Beneath Between Beyond

© David Moorhead — November 2006

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This article was inspired by several TEDTalks, especially Sir Ken Robinson’s, (recorded February, 2006), whose flair for the humorous convincingly commends advantages for the arts in public educational systems. Being a pianist, I applaud Robinson’s sagacious foresight.

Reality is not what it used to be, and the word reality might be spoken with more than simple confidence. Earthlings have been trained by an empirical reality, a brainy insinuation measured with only our five senses. Appealingly, quantum scientists can intuit realities nearly imaginable—beneath between beyond any idée fixe you and I might regard—rather like catapulting us out of everyday sandboxes containing what we presumed we are able to observe or intuit.

Here’s an idea that may be smart to ponder: Atoms creating your existence in this nanosecond are not the same atoms that created your existence in the most recent nanosecond. Imagine bodies and memories not entirely made of stuffs we’ve assumed.

Suppose for a moment that Earth’s life forms consist of layers upon layers of waves of cosmic energies containing more empty space than matter. Did our brains evolve to perceive only what we can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste? Or, are we capable of retraining our brains for intuiting a reality beneath between beyond that which our bodies can effortlessly handle, emotionally?

The kinds of creative education for interpreting the above two paragraphs are pretty important. However, public educational systems have finagled most creative imaginations into a box, especially children’s. Children are mostly treated as being wrong for speaking and doing creatively; little ones’ spontaneity is censured without being trained that something appearing ‘wrong’ might become another’s treasures!

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.
~ Sir Ken Robinson (b 1950), British born, speaker, author, consultant for creativity and innovation in business and education

It appears that 19th century education was steered toward industrialization, and, since then, the spontaneity and talents with which children are born have been squandered, ruthlessly. (Weren’t 19th century Romantic art and music revolts to industrialization?) Further, which universities today do not stigmatize students’ mistakes? How do masculine corporate hierarchies create landscapes that reproduce contempt for employees who nurture and act on their innate sensibilities?

Humans are educated whether or not we’ve entered the halls of a building, and received a paper stating our educated status. According to a UNESCO report, in 30 years, there will be more people than ever with diplomas, but those diplomas along with hierarchical economic values of schooling will have been inflated into the inane. Is it not apparent that we need to rethink intelligent educations of human capacities?

Civilization is swimming to survive into the forthcoming ocean of educated humans. Our species’ alluded extinction is apparent when considering dismissed creative imaginations could assume themselves dynamic life guards from the performing and silent arts.

I remember my dad saying I’d not find a job if I got my degree in piano. Of course, by no means could he have known my future—he was an accountant! Our rigid, traditional educational systems have put job oriented priorities like math and science at the top of the list while putting arts at the bottom. [1]

Are you able to think without dancing or playing the piano? Do you find yourself consulting a client while wanting to draw concentric circles on paper? Those are possibilities of interactive creativity, the likes of which children intuitively possess until it’s educated out of them.

All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artists as we grow up.
~ Pablo Ruiz Picasso (b 1881), Spanish painter, sculptor, co-creator of cubism with Georges Braque

Children born this year will be retiring in the year 2065, yet no one knows what the world will be like in five years much less know how we’re meant to educate our children for a future.

Is creativity in education as important as literacy? Should we align the arts with the status of literacy? Should we rethink our definition of human ecology by adopting new economical contexts for the artistic riches within human capacity? [2]

Over thousands of years of existence, into 63 years after World War Two, and here we are watching planetwide educational systems mine our minds as do corporations strip-mine Planet Earth for certain commodities—beneath between beyond anything you and I can endure imagining.

Planet Earth has been pillaged by malignant corporate and educational negligence. Crafted patriarchal delusions of peace were meant to have been interrupted by monotheistic dogmatisms, fomenting loathsome cyclic revolutions. But, with artistic visionaries, what remains of eviscerated left-minded brains could be averted by right-brained artists and creatives serving vivacious futures fashioned by children.

[1] Every public educational system on Earth has identical hierarchies of subjects. Picture an upside down pyramid with no shortage of mathematics, languages, and humanities cascading from the top to the bottom point where performing and silent arts struggle for air. Presumed for our species’ survival, Ken Robinson infers including the arts at the top of the list.

Our constant curiosity is key
to watching what’s being created.
~ David Moorhead