Echoes from a Child's Soul : Awakening the Moral Imagination of Children [1 ed.] 9789004432871, 9789004412712

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Echoes from a Child’s Soul

Imagination and Praxis: Criticality and Creativity in Education and Educational Research Series Editors Tricia M. Kress (The University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA) Robert L. Lake (Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA)

Editorial Advisory Board Peter Appelbaum (Arcadia University, Philadelphia, PA, USA) Roslyn Arnold (University of Sydney, Australia) Patty Bode (Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA) Cathrene Connery (Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD, USA) Clyde Coreil (New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, USA) Michelle Fine (CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA) Sandy Grande (Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA) Awad Ibrahim (University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada) Wendy Kohli (Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA) Donaldo Macedo (University of Massachusetts Boston, MA, USA) Martha McKenna (Lesley University, Boston, MA, USA) Ernest Morrell (University of Notre Dame, IN, USA) William Reynolds (Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA) Pauline Sameshima (Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada)

Volume 14

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ipcc

Echoes from a Child’s Soul Awakening the Moral Imagination of Children

By

Barbara A. Clark

leiden | boston

All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Clark, Barbara A. (Associate professor of teacher education), author. Title: Echoes from a child’s soul : awakening the moral imagination of children / by Barbara Clark. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Sense, [2020] | Series: Imagination and praxis: criticality and creativity in education and educational research, 2542-9140 ; volume14 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020024559 (print) | LCCN 2020024560 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004412705 (paperback) | ISBN 9789004412712 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004432871 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Problem children--Education. | Poetry--Therapeutic use. | Poetry--Study and teaching. Classification: LCC LC4801 .C54 2020 (print) | LCC LC4801 (ebook) | DDC 371.93--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024559 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024560

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2542-9140 isbn 978-90-04-41270-5 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-41271-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-43287-1 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, except where stated otherwise. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To Margaret, Patricia and Alfred, and to all my Irish ancestors, for their imagination, faith, hope, and courage. To all the children May we learn to cherish their messages of love. Mo sheacht mbeannacht ort (Seven blessings to you)

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Contents Preface ix List of Figures xiii 1 Why Is Aesthetic Education Important? 1 1 Introduction 1 2 Background 2 3 Art and Moral Imagination in Child Development 6 4 Visual Thinking, Art & Cognition 10 5 Visual Thinking and Human Development 13 6 Reflective Intelligence, Art and Moral Imagination 19 7 Moral Imagination and Art 21 2 Releasing Hope: A Spiral of Light 26 1 The Story of Emily 28 3 Meeting Ruby Bridges: Moral Imagination Released 40 4 Blue Lavender Wanderer: A Child’s Soulful Voice Revealed 53 5 Poetic Imagination 69 6 Envisioning Thinking: Heart to Heart 97 1 What Do We Know? 104 Epilogue: Moral Imagination in an Island Culture: The Aran Island Child 120 1 Creating the Island Map Mural 121 2 The Aran Island Map Mural Travels to the Summit of Croagh Patrick: A Prayer for the Children of Our World 128 References 135 Index 140

Preface The idea for Echoes from a Child’s Soul: Awakening the Moral Imagination of Children was sparked years ago when I had the opportunity to witness children express thoughts and ideas that were deeply empathic and spiritual in nature. These ideas emerged after children were given the time and opportunity to study the lives of the artists and their great works of art. At this time, I was an art teacher, and classroom teachers shared a concern that the children appeared to be “turned off” to writing. Writing had become a series of generic prompts in order to collect data. It occurred to me that the children may be starving for inspiration. I designed an aesthetic education program for writing and visited several teachers across grade levels once a week for an hour. My only request to the teachers was that there would be neither grades nor judgement. The classroom would be turned into a studio whereby all ideas were accepted. Perhaps the children had something to say to the adults. After all, when do we ever ask children what they think? Children are bombarded daily with the news and social media, and these images and messages fester in their hearts and minds causing stress and anxiety. I knew right away that the children needed to engage in sensory experiences to build descriptive language in order to understand how important symbols and language were for poets, artists and writers. At the same time, I emphasized to the children that they had something unique to say about their life. They had experiences no one else had and now was the time to release their voices. The studio environment was established as a safe zone. The children knew they had the freedom to share their inner most thoughts. This was a process to establish trust, and that trust built over time. First, one or two children would share their poetic writing, and then the following week more children would ask to share. The most remarkable outcome was the joy on the children’s faces when a classmate shared a poem. The children instantly realized there was more to that classmate than they were aware of. New friendships were made in the art and writing studio and bullying stopped. Children that were silent now had a voice, and perhaps more importantly, the children were gaining a new found recognition of who they were. They instinctively loved the freedom to express ideas and choose topics. Words became their clay to sculpt a poem about what they loved, what they feared, and what they hoped for. The possibilities were endless and many children did not want to stop writing. Unexpectedly, this arts and aesthetics program began to gain recognition as scores increased on writing prompts and more teachers were interested in participating. One administrator wanted to expand the art and writing program for staff development; however, I was not interested in packaging these ideas. I

