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To Perceive, and to Imagine

Unleashing the Talent and Energy of Teachers and Students

Keynote Address at the Balanced Mind Curriculum Conference,
Focusing on Teaching in and through the Arts

C. W. Post Campus • Long Island University • Brookville, New York

Eric Oddleifson, Chairman

November 5, 1996

Sections

To Perceive and to Imagine

The Mission of Education

In 1968 Rudolph Arnheim laid it on the line, stating (in Visual Thinking) that perception is intelligence. He wrote that the arts are the foundation for our capacity to think constructively. He believes not only that artistic activity is a form of reasoning, where perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined, but that the unwholesome split between the senses and thought has crippled the training of reasoning power and has led to various deficiency diseases in modern man. He believes that "the arts are the most powerful means of strengthening the perceptual component without which productive thinking is impossible in any field of endeavor." He points out that our entire educational system continues to be based on the study of words, and numbers, having failed to understand that the arts contribute indispensably to the development of a reasoning and imaginative human being.

Teacher Magazine made this observation recently:

The findings of cognitive research over the past twenty-five years have been called the educational equivalent of the polio vaccine and penicillin. Yet they are barely known in our schools, let alone practiced.

At the Aspen Institute in Colorado, Harriet Fulbright, CABC's president, suggested that we start putting these findings into practice. She said,

Education has more than important implications for any democratic system. It is the essential cornerstone for the system, and we neglect it at our peril. Through scientific research we have learned so much about how humans learn. Let us put it into practice in our schools and communities, not only to improve our children's future employment possibilities but to strengthen the foundations of our democratic society.

While clearly stated by Harriet, we both recognize the challenge is daunting, given the social context within which schools are operating.

The Carnegie Commission's 1995 report on adolescence in America presents an alarming picture of a society that neglects and discounts adolescents. The report describes American parents as often dismissive and preoccupied, unable to cope with the troubles of their children. This attitude seems to hold true for adolescents who live in poverty and for those who enjoy every economic advantage but only see their parents while being driven from swimming lesson to dance class to tutoring.

The report describes a culture that is not meeting the needs of its adolescent children. It describes a crisis.

We are not addressing the real issues in schools, those identified by the Claremont (CA) Graduate School study, "Voices from the Inside," published three years ago.

Yet within this environment, educators are being asked to move beyond the basic skills of reading, writing, and math, to teach thinking skills and develop students' personal qualities as well.

In 1992 the US Department of Labor published a document called What Work Requires at School for Workers in the Year 2000. They identified three categories:

  • "Basic Skills" incorporates skills such as reading, writing, mathematics, and speaking.
  • "Thinking Skills" includes creative thinking, the ability to problem-solve and make decisions, the capacity of reason and "see things in the mind's eye" (which I take to mean imagination), and knowing how to learn.
  • "Personal Qualities" they are seeking workers who are responsible, sociable -- able to work with others -- have a sense of self-esteem, and integrity, are honest, skilled at self-management, and exhibit empathy.

The Nature of Intelligence

In this environment, it becomes crucial that we pay attention to Arnheim's and others' findings about cognition and the process of learning. Most people continue to believe that each of us has a single, quantifiable intelligence, fixed from birth and measured through an IQ test. Most of us continue to believe that human cognition (which is the mental process or faculty by which knowledge is acquired) is unitary -- i.e., it is only through the exercise of the intellect, reason, and analysis that knowledge can be gained.

The business community is beginning to challenge these "massive misunderstandings," as Eisner calls them. The Harvard Business School's Gerald Zaltman has been examining cognitive processes to aid managerial performance. He writes,

Most social communication is nonverbal. Indeed, eighty percent of all communication is nonverbal.

Thoughts occur as images. Having thoughts and expressing them can be quite different. This raises the question, 'What is it we have when we have a thought?' Thoughts are images, and only infrequently verbal images. This being the case, the arts must necessarily be viewed as the foundation for our capacity to think constructively.

The point that language is not required for human conceptual thinking but is only one of several "symbol systems" used to express intelligence is beautifully made in Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian. In describing the thoughts of Dr. Stephen Maturin while listening to a concert in London in the year 1803, he writes,

A foolish German has said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations -- admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.

Gerald Zaltman continues,

Metaphors are central to cognition. A consensus has emerged across many disciplines in the past two decades that metaphors, the representation of one thing in terms of another, is fundamental to thinking and knowing.

