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| Tracing of the Soibos Vase by John Keats |
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
What has John Keats' poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn, to do with education, let alone with what is, for many, the first day back to school? Bear with me!
Beauty on Holiday
During the past school year, this blog has concentrated on several themes: the importance of creative and critical thinking, resources to support strong curriculum design, the new roles for educative technologies, and lately, the development of the learning commons, especially in and through the school library. However, one day on our recent English holiday, I was reminded that all the beauty I was seeing in art, architecture, hedgerow, and friends, was at the heart of how I was learning about them.
I am not an expert in aesthetics but I know that when I am faced by the beautiful in nature or human creation, my senses transport me beyond my limitations to new thoughts and feelings. Beauty is the great teacher. The colour and composition of a stained glass window in St. Mary's Church in Rye or the timeless ritual of a cricket match on the village green produce both a satisfaction to the soul and a challenge to the mind to learn more about one's world.
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| Burne-Jones Window in St Mary's Church, Rye, East Sussex |
Based probably on the writings of his friend Benjamin Haydon and visits to the Elgin Marbles, John Keats penned his famous poem to suggest the extraordinary moral power of art. His poem pictures the story told by the urn, in its freezing of time in space, as an eternal reminder that beauty and truth are inexplicably joined in the human imagination.
However, as school begins, I do not imagine that many teachers or students are thinking such things! Yet, teaching is a way of finding beauty in all of its guises -- the symmetry of mathematics, the balance of athletics, the dynamics of the cell, and the sense-made-sound of a poem. Much of what drew us to teach our specific subject was a passion for the beauty of it! Share your passion through the sense of beauty that drives it.
It is all too easy as we share course outlines, talk of assessments, plan field trips, and take attendance to forget that our students are yearning for more. Often our classrooms are bare and tawdry, our schools overwrought with leaflets and messages, and our assignments utilitarian. Thanks to all of you who take special time to make your learning spaces beautiful. Congratulations to all of you who reach for the spirit in your lessons and projects. Truth in its many forms will more easily flourish there.
In all our thinking, designing, technologizing, and socializing, let us not forget that creating beautiful places and experiences for our students will more likely motivate them to find the truth they seek.
NEXT WEEK: More from www.lcommons.org.
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