The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method and The Purpose of Education

I am pleased to publish an introduction that Eli Siegel wrote for the very first public seminar on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method presented in 1973 by my colleagues, All For Education (TRO #1065). I had not yet learned of Aesthetic Realism. At the time, I was a fairly new teacher of health and physical education at Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx. While I liked teaching very much and cared for my students a great deal, I was already beginning to feel ineffective and burnt out. I pursued a Masters degree in Community Health because I wasn't convinced I would last in the classroom very long and I wanted an option in a closely related field.

Well, I did begin my study of Aesthetic Realism in 1974 and the rest is history. The reason I have loved the Aesthetic Realism approach to education, philosophic and everyday, is found in this introduction by Mr. Siegel. I loved the logic of its principles, their practicality and beauty. They enabled me to love teaching and to feel fresh after decades of being in the classroom. And I watched students minds flourish as they saw, through the opposites in the subject, that indeed the world could honestly be liked. And I am proud to say that since 1975, I have taught a bi-weekly workshop for educators on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method as part of All For Education--Barbara Allen, Dr. Arnold Perey and Patricia Martone. And now the introduction:

"The Purpose of Education" by Eli Siegel

While it has been hinted or intimated often that the purpose of education is to come to a relation with the world which makes the world itself acceptable and oneself likewise a source of pride, it hasn't been clearly said that all education--whether geometry or agriculture, arithmetic, poetry, or computing--is for the purpose of liking the world.

Aesthetic Realism, in keeping with much that has been written of mind, says that mind does two things: it knows; and also likes and dislikes. The first of these possibilities is called the cognitive. All knowledge is some aspect of the cognitive. The second is called the affective; and all pleaure and pain, preference or dislike, hope and fear belong to the affective.

If people are rich in the cognitive--know things in the world and the world itself quite opulently--and don't like the world, it would seem that the knowing has not come to full avail. Suppose a person knows everything in any curriculum with fulness or subtlety and at the same time says, "All these subjects still have not made me think better of the world. I've studied engineering, and I'm not sold on the world. I've studied chemistry, and as far as I'm concerned, chemistry doesn't make me like the world at all better. I've studied theology, and theology makes me doubt the world. I've studied history, and I think the world in terms of its past is as much a mess as the present is."

We have to ask, then: What should be the relation of pleasure and pain, or the affective, to the cognitive, which has to do with knowing and not knowing? Aesthetic Realism says that where anything is known and whether one likes it or not is looked on as unimportant, there is a great deal of mental weakness in the world.

There are two things, then, in education. One is to know the world as well as possible. The other is to ask consciously whether the knowledge of the world can make for the like of the world. If it cannot, the world is a mistake. If it has to be that the more you know the world, the more you think it is against you or you don't have the valid right to care for it, then knowledge itself is part of a cosmological disruption and a mental disruption. Aesthetic Realism says that knowledge and feeling are the same thing; and that true knowledge of the world makes for true like of it.

The Art of Teaching as Explained by Aesthetic Realism

I recently read an early (1982) issue of the international journal , The Right of Aesthetic Realism To Be Known titled, "Beauty in Time." It contains a portion of a 1951 lecture Eli Siegel gave in which he discussed a newspaper article about schools for children that were mentally ill. In this section, he describes with great kindness, charm and practicality the need for a teacher to put together the opposites of energy and repose to be effective in the classroom.

Prior to my study of Aesthetic Realism these opposites were at war in me and I didn't know how to change it. I went from frantic activity to not being able to get up off the couch. I moved at breakneck speed in the classroom, which I don't think was very composing to my students; then there were times I'd sleep the whole weekend away. The big thing I learned from Aesthetic Realism in consultations, was that I was not fair to the world and and people in my mind and so I didn't feel at ease under my own skin. Without knowing, this affected my whole life, including my tempo in the classroom. I'm grateful to say through what I learned in Aesthetic Realism consultations, and later in classes with Eli Siegel, this has changed greatly in my life. I look forward to changing even more. I also used the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method for 30 years in New York City classrooms with enormous success because of what I learned and have had the privilege of teaching it to teachers along with my colleagues in All For Education since 1975.

