The absence of beauty in education robs students of their natural curiosity, intuition, and creativity. Beauty provides direction, order, and harmony. Humans are made to desire and perceive beauty, and beauty itself is the mystery of God.
Professor Margarita Mooney of Princeton Theological Seminary and the Scala Foundation is a dear friend and brilliant academic. Five years ago, I completed her class, “Humanizing Education Policy: A Study of Foundational Philosophies and Practices,” in partnership with Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy DC Summer Scholars Program. Since then, Professor Mooney and her husband, Professor David Clayton, have published two books and dozens of articles and resources on the integration of Beauty into learning. Professor Mooney believes Beauty plays an essential role in the formation of meaningful liberal arts programs and education policy itself, a lesson she taught her students then and continues to teach them still today. As one of her former students, I offer reflections on the integration of Beauty into learning as I review my notes on Father Luigi Giussani, John Dewey, and Professor James Bernard Murphy, three authors Professor Mooney assigned to her students.
Beauty, in this context, is transcendent, something that exists outside the natural world. Heavenly, if you will, mystical or divine. It is reminiscent of the Creator. Integrating Beauty into learning requires three parameters: identifying an objective standard; using that standard to choose academic content; and accepting Beauty as a transcendent principle. Luigi Giussani, John Dewey, and James Bernard Murphy explore these parameters. Giussani, in stark contrast to Dewey, identifies an objective standard and recognizes Beauty as transcendent. Murphy identifies an objective standard, uses it to design a core curriculum, and recognizes Beauty as transcendent too.
Dewey rejects an objective standard outright. He claims, “I believe once more that history is of educative value in so far as it presents phases of social life and growth.” Dewey believes an objective standard may serve its purpose during a particular era of history, but he does not believe that the same standard passes on to the next era. An objective standard, as Dewey understands it, serves its purpose at a single time and place, but means little to the next period of history. Dewey argues, “I believe that there is, therefore, no succession of studies in the ideal school curriculum…. The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience.” Dewey does not define progress as the preservation of an objective standard established by a shared body of knowledge, but as the ability to solve new problems through experience.
Dewey believes experiential education is “the only true education” and that it “comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself.” Experience, as Dewey understands it, is a student’s ability to solve problems in present society. Students will solve problems differently and in different social situations, but ultimately they must confront the issues of modern society. History, for example, is nothing more than periods of social progress that lead to the present. The priority of the present generation of students, as well as all future generations, is to live in the present and meet its challenges.
Giussani refutes Dewey directly. At the forefront of his argument, Giussani asserts: “Education requires an adequate proposal of the past. Without proposing the past, without an awareness of the past, of tradition, young people grow convoluted or skeptical.” The past offers students a comparison to the present. Students compare the past and present side by side and learn about each of them closely. This presentation opens the past and present to criticism which, as Giussani argues, is necessary: “Since my first hour in the classroom I have always said: ‘I am not here to make you adopt the ideas I will give you as your own, but to teach you a true method for judging the things I will say.” The presentation of the past (i.e., tradition) and the present, subject to criticism, is Giussani’s method of education.
The objective standard of Giussani’s method of education is tradition. Tradition, as Giussani defines it, is a guide, even if students criticize it. “In Realtà e gioinezza: La sfida (Reality and Youth: The Challenge), I wrote: ‘Knowingly embracing tradition offers a holistic view of reality. If offers a hypothesis concerning meaning and an image of destiny.” Students, then, use tradition as an objective standard to critique the present. Criticism, comparing tradition and the present, frees students from what Giussani calls “mental slavery.” Tradition does not prevent students from examining the errors of the past, but instead offers them a standard by which to judge it.
Giussani then recognizes the mystery of God as a representation of Beauty. Giussani argues that once human reason reaches its limit, the knowledge left unknown is shrouded in the mystery of God. Giussani argues, “Saying that a human being’s definitiveness is God means, on the contrary, that the definition of human beings and their destiny is mystery.” Giussani does not mean humans cannot know and experience God but instead suggests that some of the divine nature and knowledge of God exists outside reality. Humans cannot comprehend all that God is, but God’s mystery is Beautiful because humans are drawn to its existence outside reality.