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knew there was more to research. The following summer I attended Harvard’s Project Zero institute. This program was an international immersion into the importance of understanding the arts. During this time at Harvard, I was inspired to begin a doctorate to research the moral imagination of children. What is perhaps very important to point out is the bias I experienced when planning to move from a suburban to an urban district. It was perceived that urban children could not think abstractly through the arts in a poetic fashion. Afterall, in urban schools, many language arts programs were scripted. One administrator said to me, “poor children need structure.” I was determined to implement my doctorate research in an urban setting. As the art teacher, an action research arts-based study was the best way to expose bias against children. There is bias towards children of color, immigrant children, homeless children, children with incarcerated family members, and any child that is different; that does not fit neatly into the public school structure and socialization. Thus, all labels given children do in fact diminish a child’s sense of self. Why do we say that a child is at-risk; are we not all at-risk? All children have a natural sense for imaginative possibility, and if given the opportunity, their voices will be released as seen in this book. I believe all children are at-promise. As life goes on, if one is fortunate enough, a messenger comes along to remind you of what is most important and perhaps what one has not yet completed. Fast forward several years later after completing my doctorate and teaching at a state university in elementary teacher preparation, I received an email from a former child, (Emily) that participated in the program described above. Emily, now an adult, was preparing to graduate from a Masters of Fine Arts program in poetry. Emily was trying to contact me to send a poem she created. I was stunned to receive Emily’s message. As I read each line of her poem, I was overjoyed with Emily’s profound gift. A few weeks later, Emily and I met at a local diner, and she shared her story from fourth grade, over sixteen years ago. It struck me how little we really know about children and the ways they suffer from interventions, as they go through their daily life at school. I had no idea how unhappy Emily was at age nine. Once again, I knew I had to write about the children I worked with in both urban and suburban school districts in Connecticut and Arizona. It was time. The story of Emily is shared in Chapter 2. Emily is a published poet and is teaching at a university. I want to thank Emily for her inspiration. Currently, I teach and observe elementary teacher candidates in local urban schools and see first-hand what curriculum mandates, due to Common Core standards and testing, has done to both teachers and children. Some may find it harsh to describe public school as a “dead sea of dreary habit,” yet if one visits a school at any time of the day you will see children’s heads on their desks, tired and frustrated. Many immigrant children, brilliant children learning two