Metaphors actively create and shape thought; we cannot know anything unless it is perceived as an instance of one thing and not another. Thought is more inherently figurative than it is literal.

Cognition is grounded in embodied experience. This premise, although supported by research in many fields, is less widely known. It states that abstract thought is shaped by perceptual and motor experiences. Perceptual experience includes all sensory systems, not just vision. Basically, metaphorical understanding and associated mental models are grounded in everyday bodily experience.

Thus, viewing the body as a multimedia system which shapes our thinking suggests that the various subsystems such as the visual subsystem are important technologies to use in "getting the inside out."

Finally, reason, emotion, and experience co-mingle. Human thought involves both reasoning and emotion; effective decision making, whether by customers or managers, requires both. Therefore, it is necessary to consider emotion, logical inference, and embodied experience as mutually dependent and inseparable dynamics.

Indeed, the emotions are now seen as underpinning our capacities for constructive thought. Daniel Coleman, science reporter for the New York Times, in his book Emotional Intelligence, reveals new understandings of the emotions as another cognitive system hardwired into our brains. Coleman suggests that emotional intelligence is a master intelligence, or "meta- ability," governing how well or poorly people are able to use their other mental capabilities.

For many years now leading educators have been exploring the application of emerging cognitive research to practical classroom settings. In her outstanding book, Teaching for the Two-Sided Mind, published in 1983, Linda Verlee Williams writes,

Recent research on the hemispheres of the brain has made us aware that we possess two different and complementary ways of processing information -- a linear, step-by-step style that analyzes the parts that make up a pattern (in the left hemisphere) and a spatial, relational style that seeks and constructs patterns (in the right). That discovery has stirred considerable excitement among educators and created a desire to explore the application of hemispheric research to the classroom.

Children come to school as integrated people with thoughts and feelings, words and pictures, ideas and fantasies. They are intensely curious about the world. They are scientists, artists, musicians, historians, dancers and runners, tellers of stories, and mathematicians. The challenge we face as teachers is to use the wealth they bring us. They come with a two-sided mind. We must encourage them to use it, to develop both types of thinking so that they have access to the fullest possible range of mental abilities.

Cognitive Research and the Arts

As the US Department of Labor indicates, imaginative, right-brained capacities are now highly valued in the "high performance" business workplace, both in front line employee and senior management. These capacities, or intelligences, have been described by Yale's Robert Sternberg, and Harvard's Howard Gardner. Sternberg talks of the triarchic mind, where practical abilities (or street smarts) and creative abilities are as important as linguistic, and logical, mathematical capacities. Howard Gardner defines intelligence as an ability to solve problems or fashion products valued in one or more cultures, and has introduced us to his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Several of Gardner's intelligences are clearly arts based. As Linda and Bruce Campbell and Dee Dickinson observe in their outstanding book, Teaching and Learning through Multiple Intelligences, some schools interpret the Theory of Multiple Intelligences as providing a strong rationale for arts-based programs. With Gardner's claim that visual, musical, kinesthetic, and interpersonal competencies are actually forms of intelligence, arts proponents recommend that dance, music, theatre, film, visual arts, and creative writing be allotted equal status and time in the school curriculum. They claim that the arts provide important symbol systems that represent, interpret, and convey the world. Mathematics, science, and language communicate only part of our human experiences. The arts are necessary to explain other aspects of our life. Students who learn the basic skills and artistic symbol systems gain a more comprehensive picture of the world, while also developing more of their intelligences.

As Wynton Marsalis says, "the arts allow you to live in a greater percentage of the world." Or, as Ken Chenault, Vice Chairman of American Express, commented on what he gained from his 12 years of Waldorf education -- "it has allowed me to feel my consciousness at all times." With, both for him and others, amazingly practical results.

The authors of Teaching and Learning through Multiple Intelligences continue,

Multiple Intelligences schools such as Ashley River Elementary School in Charleston, South Carolina; The New City School in St. Louis, Missouri; the Expo for Excellence School in St. Paul, Minnesota; and Seven Oaks Elementary School in Lacey, Washington, all infuse the 'artistic intelligences' throughout the curriculum and teach the arts as core subjects in their own right. All students at these schools on a daily or near-daily basis study the visual and performing arts to better understand the world and to better develop the spectrum of intelligence.

