Last week I read an article by David Brooks in ‘The Opinion Pages’ of the New York Times. If you click on the link I’ve embedded (above) in Mr. Brooks’ name, you’ll have the pleasure of reading it yourself. I wish you would; not because I spent time attaching it to this post, but for the joy it will bring you and the background for a discovery it will give you. The article is titled, “Love Story”, and it truly is one. You might expect something different from Mr. Brooks, but then you’ll be surprised.
The piece is about a chance encounter in Leningrad at the end of WWII between 20th-century British philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and pre-revolutionary poet Anna Akhmatova. The serendipitous meeting created a one night love affair of like minds and souls in perfect communication. I’ll leave you to your own interpretation of the fourteen hours they spent together, another enticement, I hope, to read the article and then to move on to first-hand accounts from Akhmatova and Berlin, just as David Brooks was inspired to do by Berlin’s biography written by Michael Ignatieff. But these exciting people and their ideas are not actually the point of this post, but more the catalyst.
At the end of David Brooks’ piece, there’s a swift, jarring shift from the discussion of the cultures that brought these two amazing people together, to a comment about our educational system. I say jarring because there was no preparation for it in the rest of the essay. That’s perfectly acceptable when essay is the form a discussion takes, but it certainly made me focus in a protracted way on the words and their intent, as I assumed that was why Mr. Brooks fired it across the bow of his ‘Love Story’. The surprising sentence is: “I’m not sure how many schools prepare students for this kind of love.”
You might well be just as surprised to find me offering resistance to the implicit indictment of our schools and their lack of support for the arts in education today. I’ve certainly written plenty of anguished posts about the disappearance of the Liberal Arts education. Mr. Brooks’ suggestion that exposure to the ‘big ideas’ of the geniuses who “understand us better than we understand ourselves”, supports everything I believe about the structure offered through culture. In fact, I would include the “big ideas” we’re introduced to by great music, art and science, as well. Those are the concepts that open us up so we can start to sense the world from the inside out. It’s the dilation of a human soul through the stimulus of creativity that’s paramount, but I’ve never found the ‘opening up’ to be the particular accomplishment of established school systems, either today or a long time ago.
Yes, we do have to expose ourselves to the chance moments of beauty we’d undoubtedly call love. But there’s an opportunity today, unlike any other time in history, to educate ourselves at any age. I’m not at all sure we should expect our schools to “prepare students for this kind of love.” The opening up of mind and heart certainly has to be a lifelong endeavor, and I hope Mr. Brooks will take some solace in the fact that the ether necessary for that preparation is all around us long after we’ve left the school system. Access to the classics of literature, music, art and philosophy is basically free on the internet. There’s every opportunity imaginable to get the education we missed, no matter who or what was to blame for the original omission.
As is true with learning most of the important things in life, I think it’s best to focus on the student, rather than the teacher. Even with the inspiration and stimulus of ‘those who understand us better…,” the effort is more likely to succeed when we do the preparation on our own, learning to open up and love ourselves.