Burn the Textbooks, or: Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite, by Todd Boss

And here I am again, late for morning prayers in the Church of Another Immaculate Weekday. My sixth of seven meditations. 

I’ve been reading a book out of Britain called A Good Childhood: Searching for Values in a Competitive Age by Richard Layard and Judy Dunn. The “landmark report” examines why, in a recent UNICEF study, Britain and America claimed last place among developed countries in terms of childhood difficulties. Their resounding answer? Excessive individualism. Children need to feel they’re part of something bigger than themselves. “No child is complete without some passionate spiritual engagement." 

Something bigger than themselves. And no, we’re not talking about the Internet, fads, or social movements. The sad fact is that little of real value can be got with a username and password, a credit card, or feel-good slogans. 

Happily, we’re not talking about Catholic school, either—not necessarily. “For different children, religious practice, music, dancing, drama, art, literature, science, and the love of nature can all contribute to this experience.” 

But there are bedbugs in this blanket statement. Art-in-the-schools advocates will find a lot to like here, but when so much contemporary art reeks of its own excessive individualism, how is it likely to inspire passionate spiritual engagement in the youngster who lacks it? 

I’m less an advocate for art in the schools than I am for nature in the schools, less an advocate for the cart than the horse. Is art going to mean much to you if you’re not passionately and spiritually engaged in the world? 

On the sixth day, God made man in his image and entrusted him to care for the world. 

Science and environmentalism, too, beg us to take care of our world. But they don't obligate us to see the world as sacred, as a bond between the human and the divine, or to think of the gift as a timeless holy trust… all of which, however less founded in empirical evidence they may be, are far more compelling incitements to passionate spiritual engagement than global warming is. 

For all their urgency, most environmental messages miss the point: the world is essential to us because it represents something bigger than ourselves. In fact, it may be one of the few things that does. 

Smash the smart boards, quit the computers, burn the textbooks and recycle the cell phones. Let us not mediate the beauty of creation. And let us not quibble over this or that account. You don't need an art room for art class: the world is an art room. Get the children out into the garden and the weather, before nobody cares for either. 

Passionate, spiritual, engaged art will surely follow. 

Comments

[Noah Burke]

Great post. "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her." Wordsworth.
NB

[bill]

"Meanwhile we find ourselves in a situation where each of us must choose an allegiance---either to the posthuman, the virtual and the synthetic, or go to the earth, the real and the dead in their humic densities. " Robert Pogue Harrison, The Dominion of the Dead.

[DL]

Passionate spiritual engagement: Yes, and all three terms come into play. I forget in which novel I read that the love of Greek mythology in childhood sustained a man for the rest of his life. It's true. In other-directed America, we are often in danger of overvaluing the social, "gets-along-well-with-others" category, with a certain mindless conformism as one result. But an excess of self-involved individualism is as real a problem. Thanks for your thoughtful provocative independent posts, Todd.