Giussani explores God’s mystery further. He continues, “The word mystery indicates something incommensurable with us…. Adhering to the many aspects within ourselves always requires that we step outside ourselves, that we pass beyond the dialect in which we are brought to perceive a thing.” A student obeying an inner calling to his occupation, for example, represents the Beauty that is the mystery of God. Something outside reality calls a student to a life as a doctor, historian, or art curator. Beauty provides direction, order, and harmony. Humans, therefore, are made to desire and perceive Beauty, and Beauty, as Giussani defines it, is the mystery of God.
Dewey’s method of education does not recognize Beauty. Dewey argues, “Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and habits.” Dewey’s method of education is subjective. It measures every student’s intellectual capacity via a process of hypothesis, experimentation, observation, and results. The results of each student vary, and experiential education depends on a student’s ability to solve problems in present society. Beauty, however, transcends a student’s ability to address modern challenges. Beauty, understood as the mystery of God, is the allure of knowledge incomprehensible to mankind. Experiential education, in its final, subjective nature, does not recognize Beauty’s transcendence.
Dewey applies his method of education to the future generations of students as well. “I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience.” The future generations of students will address the needs of their time. Students, through experience, will discover new contemporary solutions, and the process continues evermore without considering the supreme draw of Beauty. This is a disservice to students. The absence of Beauty robs students of their natural curiosity, intuition, and creativity. Education becomes nothing more than a means to an end. Students are left burned out and think of themselves as nothing more than empty vessels created to solve problems. Dewey’s method of education is not a representation of Beauty in the slightest.
Murphy talks about another way of integrating Beauty into learning. He identifies an objective standard, uses it to create a core curriculum, and understands Beauty as transcendent. He writes: “The notion of a core curriculum, therefore, rests fundamentally not on aesthetic, moral, or political criteria but on the objective criteria of the sheer density of its connections to the whole of human culture.” Murphy’s objective standard is based on the ideas, authors, and texts that have had the greatest influence on human knowledge. “Given the finitude of human life and the infinite range of and density of human knowledge,” he argues, “the only feasible way to navigate this web is to begin with the key network nodes, with the anchor sites.” The anchor sites include, but are not limited to, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Vergil, the Bible, Augustine, and Shakespeare. These authors are valued highly in the Western world and globally as the sources of various eras of literature, entertainment, politics, art, theology, and science.
Murphy would suggest the connection of all knowledge is a representation of Beauty: “Because all new knowledge is discovered by means of older knowledge, all knowledge is connected. The tree of knowledge is a profusion of branches that can all be traced back to its primary limbs and trunk.” Beauty, for example, is the transcendent bridge between Vergil and Dante. Vergil’s Aeneid, written originally between 29 and 19 BC, influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy over 1,300 years later. Beauty is woven into the literature that connects ancient and modern civilizations, the classical art that inspired the Renaissance, and the Hebrew tradition that led to the birth of Christianity. It is not physical objects that are Beautiful necessarily, but their connection to one another. The ability to withstand geographical divides, cultural differences, and thousand-year periods is Beautiful.
The integration of Beauty into learning is an uncommon, yet necessary, addition to rewarding liberal arts programs and thoughtful, informed education policy. A student’s education is often fragmented. A student graduates with little idea as to how the information he learned is connected and why the connection is Beautiful. But the integration of Beauty into learning is the opposite of fragmentation. It is harmonious, structured, and moving. Identifying an objective standard, using it to choose academic content, and recognizing Beauty as transcendent are the three parameters to integrating Beauty into learning. The integration of Beauty into learning is a method that brings students to come to appreciate the value of the liberal arts and the entire inheritance of Western Civilization.
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The featured image is “Under the Roof of Blue Ionian Weather” (between 1898 and 1901), by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.