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languages, are judged and evaluated unfairly and ultimately labeled less than; as the wheels of testing keep churning, publishing companies continue to haul in profits. All the children represented in this text experienced a type of metamorphosis as their inner world was revealed to be empathic towards others and full of hope to survive in a harsh world. The more they related to the characters in the paintings, both intrapersonal and interpersonal awareness evolved as descriptive and figurative language increased. More importantly, the children began to see themselves and others in new ways while gaining confidence as writers. They had important messages for adults; to love now, for your loved one may not be around tomorrow, to forgive, and not judge one another. I believe these messages, formed within the innocent soul of the child, not yet hardened, must be dignified and held within our hearts in order to sincerely and thoughtfully examine what is critical for our children in America’s public schools. We cannot risk losing one more child. The arts are more marginalized than ever before. Curriculum is scripted and the democratic arena of education promoting freedom of ideas and possibilities diminished. Preventing the integration of the arts and aesthetics within curriculum is excluding pathways for children to learn. Each and every child is unique and comes to school with different experiences. Why are we not cherishing what each child has to offer? All school curricula must be examined and questioned, after all, what is the purpose of a democratic education? The human life thrives with love, hope, and forgiveness. The children’s voices are telling us that in the following pages. Lastly, while writing this book, I realized that life is indeed full of many mysteries. The human experience plays out each day in our public schools. Our schools are hubs of emotions released from children as they go from class to class learning about a variety of subjects and skills mandated for the tests. Yet, these emotions are largely ignored due to the fast pace of curriculum directives. Children are ultimately sorted, labeled, passed on, or worse ignored. They become invisible in the hectic schedule of deadlines and testing. If one pauses and considers that perhaps our work with children each day is holy work, we are definitely going in the wrong direction. What is more significant than nurturing a child’s soul, their heart, and their mind? A child’s world is sensitive and malleable. A harsh world with harsh words and labels slowly diminishes a child’s light and imagination. One mystery I have reflected on while writing this book, is the shared aesthetic experience between the artist, Vincent van Gogh, and nine-year-old children viewing his painting. Vincent van Gogh was praying for hope as he looked up to the starry night and was inspired to paint a message for others. Vincent’s painting, The Starry Night (1889), carried a message to children in

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two local urban and suburban schools in 1998 and again in 2004, whispering love and consolation. The interaction between the children and The Starry Night painting was profound, as if Vincent’s spirit was present. I believe the masterpiece emanated the message of hope that transcended time and place. The children felt that message deeply and portrayed empathy for Vincent and hope for all within their poems. Over one hundred years after Vincent painted, The Starry Night, his gift to future generations was realized by nine-year-old children. Now their poems carry that gift in a new way. This is one example of the power of the arts and aesthetics; touching the human experience in the most personal and spiritual way. We begin to see one another in new ways, we begin to hope with one another, we begin to love one another, and new possibilities emerge of what could be in our lives. Don’t children deserve these experiences in their daily school life? Perhaps then children would be empowered or at the very least be happy to go to school. Children are our messengers for the 21st century. We must begin to see and hear them in new ways. We have to go back to our 20th century ideas and look at the whole child once again, lest we lose our children completely to mass media and marketing, in which their minds become numb. Moral imagination and love for each other ceases to exist. As humans we were created to create, to love, and to grow; why then are these ideals excluded in our public schools? One final note is in regard to the Epilogue (see Chapter 7). In 2014, during a research sabbatical, I traveled to Ireland to the remote Aran Island of Inis Mòr. I was curious to learn more about my Irish ancestors and the Celtic imagination. When first meeting the island children, I knew that this community was raising their children in the most distinct and compassionate way. The Irish children’s imaginative and instantaneous style to express ideas made me wonder what we have lost here in America. I have returned to Inis Mòr over the past five years with my colleague Dr. James French to study these ideas of arts and aesthetics deeply ingrained in the daily island life and culture. More research is to come. For now, let us all pray for our children, for those we have lost to gun violence, abuse and neglect, both at home and throughout the world. And may the words of the children within this book weave a tapestry of love around your heart in hopes that all children discover what they are truly capable of, so that their dreams come full circle.

