Replying to LO30571 --
Dear Organlearners,
Ray Harrell <mcore@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>What I am doing is putting together a program for the
>re-introduction of complex music into the American culture.
>Since 1900 there has been a 98% decline in live complex
>musical life in America. The decline in complex literacy has
>paralleled that to the point that today the most pressing need
>in America's political elections center around literacy and
>education.
Greetings dear Ray,
I will begin the dialogue. You have touched upon many things which are
valuable to me. I hope that you will find in my response a few comments
which you can share with your colleagues.
Before anything else, I want to wish you and your team success with your
endeavour. It is a huge load which you will be carrying, but I think you
are able to reach your destination.
Your mentioning of complex literacy made me think of Alan Bloom's profound
book "The Closing of the American Mind". He pictures the lack of literacy
among the majority of American students as that they are bleeding to
intellectual death by losing the hot blood of spiritiality. He laments
their lack of passionate insight. He thinks that the cause is a
replacement of openness by relativism on all walks of life. I will come
back to this lack of openness in its broader context as one of the 7Es
(seven essentialities of creativity).
It is not only in music as art where its complexity is declining. Let us
try to see the forest rather than the tree. I have mentioned Bloom above
who observed that same is happening in literature. It is also happening in
all other forms of art. Is this the forest which we ought to see? No. It
is also happening in hobbies like cultivating plants or keeping animals
with a certain theme. Its even happening in sports which is not favoured
by the media like amateur wrestling or judo.
This is the forest. In it the old trees are dying out faster than their
replacement by new young trees. I know that it is an old cliche to say
that the new youth are not what the past youth used to be. But
organisations for art, hobbies and sports are all suffering this declining
numbers of new entrants. Furthermore, it is not happening merely in the
USA. It is happening in most countries where they once flourished. In
other words, should we seek causes, we will have to look for causes
general enough.
What do arts, hobbies and sports have in common? They are three of the
five ESCs (Elementary Sustainers of Creativity), namely art-expressing,
exemplar-exploring and game-playing. The other two are problem-solving and
thoughts-exchanging (dialogue). The decline of young people employing
these three ESCs (and most probably the other two also) may be the result
of two causes. The first cause is that they have little need to sustain
their creativity. The second cause is that they are ignorant to the crucal
role which creativity plays in their learning.
I think that both causes are operating. Why? All those students have been
exposed for ten or more years in a schooling system which had a profound
influence by way of organisational learning on their thinking. What
happened to them as pupils? They were exposed to a deluge of information
which they had to memorise and find applications for in prescribed
instances. They now consider such information as knowledge, oblivious to
the fact that only inner knowledge can digest external information in
order to mature.
These pupils have been tested excessively to certify them fit for society
as never before in the history of humankind. So, if they past these tests
and yet fail to make use of the five ESCs in the rest of their lives, it
means that these tests lacked in evaluating their creativity. This will
happen when the educational systems are oblivious to the conditions which
promotes creativity.
There are necessary and sufficient conditions to excell in creativity. The
sufficient conditions may be represented by the 7Es. Openness is one of
them. Wholeness is another one. Ask any learner who finished school what
is wholeness and how wholeness promotes creativity. That learner will gape
like a fish on dry ground. Do the same for a university student who have
graduated. The result will be very much the same. Why?
Educational systems have been subjected to the information paradigm. It
proclaims that external information has knowledge in it which gives power
to excell under any circumstance in any walk of life. It denies that
knowledge lives only within the mind, capable of formulating or digesting
information which exists outside it.
You have mentioned the following:
>Well this is a little of the discussion. I can make it
>less technical but the issues of the values of Aesthetics
>in learning was addressed by CS Pierce many years
>ago when he stated that Aesthetics were antecedent to
>all learning since aesthetics are the organization of
>perception and without perception there is no learning
>(or learning organizations).
Aesthetics (a study of beauty) is impossible without creativity. How can a
musician explore the astounding beauty of a composition without trying to
recapture with inner creativity the intended beauty of its composer? Its
like expecting a horse to have horns or a chicken to have teeth.
Aesthetics is one dimension of character. Another dimension of it is
ethics. A person cannot respect the life and belongings of another person
when that person has not earned this respect by creating self to know what
it takes. When I look at all the dimensions of character, they are
declining rapidly in all walks of life in most societies. Why?
Information has no character just as it has no knowledge! Although the
character of a person has its roots in the knowledge of that person, the
character emerge beyond that knowledge. This is most important because
only then can character guide the effective actions of knowledge to the
benefit of all people. Since information has not character, it cannot
guide anybody. Those who embrace information as the key to welfare is like
debris drifting on rough waters, going only where the water takes them.
Ray, I think I have said enough for the present. I want to add only one
thing. I tried to picture the forest. But should we try to save it, we
will have to go from tree to tree and do what is necessary. So, I am not
hinting at all that you should expand your endeavour (the tree). But I
want to caution strongly that you keep in mind the context (the forest).
The creativity of humankind is at stake by subjecting it to the chaos of
the information explosion. It is like a hot, dry wind caused by a drought
in knowledge. It blows through the forest, killing it leave by leaf, twig
by twig and tree by tree.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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