Eagle Ridge Conference Center, Raymond, MS

Dr. David Potter, Commissioner, Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning

What I have to say today may seem far a field from the practical concerns you face in your work.  I'm hoping to locate the arts within a much wider context.  I also hope that as you digest what I have to say, you will find it useful as a basis not only to justify but also to inspire your work as educators.

It's tempting to begin with a conclusion that the centrality of the arts to our lives is self-evident.  John Keats said it best in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn "Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."  In this view, the path to truth is through the arts.  Unfortunately, the assertion does not convince everyone.  Some wonder, for example, if Keats actually saw this statement on a Grecian urn.  Perhaps he made the whole thing up.  That's the trouble with poets, you know, they tend to make things up.  And what of this proposed relationship between beauty and truth?  Some would say we have spent too much time on a frivolous pursuit like beauty, ignoring the quest for truth.  Others would claim that we have spent too much time on truth and not enough on beauty, that the arts have been neglected for science, the emotional for the rational and logical.  That's part of what Id like to discuss today.

In many ways, I am singularly unqualified to talk about the arts.  As far back as elementary school, I learned my limitations.  For years, my only blemishes on report cards were C grades in handwriting and art.  I did fare a little better with music, taking piano lessons until I convinced my mother that sports were going to make that a poor investment.  I gained enough skill to play hymns at my fathers church and the organ at his street corner meetings, but even that is a fading memory.

I do have one vivid memory from my younger years, however, thanks to an elementary music teacher.  She gave me the thrill of my first live music, taking our class to see the Philadelphia Symphony in its gorgeous hall.  It has been through this spectator role that I have accessed the arts ever since, and that is how I come here today. 

I will qualify that, though.  I prefer to describe my affiliation with the arts not as a spectator but as a voyeur, a more active, if slightly salacious, stance.  My interest in the arts is avid.  I'm a fan, an enthusiast, a zealous romantic.  Some would say I've taken that to extremes, romancing the artist as well as the arts.  It is true that much of what I've learned about the arts I have experienced with and through my wife Pam, who is a painter.

A second qualification to my spectator claim:  I'm an anthropologist, though one who has been a full-time administrator rather than a scholar for more than twenty years.  I would say that during those two decades I have practiced anthropology, as a participant and observer in one of our most exotic cultures, academe.

But anthropology leads me to search for an understanding of human endeavors in relationship to our human roots, the ways in which human behavior manifests our emergence as a distinctive species.  From this evolutionary perspective, I would identify two fundamental capacities derived from our knowledge of the fossil and archeological evidence that define our unique adaptive capabilities.  We are remarkable first for our capacity for symbolic communication; second, for our skill at making and using tools.  We have refined these ways of being in the world far beyond other species.  Language and technology are the building blocks on which we have constructed our legacy, survived and prospered as a species.  And the flowering of these twinned forces is the ground of our greatest human achievements.

The arts reflect and embody these emerging human qualities from the outset.  They use our ability to symbolize, by creating forms and images, and employ technology with their various tools of the trade and materials.  The earliest traces of Homo sapiens are marked with cave paintings, reminding us of the depth of the human investment in visual expression and the range and power of symbolic communications.

What distinguishes our ability to communicate from other signaling systems is the freedom from immediacy, from being dependent upon direct sensory stimuli.  The qualities of displacement and abstraction lend richness to our communications, providing the wondrous gift of meaning to our lives.  This gift is especially connected to our fundamentally social existence, and it highlights the inextricable link between human existence and culture, through which our symbols are developed, shared, accumulated, passed down and revised from generation to generation.  This cultural process is the heart of human learning, the interplay between individuals and their collective legacy.

In the same way, technology is cumulative and progressive, drawing upon prior bodies of knowledge while inviting innovations.  Because of the intimate relationship between science and technology, we could say that both the arts and the sciences are central to this prehistoric saga of human development, deeply rooted in our survival strategies, present at the creation of our humanness, and the foundation for our evolution through our ancestors and into the future.

The physical organ most responsible for these remarkable developments has been, of course, the human brain.  Its growth in the fossil record distinguishes us from other species by its complexity.  Its functioning is marvelously attuned to generating, storing and manipulating symbols and in coordinating the complicated physical and mental activities associated with a technologically sophisticated creature.