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Sand drawing: Aran Island Echo Inis Mòr Spiral, Ireland (© Clark, 2014). 6 Hopper, Edward (1882–1967). © ARS, NY. Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas 84.1 × 152.4 cm (33 1/8 × 60 in). Signed l.r. “Edward Hopper.” Friends of American Art Collection, 1942.51. Digital Image Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY. 37 Rockwell, Norman (1894–1978). The Trouble We All Live With, 1964. Oil on canvas, 91 cm × 150 cm (36 in × 58 in). Artwork courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency, Rockwell Family Properties LLC and Norman Rockwell Family LLC | International Merchandising Company, IMG Worldwide, LLC. 45 Gogh, Vincent van (1853–1890). The Starry Night. Saint Rémy, June 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 × 36 1/4” (73.7 × 92.1 cm). Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. 54 Rousseau, Henri (1844–1910). Le Douanier. Tropical Thunderstorm with a Tiger, 1891. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London, Great Britain. Erich Lessing/Digital Image © Art Resource, NY. 70 Bearden, Romare (1911–1988). Summertime, 1967; Collage on board; 56 × 44 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Minority Artists Purchase Fund 22:1999. Digital Image © 2019 Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by ARS, New York, NY. 73 Tanner, Henry O. (1859–1937). The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Oil on canvas, 49 × 35.5” (124.5 × 90.2 cm). Digital Image © Collection of the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA. 81 Gogh, Vincent van (1853–1890). The Bedroom at Arles, 1889. Oil on canvas, (57.5 × 74.0 cm). Inv. RF1959-2. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France. Digital Image © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. 85 Mustard Seed of Change: The Awakening. Mixed-media on paper 3 × 3 in (© Clark, 2009). 98 Wyeth, Andrew (1917–2009). © ARS, NY. Christina’s World, 1948. Tempera on panel, 32 1/4 × 47 3/4” (81.9 × 121.3 cm). Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY. 100 Aran Island of Inis Mòr (photograph by A.L.A.S. Art, 2016). 120 Aran Island of Inis Oírr Rolling out the Aran Island Map Mural at the Inis Oírr Community Playground. Photo is a still image from the documentary film, Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017) (original photograph by A.L.A.S. Art). 122

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Figures Island of Inis Meáin: “I am swimming off the island,” Families Gathering in Local Pub, Osta Inis Meáin. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017). 123 Angels Appear on Inis Meáin. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017). 124 Mermaid Appears, Spring 2016. Inis Mòr: Mysteries in the Ocean. Photos are still images from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017). 125 Inis Mór: Mermaids, Dolphins, Ancient Forts, Sail Boats, Hidden Caves, Fairies, Starfish, and Snails Appear. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017). 126 Aran Island Children in Masks in Front of the Aran Island Mural. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017). 126 Croagh Patrick Summit & Sheep Constellations: A Reflection of the Divine Imagination during the climb. Photos are still images from the documentary fijilm A Prayer for the Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2019). 131

CHAPTER 1

Why Is Aesthetic Education Important? Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little. W. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight, (1902/2011, p. 1)

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Introduction

Let’s begin with the real in life, the social, aesthetic, and moral experiences, by reflecting on a sense of our true self as humans, as expressed within our ‘lived’ experiences. Currently teachers and children in America’s public schools wear a variety of masks to survive within a Dickensian school environment and dead sea of tedious habit. Very often, the true-self, the creative and spiritual self of a child is buried and out of sight. This book is for all those teachers and parents who don’t think they are creative and therefore do not utilize the powerful aesthetic, arts-based symbol systems in their work with children. In America there continues to be a distrust and misunderstanding of the nature and importance of the arts in our daily life. When the arts are at the heart of our daily experiences in our schools, we are lifted towards a greater good and understanding of each other and our human existence. We will first look at the art psychology behind the children’s poetry presented in the following chapters. In this chapter, the aesthetic methodology integrates the research of Eisner (1994, 2002), Gardner (1994), Greene (2001), Dewey (1980), Coles (1997), Perkins (1994), and Clark (2005a). Children’s poetic samples reveal the complexity of the inter and intrapersonal intelligences, thus revealing what they see, feel, and think about when viewing a work of art. According to Gardner (1994) the power of the arts and human development impacts the cognitive development of our seeing, feeling, and thinking systems. The visual thinking process applied within the aesthetic methodology presented emphasizes the research of Arnheim (1969) and Perkins (1994). This research is also supported © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004432871_001

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by Dewey (1980) stating that, “The arts impact the minds and hearts to significantly work in synchronicity with the imagination” (as cited in Clark, 2005b, p. 430). The children’s poetry represents profound messages, encompassing a sense of social responsibility, empathic thinking, and compassionate action towards others. The moral imagination of children is discussed as key to the development of a child through their empathic imagination, developing an emerging sense of self, when asking what is right or wrong, for my family, others, and my life. Perhaps in light of the many tragic and violent events in our schools, state, and country, it is imperative to develop the child’s moral imagination and at the same time awaken all adults that work with children to begin to see, listen, and dignify the child’s imaginative voice and daily experiences.

