There is a REASON why art and music and math all belong in an education, and I would add, the zen of solo sport. Team sports have social uses. But solo sport and these things all together will do things for the brain. Language skills likewise create pathways in the neurons that can also be used for the fusion of disparate ideas we call ‘imagination’ and ‘creation.’
Tell me—when you create, when you see the ocean or a snowy mountain or a flower, or hear a melody or accomplish something physical or imagine a scene in a book or sketch or stitch a pattern or find the balance in something mechanical—doesn’t it kick off a flurry of happy neurons? Does for me!
Ya. That wonderful ‘click’ when you have focused so thoroughly that there is no separation between the thought and the action. And the hours vanish. And all the mental jigsaw pieces magically slide together!
It is the reward for a whole lot of brute slogging to get that kind of discipline though. And that seems to be the sticking point for an increasing number of people.
The perfect glide into a figure-skating 3-turn. The perfect cast at the pond. The feeling and the grain of silky sanded wood. A perfect rose on your favorite bush. The remembered taste of a favorite recipe. The resonance of an in-tune Am chord. The sunsets. The sunrises. Sunlight making rainbows of every right-turned ice crystal on a snowbank. The solution to a puzzle. The paint making sunlight on a canvas. A pot coming out of the kiln. So many ways to ‘do’ art, or math, or music.
I believe in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Learning different languages gives one more ways to think.
Definitely. I mentally switch languages to think some thoughts…usually food, or traffic, but sometimes just attitude. Ciao! or guli-guli! or Bye, y’all! do the same job but the mental referent is just different. Then there are words like pietas in Latin or tomfool in English.
There is a fascinating article in Clarkesworld about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It speaks of the refutation of the “strong” version — language controls thought — but is OK with the “weak” version — language influences thought.
Examples of science fiction authors’ use of the hypothesis are given from various authors, including Heinlein, Vance, Delaney, and … wait for it … C.J. Cherryh.
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/lay_11_13/
Not sure how to answer this. I took a photo Saturday night that has been an obsession. I have been saying I need to do some cleaning, then I can pick up the pastels again. I usually work from a photo, but I had no print out, and the camera shuts off after a few minutes. This morning, I picked up a sheet of paper and drew from memory for half an hour. I could pick it apart, but the emotion is there and later versions will be better. The grumpy bear was gone and I enjoyed the day.
Ursala Le Guin had an interesting piece on belief just the other day. I’ve still got it on a tab here: http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2014/02/10/belief-in-belief/ It’s about the difference between belief (as in faith) and acceptance (as in scientific theory). Very insightful, or inciteful, depending on one’s PoV.
Paul, I’m guessing that in her terms, you _accept_ the truth of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis; as do I. Each language is a different map of that territory that includes reality and imagination. Ack, and now I can’t remember the name of the Hungarian(?) general(?) who proposed the theory that van Vogt used in his Null-A books. Gah! Too much stuff stored up there, and no good retrieval system.
Oops, that’s _Count_ Alfred Korzybski, founder of the Institute of General Semantics. I just found mt copy of The World of Null-A, revised 1970, with intro – getting yellow. I wonder if the library still has his (Korzybski’s) Science and Sanity. I haven’t read or thought about it lately, perhaps I should.
“I don’t need no steenking library!” An old “Wobbly” of my once acquaintance now passed, of course, gifted me with his copy. It’s right beside me, under (supporting? 😉 ) my copies of Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas and multiple copies of the Chanur books (with a few dozen bookmarks sticking out 😉 ).
I must read it one of these days. Science, of course, has “undecided but decidable”, and QM seems to introduce “undecidability”, but I wonder if he has a different proposition.
I can recommend Hofstadter’s books, BTW.
I was completely captivated by the concept of language in “Babel 17” by Samuel Delaney, also based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It was his Nebula winning book that influence subsequent writers like Le Guin and her novel “The Dispossessed”. Ever since I read it, I’ve been kicking around an idea of a culture that deliberately engineers a language to influence and cause brains to develop and think in a particular way, against a backdrop of the conservative nature of language and how cultural ideas become embedded in a language and preserve cultural concepts such as patriarchy, violence, cultural prejudices, etc. The idea being that in order to change a culture, you have to change the language, too.
I absolutely agree that they are an educational necessity. And the arts in schools are almost impossible to find any more. We are allowing whole generations that have no culture, no sense of those intrinsic values that art and music contain.