At this time in the history of education, there has been an unrelenting pressure on teachers and administrators to have their students pass standardized tests, and make that the sole thrust of learning. I thought it would encourage teachers to see that still, there is beauty in what they are after as a self and as an educator. Aesthetic Realism explains the source of that beauty--the oneness of opposites--and how to make it a reality in one's life.

The portion of the lecture I am quoting from is titled, "The Aesthetics of the Matter."

"The notion of beauty is implicit in every newspaper article you'll ever read; in fact, in every story that you'll ever hear, in everything that you'll ever tell yourself, in everything that you'll ever look at, hear, touch, taste, smell. The name Aesthetic Realism means that all reality has to do with aesthetics.

We have in this article the phrase "pilot school." A school is a place where a teacher urges children to learn, puts pressure on them in a sense, and yet, if she is a good teacher, acts as if the child should be entirely at ease and not feel under any pressure or under any hurry. What has this to do with aesthetics? Of course, a great deal.

The idea of energy and repose, which is very basic in reality, is present in all activity, not only that of a teacher teaching, but in any activity that has a purpose. The teacher must appear alive, must act as if she were concerned, exerting a definite influence on the children, and yet seem to act as if she were a quiet brook, quite at ease, quite restful.

If the teacher seems to be indifferent, and seems to be unconcerned, or too namby-pamby, or too wishy-washy, as some teachers are, then of course the children will notice it, and think of throwing spitballs; at least they won't like it; they'll go to sleep. On the other hand, if the teacher--as many are at certain times, particularly when the teacher is under stress herself--if the teacher seems to be like a battering ram, or is continually, in her mind, pulling the ears of the children, the children will likewise get restless.

So a good teacher, and for that matter a good person, has a problem of being at ease and yet showing energy. What is the basis of that problem? Where does it come from? How can one judge it? Aesthetic Realism says that the question of how to be reposeful is essentially an aesthetic question; and if any teacher asks herself, "How can I be a live teacher and yet not seem to be rushing the children or pressuring them?"--if she does want to answer that question fully, she'll have to get down to the aesthetics or the beauty of the matter.

Whenever there is energy and repose, there not only is efficiency, but in so far as the teacher represents energy and repose she would be beautiful...because in her manner there would be that combination of quiet and vividness that would make a picture beautiful, or music beautiful, or writing beautiful. And the only way to make sure that there is that energy and repose, is to see where energy and repose are to be found anywhere in reality--that is, to see how reality is seen as beautiful by having repose and energy."

There is a chapter in the book Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism by Eli Siegel called, "The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict." In it he describes with great logic and everydayness, this principle of Aesthetic Realism: "Every person is always trying to put together opposites in himself or herself." I remember reading this early work of Mr. Siegel's in the 1970's and feeling new dignity and hope as I saw my personal questions given a basis in the study of aesthetics.

Art, Science and Aesthetic Realism

For the last six years my colleague Donita Ellison and I have given presentations on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method and how it relates the beauty in art and science. The basis is this great principle by Eli Siegel, "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." We have had a wonderful time showing how the beauty to be found in the natural world has the same source as the beauty to be found in art--the opposites!

Since we both taught at LaGuardia High School of the Arts, it wasn't uncommon for my science students to have basic printmaking or ceramics with Donita Ellison. Early in the day they might learn how the rapid mitotic cell divisions in embryonic development are a stunning relation of the opposites of sameness and change. The full complement of chromosomes containing DNA needed for all life functions are present in a single cell at the moment of fertilization. This information is passed on through these divisions, to every one of the 60 trillion cells that ultimately make up a human being. When a cell divides in a person of 80, it has in its nucleus the information that was present at the moment of conception! Students are thrilled by this.

These same opposites--sameness and change--are also present in the art of molding clay. An artist begins with a single, amorphous lump of clay that is given shape and meaning through his or her work. Within the end product is the early lump of clay, changed through kneading and molding and baking! Mr. Siegel has defined art as "willed beauty."