The Performance Record of Arts-Based Schools

As the Campbells and Dee Dickinson observe, "When individuals have opportunities to learn through their strengths, unexpected and positive cognitive, emotional, social, and even physical changes will appear." What is the actual record of arts-based, MI schools?

The Ashley River School in Charleston, South Carolina, which accepts everybody on a first come, first served basis, has the second highest academic standing in the city and county, exceeded only by a high school for the academically gifted -- even though one-third of the students have learning disabilities and the school is located in one of the city's poorest areas. Ashley River's test scores are substantially higher than county and state averages.

The Key School, an arts-integrated school in Indianapolis, and the subject of an ABC Special called "Common Miracles," is viewed as possibly the best elementary school in the country by the National Education Association. It was started by an arts teacher who wanted to offer quality education for all children, using the arts as the vehicle.

At the arts-based John Eliot School in Needham, fourth graders, when tested for critical thinking skills, were first in the entire state.

Eighty percent of fifth graders at the Sunset Park school in North Carolina exceeded the state average on their reading test this year after only one year as an A+ school. Only 35 percent of the same class the year before had done better than average. Other positive things have been occurring. The principal, Adelaide Kopotic, writes,

Student attendance in classrooms which most regularly utilize the arts as a teaching tool has peaked at 98 percent or above, and attendance at school PTA functions has increased from less than 25 to an average of 400. Additionally, student discipline referral rates at the school showed a most remarkable drop in only the first year of A+, plummeting from over 100 to only three.

High schoolers at the FACE school in Montreal achieve at a rate 20 - 25 percent higher on average in hard academic subjects than their counterparts in other Montreal high schools, even though one reason they enroll at FACE is because they are weak academically to start.

In Germany students entering university are allowed to skip their freshman year, if their entrance exam scores are sufficiently high. Forty percent of over 1,000 Waldorf school students interviewed were found to have qualified, compared to a national average of only six percent.

The College Entrance Examination Board announced that in 1993 students who studied arts and music scored significantly higher than the national average on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Students who had participated in acting/play production, music performance and appreciation, drama appreciation, and art history, scored an average of 31 to 50 points higher for the math and verbal sections. The Board also stated that students with long-term arts study (four years or more) tend to score significantly higher on the SAT than those with less coursework in the arts.

Additionally, not only do children learn the 3 R's better and faster, but they behave differently. My favorite description of what happens comes from Ron Berger, a sixth grade teacher in Shutesbury, who talks of a school culture of high standards. He writes,

The infusion of arts has had a profound effect on student understanding, investment, and standards. As a whole, students not only do well on standardized testing measures, but importantly and demonstrably do well in real life measures of learning. They are capable and confident readers, writers, and users of math; they are strong thinkers and workers; they treat others well.

The Benefits of Education through the Arts

How do we describe the benefits of education through the arts? Howard Gardner believes that training in the arts develops constructive habits of discipline, and mind. Our research reveals other benefits as well, as (shown in fig. 6 below) -- not the least of which is the development of the imagination.

Stephanie Perrin, Head of the Walnut Hill School in Natick, MA, has her own list (Table II). She writes persuasively about the benefits of education through the arts.

Many school reform models are being tried and evaluated. It may well be that no single model will emerge; rather, perhaps a variety of educational approaches will be found to work, just as we now know that people learn and must be taught in a variety of ways.

Within the school reform movement, however, Schools for the Arts do not immediately leap to the minds of the American public; quite the contrary, the arts are disappearing from public schools at a rapid rate. However, I want to suggest that such schools do offer a model that does work for many students, educating them both as artists and :as citizens, and that this model may, in some form, work for more students then one might think, not only the 'talented' and exceptional.

The Benefits of the Arts in the Curriculum

Fig. 6

Intensive arts training, far from being impractical and elitist, can prepare students for life and work by developing in them the general skills and attitudes, the habits of heart and mind they need to prevail in postmodern society no matter what career they choose. Intensive arts training in high school increases, not decreases, options. If you want a motivated, organized, hardworking, flexible, smart, creative worker, able to work well alone or in groups -- hire a young violinist.

Further, the philosophy and process of arts training, a far older system of education than the liberal arts, also mirrors the motion of many current educational reform movements and addresses recent educational concerns such as: the need for standards; the concepts of student as worker, teacher as coach, of the Coalition of Essential Schools movement; the development of character; coping with diverse learning styles; meaningful assessment; and the importance of responding to multiculturalism in schools.