I was extremely fortunate to go to a private grammar school whose founder believed strongly in art and music-and other things, more in a moment.
Our art class was taught by an actual real artist who sold paintings and everything. I don’t think Mrs. Cameron the music teacher ever sold anything but we were sight reading in the 3rd grade so she must have been doing something right.
Plus there was glee club, almost another class. I can still sing Men Of Harlech. And the founder Mr. Rich wrote a musical revue every year that the school performed.
Oh, and we had shop because Mr. Rich believed in that too. Ten year olds using a band saw, try that today. But Mr. Soloman had 9 fingers so that was an example.
Oh, and Latin in the 7th grade.
Nuff said. Pretty good school.
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”~~ William Morris, one of the best known designers of the Arts and Crafts movement. I think he would have approved of the tile backsplash and countertop murals I made for our kitchen! I certainly know that I had fun putting the whole thing together, solving problems along the way.
That time when it all comes together, when you’re creating, when your whole being is engaged and the work simply flows as though it’s forming itself and you’re part of it…is amazing and intimaate and beautiful…and that makes it all worth it.
It is probably much the same whether it’s some form of the “arts” or some form of the “sciences” (and technical skills). In other words, whether you’re a writer, an engineer, a cook, scientist, musician, athlete…at some point, you strive for that merger of skill and talent and creativity, where what you do, what you make, and your part in the process, are all blended into a whole, inseparable, perfect thing.
I really wish our school systems and citizenry (and the big organizations soaking up the money and using the talented people) would wake up and realize that we _must_ have art, music, athletics (solo and team), history…as well as science, shop, mathematics, or “practical business skills.”
A truly educated person, a truly enlightened and productive society, needs all those things in a well-rounded, educated person. If we don’t, then I believe we end up with people ignorant of large parts of themselves, their fellow people, their loved ones…and I think not only do we cripple ourselves as a society, but we risk creating the social and personality problems we say we want to solve. Money? Power? World or global competitiveness or relevance? Trade and commerce? How do any of these matter if all that’s there is a soulless, dull grey sameness, a uniform, cookie-cutter existence?
Surely some culture that is more complete, more well-rounded, would (rightfully and deservedly) supersede such a shrunken-minded world-view. — So why does it too often seem like we’re shrinking toward the one instead of growing toward the other?
I also wanted to offer a couple of “great teacher” examples, which I’d like to add in a later post.
I seem to have climbed up on a soap box, and I’m having a bit of trouble getting down from it. 😉 Wouldn’t want to wear out people’s welcome.
BCS, you do not wear out your welcome.
🙂 Thank you!
There’s a really good video by the British Academy about the value of the humanities and social sciences to society, and the reasons why they should continue to be funded.
http://www.britac.ac.uk/prosperingwisely/
There is a quiet satisfaction in turning fluff into yarn. There is a glory in dancing, those special times when you cannot tell your body from the music. There is pride in the discipline with which you treat yourself so that you can do your best at either. Not someone else’s best, nor some objective best, but the best you chose and strive for.
wool or cotton? I watched my ex-wife spin cotton for the other members of her guild because she could and they couldn’t seem to get it to catch. I’ve seen her spin rayon, too. When we divorced, she had something like 20 or so fleeces, either waiting to be made up in roves or already done, plus 3 spinning wheels, 5 looms, a room full of fabric, 8 sewing machines, an embroidery machine, tons of reed for baskets, broom corn for making brooms…..I just thought it was fascinating the way she’d do those things.
Wool and wool blends so far. I’m neither as good nor as fast as I could be, but it still satisfies something in me.
Math and teachers — An example of a good teacher.
I am more of a language skills type of guy. Way back when I was a much younger Blue, that is, in elementary school, I greatly disliked the rote memorization of multiplication tables that went with math class, new math or old math. (In the 70’s, “new math” was a thing. Thankfully, I mostly learned the “old math” way.)
Oh, I could do basic math OK. But it was just OK. I didn’t excel. I was average at it. Somewhere in my kid brain, math seemed like it was a bunch of number crunching. Bo-ring. I knew I needed it for school and college and life but…ho-hum…. That exaggerates a little. My grades were good, but ehhh. This, even though I liked my teachers. (Hey, I liked school, I was one of the smart kids, but well, math was only OK, not great….)