Recent research on the brain offers insights about the relationship between the arts and human learning.  The mind appears to be comprised of a limited number of faculties or modules, each specialized in a form of information and each therefore carrying out a particular kind of perceptual or cognitive task.  These functions likely correspond to specialized neural connections in different areas of the brain.  Modules have been identified for a language system, a visual system, a motor system tracking the body in space, and, interestingly, a system associated with music.  A central module integrates these inputs into a unified understanding of the world and formulates actions based on that conception.  The brain therefore employs many forms of intelligence, enabling us to learn and to build a storehouse of knowledge based on that learning.

In this account, not just the arts and sciences but all disciplines are, of course, natural; that is, they derive from human abilities and experience.  In reality, the concept of a discipline is an artifact of the social organization of knowledge, most particularly academic knowledge, though underlying these categories are profound ways of making sense of the world.  When we focus on the arts as an original human activity, we are not trying to establish a higher legitimacy or status for them, but rather examining how the kind of thinking associated with the arts contributes to human learning.  The hard-wired modules associated with language and with spatial cognition are a good place to start.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger reminds us that language was, for many centuries, spoken rather than written.  He observes that speech enables man to be the living being he is.  In his view, the speech of genuine thinking is by nature poetic, though it need not take the form of verse.  He says, The opposite of poetry is not prose; pure prose is as poetic as any poetry.  The voice of poetry must be poetic because poetry is the saying of truth.

Heidegger extends this illuminative function of poetry when he states: all art is essentially poetry, because it speaks the truth.  And poetry, as linguistic, has a privileged position in the domain of the arts, because language, rightly understood, is the original way in which beings are brought into the open clearing of the truth.  As he puts it, the naming [through language] is a birthing, and from that beginning the other arts are born.

Heidegger reminds us that our symbolic talents are not simply utilitarian or adaptive in the primitive sense of survival.  Instead, they enable us to reflect on our own existence and experiences and, most remarkably, to reflect on ourselves in the world.  Consciousness, including self-consciousness, adheres in our being as well as in our doing.  Our search for meaning, through reflection, is essentially an artistic act, an imaginative and creative response to the mysteries of existence.

Consider a work of visual art in this context.  In one sense the work is a physical object in space, a thing that we perceive through our senses.  But the art work is unlike other things that we make for use.  The art work instead evokes a world and seeks a meaning in the world it portrays.  It transforms the material, physical world, not simply to represent or offer a likeness of the objects it portrays but rather to present an opportunity for reflection.  I like Virginia Woolf's formulation of this phenomenon.  She observed that art is not a copy of the real world.  One of the damn things is enough.  In this sense, art is meta-physical, not just beauty but also truth.

I warned you that I was a zealous romantic when it comes to art.  The play, the text, the dance, the song, the painting, the sculpture-- works of art have the power to illuminate, to transform our life into meanings inaccessible through other forms of learning.  In Heidegger's words, "art brings the passage of the unknown, the unfelt and the unsensed event into the realm of human consciousness."  The philosopher Arthur Danto speaks of the expressive power of art.  He defines art as the transfiguration of the commonplace.  Art lifts us outside our routine thinking and asks us to see the world anew.  The artwork brings forth an interpretive view of the world for our attention and reflection.  In doing so, it connects the creator-artist and others who receive it, participate with it, and hopefully feel its power at work.

Its time to move beyond this somewhat mystical perspective on the arts to ask what implications this view has for teaching and learning, for our role as educators.

First and foremost, I think it argues for the arts as basic to a full understanding of the world.  That should influence our decisions about the curriculum.  We need to ensure that students of all ages experience the literary, performing, and visual arts throughout their educational journeys.  Curricula ought to recognize that some can benefit from this experience directly by doing the arts, while others, like myself, are likely to gain more through more voyeuristic modes.

Second, we might think of ways to take better advantage of the pedagogical model typically used in the arts to encompass other fields of learning.  Usually, arts pedagogy involves doing as well as thinking; i.e. practicing the craft, with immediate feedback to the student.  At its best, it also includes dialogue about historical and cultural contexts within which works stand.  This combination of experiential, active learning and conceptual thinking is a valuable model for good teaching and learning in all subjects.