Table II

Education through the Arts

Intensive Study of the Arts Promotes Learning of:

  • Discipline: Good Work Habits
  • Self-Awareness: Self-Responsibility
  • Persistence and Ownership of Work
  • Relationship of Effort to Achievement
  • High Ideals--Positive Adult Role Models
  • Learning as On-Going Process
  • Communication of Ideas
  • Synthetic and Analytic Thinking -- and Relationships
    ("Big Picture" and Details)
  • Active Learning: Learning by Doing

    A PARTIAL LIST . . .

    Source: Stephanie Perrin
    Head Walnut Hill School

Arts Integration -- What Does It Mean?

When we talk about arts-based schools, we refer both to 'infusing' the artistic intelligences throughout the curriculum, in order to better serve students with different learning styles, and to teaching the arts as discrete academic subjects in their own right.

Infusing the Arts

As Karen Gallas, a first and second grade teacher in Brookline, MA, points out, in her book, The Languages of Learning -- How Children Talk, Write, Dance, Draw and Sing their Understanding of the World, the process of infusing the arts into the curriculum changes both what we study in schools, and how we study it.

Infusing the arts can be extremely powerful, as a recent edition of Horace, the newsletter of Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, points out. Horace described the results of a three year study of fourteen New York City classrooms.

Using arts processes to teach academic subjects results not only in improved understanding of content but in greatly improved self regulatory behavior. Student behavior improved strikingly in such areas as taking risks, cooperating, solving problems, taking initiative for learning, and being prepared, researchers say, and content related achievement also rose.

This answers our key question: whether skills from the arts transfer to other areas. But we also found that this transfer cannot occur unless teachers change their classroom's structure -- their use of time, grouping, instructional strategies, active and participatory learning for all kids -- to allow those skills and abilities to come out and be used.

For students who struggle in schools with curricula based primarily on verbal proficiency, the study found, using arts processes proved extremely powerful. We saw huge changes for those with more kinesthetic, musical, and artistic tendencies, researchers note.

How, then do you incorporate arts processes in your professional practice?

The bottles in which you will find the polio vaccine and penicillin are several. I recommend first the late Earnest Boyer's book, The Basic School. Additionally, The Languages of Learning by Karen Gallas, and Teaching for the Two-Sided Mind by Linda Verlee Williams, are outstanding. The largest bottle, with perhaps the most powerful medicines, is Teaching and Learning through Multiple Intelligences, by the Campbells and Dee Dickinson.

Many arts educators resist the notion of infusion. Horace comments,

Controversy within arts disciplines themselves often inhibits the infusion of arts into the teaching of sciences and humanities. Many arts educators fear that aesthetics, criticism, creation, and art history will be watered down by such means -- that the 'arts component' of an integrated curriculum will be a mere gesture made of toothpicks and Elmer's glue, without depth, context, and meaning.

We sympathize with this point of view. We have not one, but two great challenges. The first is to incorporate the findings of the cognitive psychologists in general professional practice. The second is to reestablish the arts in the basic curriculum as discrete, academic disciplines in their own right.

The Arts as Stand Alone Subjects

The arts, as stand-alone, academic subjects in their own right, represent powerful alternative models of teaching and learning. The movie, Small Wonders, about one teacher's violin program in New York City's Central Park East, makes this point more powerfully than I ever could in words.

As Horace observes,

Almost every one of Theodore Sizer's Nine Common Principles reflects an artist's perspective: the philosophy of student as worker and teacher as mentor and coach; the belief that every child can think and express herself well; the use of essential questions that cross fields of inquiry; the conviction that doing one thing well is better than doing many superficially; assessment by performance, portfolio, and exhibition.

Students should practice an art discipline to develop tools of thought, to give meaning to facts and to facilitate creative or transformational thinking, as well as to "live in more of the world" -- even though most will not become professional artists.

These tools of thought identified by the Harvard Business School, include analogizing and the use of metaphor, pattern forming and recognition, visual and kinesthetic thinking, modeling, playacting, manual manipulation, and most importantly, aesthetics. Robert Root-Bernstein, a biologist and cellist, believes that the mind and senses alike must be trained equally and in tandem to perceive and to imagine, and points out that few, if any of these tools of thought are in our standard science curriculum.