These opposites, so beautifully one in the world and in art, are present in the ordinary, every day turbulent lives. Students, for example, can feel the world is boring and things are too much the same and so they can look for excitement in ways that are sometimes dangerous. They can also feel the world changes on them suddenly and certainly can't be depended upon. Parents might go through a divorce and make for changes in the lives of their children that are unexpected and painful. Children can suddenly be displaced by a fire or a death in the family making the world feel unfriendly and not to be trusted. Teachers can also feel their lives have too much sameness and routine and yearn to see the world and people, including those close to them, with new freshness!

Meanwhile, as difficult and heart-wrenching as these situations are, students can learn through the subjects they study that the same world that can confuse them also has a structure of opposites--a beautiful relation of sameness AND change that is permanent! The world may not be run right or managed fairly, but it is made well! Donita Ellison and I have had the pleasure of showing this great fact to students in our classes and to teachers in the many presentations we have given together over the years. I look forward to giving many more!

You can visit the Terrain Gallery's website to find out more about the Siegel Theory of Opposites in relation to art. I am also a member of The Art and Science Collaboration, Inc. whose rich website is worth a visit.

Through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Knowledge Opposes Anger--& Students Learn!

On Thursday, November 1, 2007 there will be a public seminar given on the success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City. As a teacher who used this method for more than 33 years in New York City public high schools, I know how how greatly this method enables students to learn with enthusiasm and grace. I am pleased to present here the announcement for this seminar, sent to educators near and far.

The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method enables students on every grade level to learn successfully and become kinder people! Teachers who use this method will describe lessons from their own classrooms, and show how through it students not only pass standardized tests, but love knowledge--and this includes young people who were cynical, angry, and had just about given up on the goodness of their minds.

The Purpose of Education

Eli Siegel, the great American educator and founder of Aesthetic Realism, explained the purpose of education: it is "to like the world through knowing it." He also showed that contempt--"the addition to self through the lessening of something else"--is the chief cause of a student's failure to learn. And contempt for the world and other people is also the cause of the violence that has made America's schools dangerous.

Young people feel cheated and are furious. Many feel there's no future for them. Many see their parents desperately worried about being able to feed and house the family. Students also feel disrespected, having to go to school buildings that are in disrepair and where there aren't enough textbooks. The feeling, "Why should I bother learning this stupid subject in a world as mean and crazy as this one?" has intensified.

Meanwhile, inwardly, young people are screaming, "Please don't give up on me!" They're thirsty for convincing evidence that the world can be liked, honestly respected, without leaving out any of the facts.
The Aesthetic Realism teaching method resoundingly meets this hope--through the following principle:

"The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites."

An Instance

For example, students are excited to see, as they study the human immune system in a high school science class, how it puts together general and specific, for and against. They learn that the immune system can respond by sending a general force of white blood cells to defend the body at the site of a paper cut, splinter, burn. And there are also white blood cells that seek out and destroy very specific disease-causing agents in our bodies. These blood cells are for us by being against pathogens that take up residence within us.

Students want to be proud of how they are for AND against the world. As they see these opposites together beautifully in the immune system, they respect reality; they remember the facts of the subject. They also see that they can be for the world--have true respect for it--and at the same time be against injustice, be accurate, useful critics. And this makes them proud and much kinder.

On November 1st, you'll see the educational meth0d that meets the fervent hopes of students across the nation!

"It is my professional opinion that this is the world's finest teaching method! It can solve the crisis in education." --Jeffrey Williams, science teacher, PS/MS #37, Bronx

"The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method changes the pervasive dullness, cynicism, and lack of interest in both students and teachers--and makes classrooms dynamic with real learning and pleasure!
--Leila Rosen, English teacher, Bayside HS, Queens

Speakers: Lori Colavito (3rd grade, Southampton Elementary School)
Avi Gvili (communication arts, IS 7SI)
Rosemary Plumstead (science, NYC HS, retired)
Patricia Martone (ESL, PS 134M)
Christopher Balchin (social studies. Brooklyn Academy of Science & the Environment)
Arnold Perey (instructor, the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method)

Aesthetic Realism Foundation 141 Greene Street NYC 10012 212-777-4490

Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism

In recent news headlines, the case of the 'Jena Six' has sparked much intense emotion throughout the country. That in this day and age we have young people hanging nooses across tree branches without any real sense of the horror of such an act and the depth of emotion this can make for in a person of color, is astonishing. Aesthetic Realism explains the cause of racism at its very beginning in the human self. It is the desire for contempt: "the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it." It is also important to say that the brutal beating later endured by the young white man was also motivated by contempt. Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism said, "contempt has to be studied if man is to be kind."