The brain operates as a parallel processor, holistically engaging thought, emotion, imagination, predispositions, information processing and other aspects of our learning systems.  Our teaching should provide activities drawing on these multiple paths and manifold ways of learning.  Immersing students in learning environments that call upon several learning modes at once can be enriching.  Experiential learning is a beneficial way to pursue this goal.

We also can draw upon the learning processes associated with the arts to penetrate other disciplines what might be termed an arts across the curriculum approach.  We can design learning experiences in other fields that call upon and strengthen the mental qualities so dominant in the arts.  Art, for example, emphasizes perceptual thinking, which is an inherent aspect of productive thinking in all areas of cognition.  As Aldous Huxley observed, "What emerges most strikingly from recent scientific developments is that perception is not a passive reception of material from the outside world; it is an active process of selection and imposing of patterns."  Creating learning strategies to stimulate perceptual activities in all disciplines where feasible, and using the arts as a point of access to other fields of knowledge by incorporating visual and auditory elements into our teaching, are fruitful approaches.  This is best accomplished not by using the arts as aids but as essential modes of learning new materials.  In doing this, we would do well to keep in mind the caution of David Bronson, who said: "quite apart from anything the teacher does the student is a pattern-finder and a pattern-maker."  Possibly the greatest obstacle to make use of this principle is our ingrained notion that education is the acquisition and mastery of new material. 

Another teaching and learning strategy is to focus on the metaphoric dimension so evident in the arts but also critical in other fields.  Metaphor, like perception, is pervasive in daily life, not just in language but in thought and action.  Our ordinary concepts are fundamentally metaphoric and shape our views of the world.  As T. S Eliot wrote:

Between the idea
 And the reality
 Between the motion
 And the act
 Falls the shadow.

Being attentive to metaphors we use in our respective fields and drawing students attention to their complex, many-layered meanings, can be productive and rewarding. 

In a similar vein, creativity in all fields involves the role of personal engagement and expression.  Our teaching should strive to help students relate material to their own lives.  Class assignments using personal narratives in responding to abstract subject matter are an instance of this tactic.

An individualistic perspective also recognizes that each brain is unique, in terms of its own substance based on past experience, but also its capacities for learning systems.  Some of us learn more through textual materials, others through visual, tactile, auditory or other learning modes.  Our teaching should strive to tap these biological preferences through course materials offering diverse forms of learning.  This will enable students to respond personally with their preferred ways of learning and knowing while developing lesser abilities.

Finally, many people confront the arts and other disciplines as spectators or audiences.  We teach mostly students who will not become professionals in our fields.  How can we fulfill the promise of our respective ways of looking at the world even when our students are not apprentices?  David Perkins, director of Harvard's Project Zero, celebrates the arts as a way of developing habits of mind useful in all areas of knowledge.  He speaks of the minds hungry eye, which seeks meaning through intuitive responses to perceptions.  The perceptual system engages in experiential thinking which grasps situations through quick decisions about what is out there.  Artists capitalize on this by offering provocative images which ask the eye to react in ways that seek their meanings.  Perception is typically reasonable without reasoning, without conscious deliberation.  We use experiential intelligence to extrapolate one layer of meaning using eye and mind.

But much of art, as with other disciplines, is invisible to the quick takes of experiential intelligence, which does not catch all there is to be seen.  To understand fully a work of art, we look for meaning beyond technique.

For this we need reflective intelligence, the mindful, self-conscious use of our conceptual tools.  We master a work only by cultivating deliberation, analyzing, questioning, [and] making connections.  We need to give looking, or reading, or hearing-- or any involvement with the arts time.  While this is good advice for contemplating language-based, visual or auditory artworks, it also is an appropriate model for all learning.  What Donald Shoen has called reflective practice inspires us to address learning holistically, combining experiential and reflective ways to engage materials.

As the arts show dramatically, the mind is eager to engage in the search for meaning if stimulated by challenging, evocative and novel materials if given the chance and the tools to think broadly and deeply about them. 

Let us all make learning an artistic experience, drawing on the rich legacy of the human species and the human spirit. Let us follow Einstein's dictum that no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.   We must learn to see the world anew.  As teachers, we are entrusted with helping students to see the world anew as well. In this sense, we can all become artists.  Thank you.
 

Dr. David Potter
October, 2003

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