Cut to 9th grade, freshman high school. I’m a little behind the other college-bound smart kids, apparently, who are ahead a year in math. Hmm, OK. — So I’m in Algebra I. My teacher was a man named Mr. May. Mr. May was unusual. He’d become a teacher because he wanted to teach. (No, that’s not what made him unusual.) He was unusual in the level of commitment there. He wanted to reach kids, to get them to like math, and — to change. He didn’t harp on this, but it was evident. He was unusual in that he had been a drug addict, he told the class. He’d gotten off drugs and he didn’t make it a secret he’d found religion. (He didn’t make a huge deal out of either one, but it did explain what looked like acne scarring on his face. Hey, I was a suburban kid. I had no idea, though other students did.)
Well, OK, that was different, but he was in a dress shirt and tie always, professional, friendly enough. Mr. May was slightly nerdy, in a good way. I looked up to him.
Over the first few weeks, I began to see something strange. Math could be…fun? Elegant? Useful? It could (somehow) appeal to that logical, orderly side of me that appreciated things being neat and tidy? (And yet I am not a beatnik.) The way he explained things got through to me why math could be…beautiful…a subject to like, to enjoy. Over that year, he got through to me an appreciation for math.
Oh, I still wasn’t fast at basic math. (I’m still not, even after college and work life.) — But Algebra “clicked” with me. Hey, this stuff is juggling with ideas. It isn’t just about crunching numbers. It could be really interesting. (It might’ve helped that I’d always liked Mr. Spock. Ahem. Though that didn’t tend to enter into classes. Heh.)
I went through the regular math sequence after his class, and had a good, brand new teacher for Geometry. And I was hooked after that.
It wasn’t until I reached Calculus that I would realize some of the techniques and examples Mr. May had taught us in Algebra were actually…taken from Calculus. — He had, because some students were actually (OMG!) curious! — He had shown us a longhand way to approximate square roots. The process was a little complicated, but understandable, and I’d later run into it as some application of derivatives and differentiation in Calculus. — I’d known Mr. May was giving us some interesting stuff in his teaching methods, but it was impressive to find out why his methods were precise, careful, and easy (I thought) to follow.
Some years after school I heard, I don’t recall how, that Mr. May had passed away, which was earlier than expected.
Most of the students I knew of liked and respected him, and a few from my class year had said he’d inspired them to like math too, they’d looked up to him and he’d helped them as people, not just as students, by being a caring teacher when they were teenagers trying to figure out life.
Mr. May probably never knew he’d made a difference for several of his students, and that he was well remembered long after high school.
Not bad for a guy who just wanted to do something useful with his life and atone for himself, after whatever he’d been through when he was younger. (And as far as I was concerned, he needn’t have felt guilty. He was a stronger, more decent guy because of whatever he’d gone through.)
Tommie and joekc6nlx have the right of it. There is a kind of Zen in spinning, weaving, knitting, crochet, embroidery, needle point, quilt making and such “hand work.” You kind of take your mind out of gear, because really the process is mostly eyes and hands. I have some of my best story ideas doing knitting or crochet, or needlepoint, listening to music, and just let my mind freewheel.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have a character, Theo Waitley, who works out complex stellar navigation problems using string.
in kendo, when you make a strike and you feel everything comes together just right, mind, body, spirit, sword, and you know it, and your opponent knows it. The hard part is doing it again and again, and knowing you’re never quite to the perfect strike. You don’t quit, because “this is kendo” and it’s about improving yourself, not whacking someone with a bamboo stick.
“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.”
 – Erwin Schrödinger (founder of Quantum Mechanics)
My family growing up were all a bunch of bookworm geeks with an artistic and musical bent. I always loved the science assignments where we had to draw the important details of plants, bugs, or fish guts. Didn’t matter what, drawing it out was always a good way for me to learn. Doodling in a notebook always seemed to help it ‘stick’ even on non-science class. Later, in college when it became chemical structures, how DNA creates proteins, how a critter relates to its ecosystem, or even what the calculus formula were trying to say, that same artistic way of thinking was very important for me to understand. The whole ‘happy neuron’ thing for sure.
I think eliminating art and music would do more damage to some kids than others, because we all have different learning styles. Music and art are really strongly related to puzzle solving in my mind anyway! Group sports were always a struggle, but in college I was on the Fencing team and LOVED it. Something about having to work out how to get the tip through the opponents movements to score while keeping them from zapping me was just a variation on puzzle solving.