school of things

A cultural education is one which: a) helps pupils to understand cultural diversity by bringing them into contact with the attitudes, values and institutions of other cultures as well as exploring their own b) emphasises cultural relativity by helping them to recognise and compare their own cultural assumptions and values with these others c) alerts them to the evolutionary nature of culture and the potential for change d) encourages a cultural perspective by relating contemporary values to the historical forces which moulded them.

There are various kind of thinking and various kinds of intelligence. None of the has a prior or self-evident right to dominate the others in the school curriculum. There is more than one mode or thought and action. Accordingly, there is more than on mode of creative thought, Work and productivity and there are no grounds for the elevation of, for example, the sciences over the arts either in the policies or planning of the school curriculum. The development of creativity needs a sound base in knowledge and skill but also teaching methods which are flexible and open-ended so that it can emerge and flourish. Pupils must be encouraged to test out ideas which are novel, unusual, even eccentric and iconoclastic. Creative work is not merely a question of playing with things, of randomness and chance. It has much to do with serious and sustained effort, often at the highest levels of absorption and intensity. This involves respect for standards and aiming purposefully, often at great expense of time and effort, at producing Work of high quality. We regard these efforts of discipline, know- ledge and initiative as of fundamental importance on the road to achieving the autonomy and maturity of adulthood.

Finally we come to an argument which is rarely made for the arts but which seems to us to be clearly implied by what we have said so far. This is the potential of the arts for developing a sense of excellence and quality that can transform an individual’s expectations of him/herself. This arises in part from the qualities of discipline, dedication and attention to detail that are called for in the skilful exercise of the arts. One has only to watch an artist at work in painting, composing, sculpting or rehearsing to know the truth of this. There are of course moral judgements here. In advocating the arts we have in mind a style of education which is becoming increasingly needed: one which values the ideas of width, diversity and personal autonomy; where the outcomes aimed at are the welfare and the well-being of individuals and the development of their capacity for autonomous choice so that they can, of their own free will and informed judgement, decide on what a worthwhile life for them will be. Certainly schools have responsibilities in preparing children and young people for later life. But this is not a simple matter of coaching them for academic qualifications. The arts can help to improve the quality of life for the individual.

Students learn best individually, meeting their own needs over the needs of the group. Internal success should be fostered, rather than external judgment. Teachers should be able to analyze progress and offer highly customized feedback. And, perhaps most importantly, students learn to compete with themselves, rather than with each other.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

In the discoveries of science, the bisociated matrices merge in a new synthesis, which in turn merges with others on a higher level of the hierarchy; it is a process of successive confluences towards unitary, universal laws… . The progress of art does not display this overall ‘river-delta’ pattern. The matrices with which the artist operates are chosen for their sensory qualities and emotive potential; his bisociative act is a juxtaposition of these planes or aspects of experience, not their fusion in an intellectual synthesis — to which, by their very nature, they do not lend themselves. This difference is reflected in the quasi-linear progression of science, compared with the quasi-timeless character of art, its continual re-statement of basic patterns of experience in changing idioms. If the explanations of science are like streams joining rivers, rivers moving towards the unifying ocean, the explanations of art may be compared to the tracing back of a ripple in the stream to its source in a distant mountain-spring.