It is however, the power of the aesthetic which is the most vital. We do not value the arts for what they are because we do not value aesthetic meaning. In a recent, Education Week article Jessica Davis, head of the newly installed arts-in-education concentration at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, asks, "Why must we justify arts learning in terms of other disciplines?" She observes that we should not be trying to transfer something that has value in itself, and suggests that the arts are not valued in schools because our society's own value system is flawed. She suggests that the arts need to be incorporated into every child's learning to provide them with the necessary tools to make and find meaning through aesthetic symbols, and participate across circumstances, culture, and time in the ongoing human conversation that is perpetuated through art.

The power of the search for meaning through aesthetic symbols is fully understood by an extraordinary sixth grade teacher, Ron Berger. He writes,

My position has been that arts are not just important for the 'carryover effect,' of energy and interest which occurs in artistic schools and which fuels academic growth, but because they can be at the core of a culture of high standards in a school. It is not a carry-over of energy, but rather an entire structure of creating, critiquing and sharing all academic work within an aesthetic model. I have argued that arts can form the basis of school norms and standards for work in a manner which is incredibly powerful. Student work is strong not just because they have more energy for it, and not because there is a clear transfer of intelligences, but rather because academic work is embodied in projects which are viewed artistically at all points in their creation.

There are five main points of emphasis in Ron's school:

  • Poor quality work is not acceptable. Kids are expected to work on draft after draft -- perhaps 15 versions of a drawing, map, or illustration, with each draft an improvement. The kids have fewer final products than other schools, but what they have is high quality work, and something of value, of which they can be proud. The process of continuous work and improvement engenders pride in: kids -- it changes the notion of who they are. They realize they can do something of quality.

  • The arts-based approach allows a "structure of critique," as critique is a tradition in the arts. There are no hurt feelings, as it is part of the normal process. Once kids learn models of critique through the arts, they begin to start thinking differently, and to apply it to other areas of their life -- with parents, and the principal. In the classroom Ron asks students for critique of his own performance as teacher.

  • The tradition of the master teacher not as expert, but as the leader of inquiry, is followed. The arts reflect the tradition of continuous learning. The teacher is not expected to be the expert. Experts are brought in to the class periodically, to illuminate certain areas of study. Ron is not the expert, but the master teacher.

  • The arts tradition of exhibition is followed. If in the arts it was all practice, and no recital, no one would work hard, or care. But in most schools that is all children do -- practice. If, on the other hand, everything they do will be exhibited, then they begin to care very much indeed.

  • Finally, the arts' tradition of keeping work in a portfolio is followed. Once a portfolio "culture" has been established, kids develop a need for evidence. "Where is your evidence, your portfolio?" Is the question. Evidence fits scientific inquiry but fits well in the arts as well.

The Arts Are Mainstream Education Reform

Most leading education reformers and many reform initiatives have picked up on the message of Arnheim, Gardner, Eisner, and Sternberg.

The Province of Saskatchewan has mandated arts training, in all the arts, for all children, K- 12, and has been working on getting them integrated into the curriculum for the past 15 years. They understand the power in aesthetic education. A full arts curriculum for each grade is available through the Internet at:
http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/subject.html

Additionally, an interactive CD-ROM called "Ideas and Inspiration," is available for teacher training, and student instruction, in the visual arts.

Minneapolis has the arts as one of five core disciplines in the curriculum and has developed some useful handouts for parents.

The curriculum of the Edison Project schools, emphasizing both the arts and the use of technology, is showing positive results, according to Education Week.

The Accelerated School program of Stanford's Hank Levin has over 1,000 schools participating, and strongly embraces the arts.

Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, in the May 1996 edition of Horace, now proclaims that the arts must move from elective, to essential status.

In his recent book, The Basic School -- A Community for Learning, the late Ernest Boyer wrote:

Language is, without question, central to all learning. In the Basic School, language is defined broadly to include not just words, but also mathematics, and the arts -- three symbol systems that have their own unique characteristics and, at the same time, relate intimately to each other.

Weaving the arts through the whole Basic School curriculum, and giving more focused time to art instruction, as well, profoundly enriches students' lives and stimulates their minds.

In the Basic School, art is an integral language, with a role to play in teaching all the disciplines. And teachers who themselves are not skilled artists include art experiences in their lessons.

