outside, there are four open chambers.
Taniqua said, "You can see that the atria [upper chambers] receive blood
and the ventricles [lower chambers] pump blood out."
These fundamental opposites, to and
from, make for turmoil in people: what’s coming to me and
what does another person deserve from me? My students and I were
seeing that the heart does a wonderful job with them! When I asked the
class, "Do you think all learning is a oneness of receiving and sending
forth — we take in knowledge from the world, and this enables us to express
ourselves?," Jaime said, "That’s true! I like that."
When I first met these 14- and 15-year-olds,
they were in a terrific fight between wanting to learn and acting as if
they’d been through it all before and it didn’t come to much. Manuel stared
vacantly into space, tapping his pencil on the desk. Lisa’s mother told
me her daughter had a very hard time with science and had been diagnosed
as having attention deficit disorder; Lisa was a mingling of fear that
she couldn’t learn and a trying to be nonchalant. Students of different
ethnic backgrounds were separate from each other, while some, like Susan
and Abigail, whispered constantly. Marion would be near tears after exams,
saying, "I studied, Mrs. Plumstead, but I can’t seem to remember very much."
Yet as the semester progressed, the changes, including in Marion, were
monumental.
The Drama of Separation & Junction There was a lively, studious atmosphere. We
saw that the separation in the heart is kind — and therefore different
from the ethnic separation that can go on in a high school!
We saw that blood lacking oxygen returns to
the heart and enters the right atrium. When this chamber contracts, the
blood flows through the valve into the right ventricle below, which in
turn contracts and sends the blood to the lungs to be replenished with
oxygen. Then blood, now with oxygen, is returned to the upper chamber on
the left side, where it swiftly passes through a valve to the left ventricle.
When this contracts, the blood is propelled with enormous force through
the aorta to every cell in the body! Though the two sides of the heart
are completely separate, they are joined by muscles that encircle
the whole heart. And my students were astounded to see that these two sides
actually beat at the same time.
I asked whether we want, like the heart, "to
have a good relation of being apart from and also joined to
other people and things." Nancy said thoughtfully, "Sometimes I feel close
to my friends, and other times I don’t want anything to do with them."
Other students nodded in agreement. We saw that the heart is efficient
because each side is for the other even though they’re both separate.
They don’t dismiss each other; they work together.
We learned that even as the sides of the heart
beat together, the force with which the two ventricles beat is different.
The reason is in this passage from The Incredible Machine: "The
heart must drive blood through our bodies with enough force to send it
surging to the farthest capillary; yet it must pump blood gently to the
lungs." "That’s power and gentleness!" Manuel said proudly, no longer staring
into space. I asked the class, "Do we want to feel we can be both forceful
and gentle?" "It’s hard," Danny said; "you want to be kind, but then people
think you’re weak and you end up getting pushed around."
These opposites are tremendously important
for teachers. Before studying Aesthetic Realism, my energy in the classroom
too often took the form of angry intensity, and I would verbally bludgeon
my students with facts, insisting that they memorize them because I
said so. Later, I would feel I had been mean, and try to act
like everyone’s buddy. Then, in an Aesthetic Realism class I was honored
to attend, Mr. Siegel asked me, "Do you think you see what a true idea
of strength is? A person is strong who can most use the world to like it."
I told my class, "What we’re hoping to feel
is that when we’re forceful or strong, we’re also kind — because we have
the same purpose in both: to encourage another person, make him or her
stronger." And, I said, we can learn from the heart — "it’s gentle and
strong, and has the same beautiful purpose in both: to take care of the
human body."
The Victory of Knowledge and Kindness And they became much kinder as they saw that
the heart, with its magnificent structure, is the same in every person,
regardless of skin color or nationality. We watched The Heart Knows
Better, the 60-second Emmy award-winning public service film produced
by filmmaker and Aesthetic Realism consultant Ken Kimmelman. And they applauded
when they read these kind words of Eli Siegel on the screen: "It will be
found that black and white man have the same goodnesses, the same temptations,
and can be criticized in the same way. The skin may be different, but the
aorta is quite the same."
Ninety-one percent of my students passed the
fall term biology course. Angelina wrote: "I could not do science....So
I wasn’t looking forward to this class. Then I discovered that I love biology!
I learned to respect my body, to respect even bacteria."
I hold members of the press responsible for
the failure in America’s schools. With hideous resentment at not being
able to feel superior to the knowledge and kindness of Mr. Siegel and Aesthetic
Realism, they have tried to have Aesthetic Realism not exist. But the beauty
and truth of the Aesthetic Realism teaching method are immortal!
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