Hello,
I said in a reply to Roy Winkler's question, about the educational
problems with preparing young people for the work force, that
certain educational practices that developed the perceptual
mechanism of primary and secondary students had been abandoned
in the late sixties and early seventies. These programs were
abandoned in favor of more short term goals (Moonwalk,i.e.
"prestige"/ or sell R&R popular musical recordings and programs
to the schools, churches and synagogues, i.e. "for-profit
education") The Arts programs that I talked about are all
FINE ARTS programs which have a perceptual/analytic/expressive
/discipline/ensemble base. Like pure math, they have at their
heart the development and perception of pure abstract forms
in design, sound, movement and poetry. The adolescent problems
incurred in the 1960s with the heightened sensory awareness,
brought on by the use of the dangerous drug LSD, are solved
in the gradual development of sensory expertise through the
discipline of the Fine Arts. This eliminates the sensory
overload experienced through the use of the drug. It also
gives them better "taste."
This is a whole lot larger discussion which moves to
the issues of conflict and resolution that are so much a part
of adolescent life and which are expressed in a disciplined
focused manner by the primal consonance and dissonance or
the "sublime duality" of the Western artistic tradition.
In short the Fine Arts has two streams of discipline at its
base. 1. TRADITIONAL ART is the collective memories of the
affective elements of Western culture. This art is recreated
through the eyes of an expert or Master Performing Artist.
He per-forms the stories, histories, abstract expressions
of the most comprehensive elements of the culture, time and
space of a particular society. A work of art is a time
capsule that a performer can enter and an audience can
experience of the literal sounds, movements, dialogues,
you name it, of a particular time/space. A recording/video/
film is an object, a "record" of a specific way of thinking
about that time/space but the elements of conflict and
resolution in all of its "improvisational modes" is not
possible. The information exchange is found only in the
communication between a live audience and live performers.
Unfortunately, like the computer, you have to have a certain
amount of literacy around the formal abstract issues or you
are relegated to the non-communicative "touchy-feely" side
lines in the "great transcendental cultural dialogue." Kind
of like opera in America before Super-titles. 2. The second
element of the Artistic equation is THEORETICAL and is a
"Psycho-physical pursuit of cultural values in a medium, i.e.
sound, movement, paint, rhythm, stone, drama, etc. This
Theoretical element in FINE ART (traditionally in the West)
has two values:
1. It must be TRUE. 2. It must be the BEST POSSIBLE OF ITS
KIND. (That's why you call a great "anything" an "Artist.")
Fine Arts Composers for example have a responsibility through
their art to accurately MIRROR the society in all of the
elements that relates to music. That is the "truth." (Pick up
a copy of Edward T. Hall's "The Dance of Life" and read about
a society's rhythms that the composer must be able to hear and
put in a UNIQUELY BEAUTIFUL setting. Beauty does not in this
instance mean that you are necessarily pleased, it simply must
be THE BEST POSSIBLE OF IT'S KIND. In True Fine Art, the
Beauty is revealed as the audience's consciousness evolves.
That is why you can listen for years and have the pleasure
of discovery on every listening. The reason the West has,
over the last thousand years, given honor to Orpheus and his
descendants is that Fine Art moves into every element of life
and enhances it. It would be impossible to sell it adequately
although Sothebys try's. You just have to give up on that one
and figure out a way to have enough MEMORY and maintain your
memory chips.
PERCEPTION IN THE EVOLUTION OF MENTAL MODELS.
EAR AND BRAIN: Even though the work on perception in the
brain is in it's infancy, certain "facts" seem to be
accepted.
1. The brain's ability to perceive has certain
limitations that can only be filled in by time, experience
and the use of all of the senses. i.e. the "seeing"
of a curved line is created by sensual negotiation.
(See Bateson, "Mind and Nature")
2. If a limitation, (I'll use sight because the
data on hearing is so primitive) such as a circular
curve, is not filled in by experience before the
early months pass, the child will have an incomplete
ability to see circles. For example: If they have a
conjunctivitis in these early months, the stimuli
starvation to the brain will leave a partial blindness
even though the eye is perfectly/mechanically healthy
at a later time.
This seems to say that certain abstract structures, in the
present, are created from memory and that each person sees
(hears) that structure differently since each person's early
experiences are different. (See Carl Pribram's discussion
on the mechanism of the "Phantom Limb Phenomena) In teaching
we say you "know" only that which you experience. The mind
reads through the prism of memory what the sensual apparatus
perceives. The mind can remember the initial input without it
being in reality but the perceptual mechanism can also play to
an empty room, if the initial experience is inhibited at
an early age.