The first goal of the Basic School is literacy for all. The aim is for all children to be successful, not just in reading, writing, and mathematics, but also in the universal language we call art.

The arts are no longer considered frills. The leaders of mainstream education reform have recognized them for what they are, which is the foundation on which the entire educational structure curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment -- must be built.

A Community Dialogue on What Is Valuable and Important

In a recent piece in Education Week, "What Do Superintendents Want?", Thomas Sobol, former New York State Commissioner of Education, writes,

The problem that gripped superintendents' attention at a recent gathering at Teachers College, Columbia University, was the decline of community in America -- and the role of the public schools in creating and sustaining that community.

Actor/activist Richard Dreyfus, the producer of the film Mr. Holland's Opus, in his remarks to a meeting in August of the American Federation of Teachers, referred to a debate now taking place in America.

Mr. Holland's Opus was about a guy struggling to become a school teacher and a good person. But it was also about a larger debate within American society over what is valuable and important to us as a people.

What touched people in the film, why they responded so strongly to it, points to certain fundamental values in America, certain aspirations and longings that are not currently being fulfilled, that we, in an odd way, have walked away from.

Sure, parents want their kids to be able to go to college and get a good job. But that is not enough. They want teachers who help their kids to understand life and its meaning. They want them to understand who we are and how we should express our character in words and actions. And I believe people, as they watched this movie, unconsciously recognized the importance of a complete education, from math, science, and history to art and music.

Perhaps we've all misunderstood the reason we learn music, and all the arts, in the first place. It is not only so a student can learn the clarinet, or another student can take an acting lesson. It is that for hundreds of years it has been known that teaching the arts, along with history and math and biology, helps to create "The Well Rounded Mind" that western civilization and America have been grounded on. America's greatest achievements -- in science, in business, in popular culture would simply not be attainable without an education that encourages achievement in all fields. We need that "Well-Rounded Mind" now. For it is from creativity and imagination that the solutions to our political and social problems will come.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I turn again to Walnut Hill's Stephanie Perrin. Walnut Hill is a private school serving students wishing to become professional artists. It emphasizes excellence in academics as well, recognizing that only a small part of the student body will remain professionals for their entire career. This is part of Stephanie's address to the graduating Class of 1996. Her charge, at the end, is a charge to all of us in this room as well.

In the western world since the 17th century, there has been a big philosophical split between rational and spiritual, between mind and body. We have depended for centuries on rational thought to take us where we need to go. We have had faith in what we can see, measure, and observe. Qualities such as intuition, creativity, and the life of the imagination were left to the arts and sometimes, religion.

As we approach the 21st century, we can see that our faith in the rational has taken us far. And we can also see that it cannot carry us all the way to a full life. So at the end of this century, people are asking questions about meaning, about spiritual life. I think we could agree our lopsided view of human capacity is not enough. We need all aspects of knowing, however you want to classify these aspects -- intuition and intellect, body and soul. You have, thanks to your experience here, access to both.

Unlike many people, young or old, you are very familiar with the intuitive and imaginative part of your self.

Because you have been required to know yourself in order to paint, write, dance, and make music, you are, unlike many people, deeply familiar with your dark side, with pain, struggle, and difficulty.

You know that in the dark and difficult places where only you can go are the biggest learnings. Creativity comes from what is NOT known. You have learned not to be afraid of the dark. Rather, you know its richness and possibilities.

In this story woven at Walnut Hill, we have supported you in developing as much of self as possible, in being as rich a story as you can be, and also in teaching you the tools you need to keep yourself learning, to remain in motion. This motion allows you to keep on weaving your story, to continue to ask questions rather than spend all your time seeking answers.

Life is motion. Sometimes the motion is very slow and soft, other times head-spinningly rapid, but movement is the essential sign of life.

At Walnut Hill you learned to see meaning in the world in many places and to have a sense of wonder and possibility. You are not cynical. You are open to experience and make meaning out of all sorts of materials. This is a crucial thread as you move to the 21st century.

Our charge to you, class of 1996, is to leave these threads, this story behind, and step over the threshold into the dark and into the light. May grace and love follow you wherever you go.

Copyright © 1997 CABC
Center for Arts in the Basic Curriculum

Posted with permission by
New Horizons For Learning

For permission to redistribute, please contact:
Eric Oddleifson:




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