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Background

Gardner’s (1994) book, The Arts and Human Development, laid the foundation for future work in the area of psychological research including his most popular and appropriated theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983). Despite the number of intelligences put forth by this theory, Gardner (1994) stated that the arts and human development for him personally “occupy a special place in my mind and soul” (p. xii). Consistent with this thought however, is the research he introduced more than four decades ago on art and human development, in which the arts provided a holistic approach to human development (1994). His theory, which highlighted art education, remains a dominant force in his present research and has the potential to shed light on areas as disparate as suburban and urban elementary and middle school students and the preadolescent’s symbolic language. Gardner has worked throughout his career comparing the similarities and differences of the mind of a child and the mind of an artist. Gardner pointed to the adult who interprets his world logically with an end in mind, while viewing the child’s reality as gradually evolving. Gardner’s inquiry into the understanding of a child’s mind pointed to the critical need for educators to continually emphasize the importance of the arts in the classroom to foster child development. The arts provide the integration of affect and cognition where “feeling and knowing are recognized as intertwined” (Gardner, 1994, p. 7). Gardner continued work with the constructs of intelligence and psychology of the mind and noted that children need to “play” with their knowledge of the world. Arnhem (1969), a noted psychologist, commented on the inspiration artists

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gain when viewing the creative seed captured within children’s art. Still, historically, the arts have been largely neglected in the literature and curriculum of child development. Even though imagination has been widely discussed since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, imagination has been neglected in educational pursuits due to the overwhelming influence of positivism in educational research (Efland, 2002). Behaviorists avoided the study of imagination due to their lack of ability to quantify mental imagery, impressions, experiences, and the internal sensations of individuals (Gardner, 1982). Educators at best have considered the arts as a frill of secondary importance and at worst have distrusted those educators who are artistically inclined to integrate the arts within curriculum domains. Educational research has overwhelmingly placed the arts on the fringes of educational importance (Arnheim, 1989). At the time, Gardner (1994) called attention to the important role of the arts in child development; and may have been the lone spokesperson for the arts. He vehemently disagreed with Piaget, “who has nothing to say about the arts” (p. 12). Gardner proposed that the arts are critical, in that artistic work is an intellectual, cognitive enterprise, as well as an area that involves problem-solving and problem-finding” (p. 13). Brown (2001), an arts researcher, advised that the arts be repositioned alongside other disciplines as a symbolic system of thought. Concurring researchers (Arnheim, 1969; Gardner, 1994; Goodman, 1976; and Eisner, 1994) maintained that the arts represent a formalized discipline, cognitive in nature. Brown (2001) asserted that cognitive theorists should reinvestigate cognitive theory as a return to intuition and re-examine the physical and mental performances or “intelligences” involved in the mental representation necessary for creating in the arts (pp. 84–93). With this in mind, Gardner (1994) devised three components or systems, making the arts central to defining the human condition. These systems, as articulated by Gardner, are universal to people throughout the world and integral to an understanding of human development. These systems are comprised of perceiving, feeling, and making. These three systems as defined by Gardner encompass the following: The perceiving system involves the sense organs and the differentiation they are gradually able to make, first externally, then internally. The products of the perceiving system are discrimination and distinctions. The feeling system is regarded as the crucial component of the artistic process. The feeling life is that which is experienced phenomenally by a person and this kind of realization is the sole and painful way of “getting”