Children need artistic stimuli from a very early age. Indian
people say you should sing to the child in the womb. Play and
imitation develops the child's sensual acuity. Can you imagine
Stephen Hawking as Helen Keller? Sometimes adversity enhances
genius, sometimes potential geniuses are simply never developed
because they can't sensually discriminate. The great books
and symphonies are appealing but must be toiled over year after
year if the art is to serve its purpose. The delight that
grows with success in the pursuit makes the toil pleasant.
As for today's kids. There are children who are different from
the children of a couple of generations ago. Those who are
growing are not the point. The point are the wasted ones whose
minds, bodies, and emotional development will impoverish us all.
In art
the only final answer is the art itself. What makes it
cost effective is that it crystallizes the world's human
specialness and creates the future for the next generation
because it shares the impulse of the soul of the past.
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Butch and Carol said:
>People and especially the children are learning differently today than
>a generation ago.
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True, but most aren't as sophisticated as the past. Some
are, but the New York Times publishes on a fifth grade
reading level. How many can read it or understand its
importance. Forget the kids, how many of your workers?
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Butch and Carol said:
>I submit that:
>
>1. At one time we learned through memorization. The math tables are
>an example. Attention spans were relatively long.
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Not learning your math tables is lazy. We all were and are.
You should do calculations in your head daily because the
evidence is strong that it will put off dementia. Also the
separation between non-literate hieroglyphic memory and literate
alphabetic memory is considerably earlier then the last
couple of generations. However, I have seen some amazing
memory work amongst native people who designated children
for special roles in the community and did not let them learn
to write. They can memorize an 800 stanza poem on the first
hearing. I wish I could do that.
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Butch and Carol said:
>2. Then with the writings on stone through the prime of the books we
>learned through reading and listening. Attention span decreased
>somewhat to accommodate ready.
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I don't know what you mean. The printing press was
invented because so many "rememberers" and "healers" died
in the plagues. They lost so much knowledge that there was
a primal need to make the knowledge safe. Forty years ago
the Steinway Piano company made their craftsman write all of
their processes down in a book because they didn't want to
lose it to death or a competitor. The pianos have never
been the same since. Don't listen to the Edison/Aristocratic
propaganda about the solitary inventor. Printing was known
about for as long as they knew the Chinese.
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Butch and Carol said:
>3. As TV became popular, we began learn through visuals. Attention
>span decreased to accomodate this learning style.
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Drama and sitcoms have been around much longer than
Television. Their concentration is not "different"
it is poor.
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Butch and Carol said:
>4. With the cyber age we learn through visuals with sound. Attention
>span is changing to accomodate cyber learning.
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Very optimistic, it feels more to me like "Soylent Green."
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>Butch and Carol said:
>You can also look at the changes in music. Relative to the thirties,
>the music today consists of short burst of words with a lot sounds.
>Many people now learn in short burst with lots of sounds.
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Not true, pure hokum, If you would like, we can
discuss the music but it's very complicated.
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Butch and Carol said:
>If you check the stats, you probably will find that less books are sold
>today than there were 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Publishers continue
>making the profits through increased prices and reduced operating costs.
> ------------------------------------------
Also not true. There are more books sold then ever, of
course there are more people then ever. Initially books
like CDs when the digital tapes made piracy possible were
hurt by the easy copy ability. With new laws limiting
the wholesale breaking of the publisher's copyright,
book prices have been coming down. Not printed music
unfortunately. It still costs an arm and a leg. Check
your stats.
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Butch and Carol said:
>If you check the stats, you probably will find more CDs with visuals
>and interactives are sold today than 5 years ago. These CDs have
>replaced books.
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Come on! This is too easy! Which causes more cataracts,
books or CrystalScan? Would you really read a book on
this screen? I don't know people who rush home from
reading this screen all day at work to turn it on and
read a book. Maybe you do. Do research, talk to
colleagues, yes but read a book that you could hold
and adjust the external light? Maybe my 54 years is
showing. I even print out this list to read comfortably
wherever I am, like the newspaper, in the bank, on the
bus.
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Butch and Carol said:
>If you check the stats, you probably will find computers are in about
>80 - 90% of the homes and in 99% of the schools.
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Maybe C-span and MacNiel/Lehrer lies but that's not at all
what they said last week. I would love it if this stat
were true.
> ---------------------------------------------
Butch and Carol said:
>Have you ever thought that maybe the children are just as smart as
>ever, that maybe we use the wrong instrument to measure smartness or we
>are measuring the wrong thing?
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I grew up on the Quapaw reservation where the kids were smart,
I worked in the Washington Ghetto where they also were smart.
There is no lack of smartness, but......The ones of us who got
out, have done well, but we were all involved in the Arts. The
others and that is most, didn't. They couldn't get those early
images out of their heads. The dominant culture is just as
deprived now as those kids on the reserve. It is a crime.
-- Ray Evans Harrell Artistic Director The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. 200 West 70th Street, Suite 6-c New York City, New York 10023-4324 mcore@soho.ios.com