Why The Arts Are An Integral Part of Our Curriculum

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Guys, please welcome back guest blogger, Christy Lindsay.

I don’t know about you, but I think most of us have our list of “important subjects” that have to get done during the day.  We have those boxes that must be checked off and then and only then, if we still have time, we will fit in the “extra stuff” like music or art or maybe some poetry for the really ambitious.   I was right there with you, and it wasn’t until last summer when I heard a talk by Cindy Rollins at the CiRCE conference entitled The Long Haul that I started to change my thinking on this and placed the arts on equal footing with the rest of our studies. 


You see, I had thought music and art and poetry were nice, but I hadn’t thought, like Andrew Pudewa says in the title of one of his articles, “Music is Not Nice”, it is essential!  He states, “It is a profoundly powerful thing with transformational effects on the individual as well as society, and we ignore this at our peril.”  I would expand that to say the same is also true of art and poetry.  These are not just nice things, to make one cultured, smarter, and get better SAT scores, but they are essential for the soul and the formation of character.

Often, the education of our children can be focused on simply acquiring knowledge.  We do what the modernist does and separate the person into two parts, the body and the spirit.   We educate the mind in our schooling and we let the church take care of the soul.  But the christian woldview looks at the person as an integrated whole, the body, the mind and the spirit.  Therefore education should aim at nurturing all three parts.  As christians it is our responsibility to help our children acquire knowledge, wisdom and virtue,  and the arts are a great place to start.  They stimulate the mind through their complexity, form and structure and they feed and nourish the spirit, helping us to understand deep truths.

 The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man, in his chapter Men Without Chests quotes Aristotle saying, 
“the well-nurtured youth is one who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart.”   
So I ask how can our children learn to know and recognize the true, the good, and the beautiful if we never expose them to it?  
The kids listening to their children’s audio tour at the Brandywine River Arts Museum.

I was talking with a mom of a soon to be Challenge IV student at our recent CC practicum who told me that her daughter was classically trained in piano from an early age and was given a rich diet of classical music, and to this day, even as a teenager, shuns modern pop music.  Her daughter was sitting there as her mom told me this and she heartily concurred, even shuddering when her mom mentioned rock music.  I am not saying that all rock music is “evil”, I am just trying to make the point that when you feed your children a diet of the beautiful they will begin to crave it.  My own 12-year old daughter will turn on Bach herself when she knows she needs to relax.  I don’t think she is extra special (ok, maybe I do), but I believe that this is possible for any child who is simply exposed and helped to appreciate the beautiful.

What I also didn’t realize was how the arts can point them to God, who is the ultimate source of all things true, beautiful and good.  God has told us of himself through metaphors all throughout the bible, I am the door, the vine, the lion of Judah, the lamb, the bread, the light, the shepherd and on and on it goes.  Music, art and poetry also teach through metaphor.  Classical music, though it is often without words can express, pain and sorrow, joy and pride, glory and celebration.  Artists attempt to capture through paintings ideas that express more than words ever could.   

When we recognize the good in those things, we can then ask the question, why do I call this good and what good thing in this piece teaches me more of the character of God?  Why has God made us to be drawn to beauty?  

 “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”  Psalm 27:4

Douglas Wilson in his article, Nurturing Fat Soulsexhorts us that we should want much more than “just decent children.”   He says,

“…I’m much more worried about raising decent but soulless children, children with that blank, unconscious stare who run in tight grooves, completely lacking in any passion for anything grand and beautiful.”

He goes on to talk about cultivating wisdom and that wisdom “involves wonder, a mysterious, humble wonder–a taste for beauty.”  And contrary to the post-modern thinker, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder.  God has given us a standard for beauty and that is himself, and anything that does not point us to him does not fit the definition.


It is hard for us to imagine the impact the arts can have on our souls until we delve into them for ourselves.  But it is amazing the effect they can have.  Incredibly, there is a silent spiritual revival going on in Japan due to the rediscovery of the music of Bach in the past 15 years.  Japanese are starting to ask questions about life and death, hope and Jesus.  The composer who wrote “Solo Deo Gloria” (Glory to God Alone) on the top of all his compositions is still helping to turn people to Christ 250 years after his death.  Bach has been called a “missionary” to the Japanese.  Nancy Pearcey, in her book Saving Leonardo tells the story of one convert, Masashi Masuda, who “dates the beginning of his spiritual journey to hearing the Goldberg Variations performed by Glenn Gould, which have no Scriptural words at all.  Masuda now teaches systematic theology at Sophia University in Tokyo.”  She quotes the journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto who tells the story of young Japanese going on pilgrimages to Leipzig, Germany, where Bach worked for twenty-seven years.  They sit in the church where Bach was the cantor “following with shining eyes the rich Lutheran liturgy.”

Shining eyes.

Sound familiar?  I think we heard that somewhere before….

Listen to Glenn Gould play Bach’s Goldberg Variations for yourself and see if you can grasp how this music could have affected someone so deeply as to start asking questions about God. 

Next time I will share with you how I simply go about helping our children learn to appreciate the arts in our home school.  I hope you will be back!

Comments

  1. says

    I am enjoying your blog — I think one reason is you are enjoying so many things that we enjoyed the four years we lived in that area or from my time growing up in that area.

    Reply

    • says

      Beth, that’s cool! Where are you now? I’m originally from the D.C. area, so I feel like I’m still exploring where I live now. : )

      Reply

  2. says

    Thanks, Christy! I look forward to hearing how you do this at home. I want to each my kids to love that which is lovely, and yet, not all music or art is lovely to me. I guess I am one who can say that I want this for my children but do not even know where to begin.

    Reply

  4. says

    Thanks for the reminder and encouragement this morning! I’ve been trying to slip in classical music and art viewing using the methods/resources from Harmony Fine Arts – http://harmonyfinearts.org?affiliates=6 and SQUILT Music – https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?cl=211139&c=ib&aff=197517

    My kids really love this time and I’m happy to give it to them because those programs make it so simple! We don’t do those things every day, but hopefully we will work up to it, even if it’s just quietly listening to a piece of classical music.

    Thanks for linking this up to Trivium Tuesdays!

    Reply

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