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the particular experience. The making system consists of behavioral acts, elements, or schemes, which tend to become combined into more elaborate, hierarchically arranged skills. (p. 37) Gardner (1994) presented the child’s imagination as one in which the functions of the three systems are combined by children while singing and drawing. According to Gardner (1994) modes and modalities are derived from the functions of the three systems, and act in a way of interpreting experiences. These modes and modalities are defined as follows: Modes and modalities are given to metaphoric experience and they have highly symbolic qualities. Mode fragments in the human become integrated only by becoming symbolic at the time they become real, i.e., they become social, aesthetic, and moral modalities at the same time they become an expression of the organism. (p. 147) Efland (2002) supported Gardner’s study on cognition and art stating, “In Gardner’s view, a comprehensive education would engage individuals to develop competence in a wide array of educational media” (p. 61). Gardner noted that in recent research “children awkward and unexpressive can communicate their thoughts, desires and percepts freely and passionately. The arts can provide critical clues for the understanding of the minds of children” (Gardner, 1994, p. 349). While understudied in the field of educational research and examined solely as an “arts” phenomenon, Gardner’s work involving the human developmental systems has remained an unexplored enigma for education in the 21st century. Articulating a progressive philosophy of student engagement Dewey (1980) and Greene (2000) have both advocated the primary placement of the arts in the curriculum. Education is “excluding the arts that lift us so far above what we are accustomed to think as instruction” (Dewey, 1980, p. 347). The arts furnish situations that require interpretation, and assist to “disrupt the walls that obscure freedom,” empowering students to become fully alive (Greene, 1988, p. 133). Due to the lack of appreciation for and underfunding of developmental research on children’s imaginations in general, and moral imagination in particular, the arts fail to play a central role in public education. This has been particularly endemic in both urban and suburban environments where basic skills are stressed at the expense of artistic and aesthetic education. Eisner (1999), a leading proponent of the arts in the curriculum stated that “it is precisely the capacities of very young children to exercise their imagination that needs to be sustained rather than diminished in school” (p. xi).

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Eisner (1989) called for educators to understand that instructional and curriculum decisions help to shape the minds children come to own. Children’s minds are influenced and shaped through opportunities and experiences presented in school. Forms of culture and the information to be selected at school give expression to what children may imagine, understand or feel. What teachers choose to use to motivate students to think affects what children will, in essence, think about (Eisner, 1997). Excluding the arts from school curriculum may actually impair the development of the child’s mind and imagination. Gardner (1994) stated that: Art is so closely tied to the developmental process that any impairment in development due to psychosis, regression, or senility, has immediate ramifications in one’s aesthetic activities. The fact that the arts deal with those qualities, modes and vectors that are basic and universal to mankind and that psychosis impairs that artistic process suggests that the most fundamental processes and content of human communication are in jeopardy. (p. 346) Moral imagination may be derived from such a developmental process. Dewey (1980) asserted that “moral imagination is a gradually developed capacity to reflect upon what is right or wrong with all the emotional and intellectual resources of the human mind” (p. 348). Dewey maintained that imagination “is a way of seeing and feeling things as they compose an integral whole. It is the large and generous blending of interest to the point where the mind comes in contact with the world” (p. 267). Maxine Greene (1988) emphasized Dewey’s (1980) philosophy stating: Experience becomes fully conscious only when meanings derived from earlier experience enter in through the exercise of the imaginative capacity, since imagination is the only gateway through which these meanings can find their way into a present interaction; or rather…the conscious adjustment of the new and the old is imagination. (p. 125) Greene (1988) concurred with Dewey (1980) that democracy in education fosters free inquiry, creative imagination, and moral reflection. This research leads the clarion call to uplift our schools with the arts as a necessary discipline. Furthermore, the poetry in the following chapters from pre-adolescents provides an inquiry into urban and suburban preadolescent’s moral affect, moral discriminations, and moral thought.

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figure 1 Sand drawing: Aran Island Echo Inis Mòr Spiral, Ireland (© Clark, 2014)

Symbolically the concept of the echo as a spiral (see Figure 1), is representative of a labyrinth full of the paths and directions of life’s patterns. The many twists and turns, from darkness to light, within our daily experiences, representing the inner possibility of children. The moral imagination is not stagnant and readily thrives and builds as possibilities emerge. The following poem titled, “The Labyrinth,” symbolically forms the complexities of these ideas. The Labyrinth Unsure, Lost among high hedges, Navigating the maze, A journey Through briars and bramble, Butterflies and bees, Surefooted, stumbling, Resting not pleased. One center, the goal, The end and the beginning, Life’s labyrinth, the challenge, Yours for the winning. (Smith, 2019)

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Art and Moral Imagination in Child Development

To continue to understand the psychology behind the creation of the children’s poetry when stimulated by great works of art, it is important to understand the