As an educator for more than three decades in New York City public high schools, I saw thousands of instances in which student's made less of one another. The thing they have in common is the unjust hope to build oneself up falsely by lessening the meaning of a person. One student calls another "stupid." A student who learns with ease asks another who struggles and who is hiding his or her test paper results, "what did you get?" Cliques form in the cafeteria that are snobbish and exclusive. I've heard students say with great scorn, "it smells in here," after a bi-lingual class had just left! To my great shame I remember making fun in the 1970's of the way my Hispanic students spoke spanish. I would not have admitted then that I was prejudiced because it didn't go along with my picture of myself as a "nice" person.

I later learned from Aesthetic Realism that this prejudice began with a way of seeing the world and a contempt for difference that hurt my life and had me dislike myself. Seeing this made it possible for me to change, to be a critic of myself and have the conscious hope to respect my students. The difference this made in the atmosphere in my classroom was like night and day!

I want my readers to know that there is a book titled, "Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism," written by Alice Bernstein and Others and published by Orange Angle Press in 2004. It is, in my opinion, a definitive text on the subject of racism as it describes what Eli Siegel and Aesthetic Realism explain about the cause of racism and how it can end. I am proud to be among the authors telling how through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method prejudice is opposed. Every classroom teacher should read this book!

The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Relates Sports, Dance, Biology!

I began my career in education teaching health and physical ed on the high school level in 1971. In 1974, when my study of Aesthetic Realism began, I started to test the Aesthetic Realism method--how are opposites made one in the sports I loved all my life and in folk dance, which I loved to teach? I saw how in volleyball, the set pass put together delicacy and gentleness as a person's fingertips meet the ball. Meantime, the spike has great power with precision. In order to hold a bat and hit a ball successfully a player has to have a grip that is at once firm and flexible, and a stance that is alert yet relaxed. In every team sport there needs to be a good relation of the individual and the collective, self-assertion and yielding to others.

Continuity and discontinuty, hop and glide, separation and junction are one in folk dances from different countries. At first, students would moan and groan at the idea of learning such uncool dances. Then, lo and behold, they didn't want to stop. "The world, art, and self explain each other:" Eli Siegel explained, "each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." Opposites such as: power and delicacy, firmness and flexibility, continuity and discontinuity, so gracefully and beautifully put together in a sport or dance, are opposites every person, at any age yearns to put together. As students saw these opposites could be made one in the subjects they studied, they had more hope for their own lives.

In 1990, while on a sabattical, I obtained the necessary credits to teach science full time. I particularly loved teaching anatomy and physiology. The human body is a stunning relation of opposites--many and one, power and delicacy, junction and separation, firm and flexible--the same opposites present in sports, the dance and the turbulent self of every person. Many students had difficulty learning about blood and showed tremendous fear when as we began to study the subject. However, when they saw the aesthetics in our blood, their fear changed to interest. Some of what they learned is present in this article title, "Lesson in Blood" published in the Philippine Post.

Through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, Interest Wins, Cynicism Loses--in Students & Teachers! by Leila Rosen

This article, published in "The English Record" of the New York State English Council, illustrates the beauty to be found in grammar, particularly in the use of adjectives. Students can find grammar boring, but through this Aesthetic Realism principle by Eli Siegel, they can change the way they see different subjects: "The purpose of education is to like the world through knowing it." Miss Rosen writes, "My students came to love adjectives as they saw that a world that has adjectives in it is a world that is interesting." And she goes on to show, that in time, her students ability to write improved enormously. Learn a new and exciting approach to language arts through the Aesthetic Realism Method.