Do You Long for a Renewal of Beauty?
This week, I met with some of my team to talk and muse about our vision of the classical model. Over the course of several days, we shared inspiring words from authors who like to think deeply about true education.
Because I am preparing for next week’s Toward the Quadrivium event, my mind often turns to the loss of beauty in modern education. Stratford Caldecott’s book Beauty for Truth’s Sake is a must-read if you want to challenge the modern distinction made between the arts and the sciences and restore the place of beauty as an essential of true education.
This weekend, I want to leave you with one of his claims to contemplate. He writes,
“The recovery of a contemplative appreciation of numbers and shapes would also herald a renewal of the arts (painting, sculpture, music, architecture, even film). For it is the contemplative dimension that connects us with the source of inspiration and beauty in the cosmos and our own souls” (90).
So, my questions for you are, how can we grow a contemplative appreciation of numbers and shapes—that is, arithmetic and geometry—and how can doing that bring about a renewal of the arts?
Think on these questions, and as you pursue answers, I hope you will join us first for Toward the Quadrivium, to enjoy the art of harmonics, and then for our *free* Parent Practicums, where you will learn practical methods to make your family’s home school bilingual in the language of numbers.
Social Networks:
David Hicks: Norms and Nobility
Stanley Fish: How to Write a Sentence: and How to Read One
I cannot wait to attend this year’s practicum! I am rediscovering my joy of math again as we teach our 8 year old.
I had a lightbulb moment about learning and mastering math in our music practice.
We are a Suzuki music family and Dr. Suzuki has written one of my favorite books that I think all parents should read – Nurtured by Love.
I believe our approach to math is the problem – we introduce a concept or fact and then move on. The problem is there is not enough emphasis on contemplation and mastery of math. We view math as this cold/concrete/unbiased/stationary being. It isn’t. I feel like learning math is exactly like learning music. Math has rythm, pitch, color, syncopation, dynamics! But we need to be still with math and spend time with it in our education to see its beauty.
In music – Dr. Suzuki had a wonderful saying: once you have learned a piece now you are ready to start practicing it.
So many music students learn a ton of songs and “finish the book” but they never really “master” the songs they have learned. We do the same with math – we think once we have introduced the concept we are done teaching it.