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systems of human development. Gardner’s (1994) identified systems of perceiving, feeling, and making, were appropriate for this research on the moral imagination of children, in order to capture and analyze the children’s symbolic language and metaphorical expressions. These three systems represent how we perceive (moral discriminations), feel (moral affect), and make (moral thought), and are intuitively inherent to humans in the creation of art and poetry. Gardner (1994) continued to build and reflect on the role of the arts in human development in general, with attention to the psychological growth of moral imagination within children in particular. A child’s feeling life or feeling system as stated by Gardner comes under the influence of symbols and objects. We have all witnessed children boldly reacting to music with their bodies and arms creating calligraphic and symbolic movements in the air with joy. Gardner (1994) believes that this aesthetic medium is a musical “integration of feeling and symbol use” and has an important adaptive function in human perception and performance (p. 153). Children experience affective states differently than adults. Children distinguish “real” action from illusion or artistic. Gardner maintained that it is “wrong for adults to assume children’s fears or joys are not deeply felt. A child may enjoy, fear, laugh at or become uneasy in the presence of displays that produce subtler reactions in adults” (Gardner, 1994, p. 152). The child’s individual “perceived affect” retains the memory of early years and aesthetic objects can arouse these earliest memories, emotions and feelings (Gardner, 1994). Knowledge of love, jealousy, anguish, torment, empathy, and irony will expand as the child’s worldly experiences accumulate. When children create, their affective realm is ignited and unified as their experiences are integrated within their creations. “A child’s phenomenal experience in observing a complex array may be limited to a single unified emotional response” (Gardner, 1994, p. 152). Gardner (1994) explained in the feeling system that “affects” act critically in a way that fuse experiences together. Gardner concluded that a child’s simple affective life of temperamental patterns enables him or her to perceive artistic works as organic wholes and to become fully involved with those artistic works in an affective way. Gardner (1994) equated the “feeling” system with the “perceiving” system, as it remains the same throughout one’s life. In early developmental years, the “perceiving” system is greatly enhanced by the child’s increasing ability to handle symbolic systems. “As the child gains facility in using language and reading pictures, he manifests a strong tendency with respect to these symbols” (p. 156). Gardner’s research revealed that the child is continuously searching for meaning and references in every single perceived symbol or object.

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Over forty years ago Arnheim (1969) pointed out the necessity of the arts as a critical catalyst to develop visual thinking. Greene (2001) concurs that Arnheim’s work is important as “visual perception lays the groundwork of concept formation within the imagination…He [Arnheim] wants to see art recognized as visual form and visual form as the principal medium of productive thinking” (p. 71). Arnheim (1989) referred to perception as a powerful dynamic performance that “one realm can be used to symbolize in another” (p. 26). Arnheim’s research supported Gardner’s identification of the perceiving system as vitally important to human development and moral imagination. Perceptual dynamics derive from a psychological phenomenon that may be described as resonance. When one looks at the image of a rising arch or tower in architecture or at the yielding of a tree bent by the storm, one receives more than the information conveyed by the image. The dynamics transmitted by the image resonates in the nervous system of the receiver. The body of the viewer reproduces the tensions of swinging and rising and bending so that he himself matches internally the actions he sees being performed. These actions are not just physical gymnastics, they are ways of being alive, ways of being human. (Arnheim, 1989, p. 26) “Traditionally, visual thinking would have been considered a contradiction, since seeing was believed to exclude thinking and thinking to be necessarily removed from concrete perceiving” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 10). Arnheim (1969) and Perkins (1994) support Gardner’s theory of art and cognition. They maintained that the most creative thinking is done in images and visual perception is abstract reasoning. “When imagination is seen as reflecting reason functioning at its best moments, a fresh conception of what the development of mind entails is made visible” (Eisner, 1999, p. xii). Arnheim (1989) concluded that the mind of a child acquires intuitive concepts through visual thinking, a way of “exploring and understanding the world” (p. 28). Dewey (1980) asserted that “imagination” is a way of seeing and feeling things as these perceptual systems compose an integral whole. This is the critical link between Gardner (1994) and Dewey, and points to the primary importance of the “perceiving system as a constant for the child as he or she makes and searches for meaning within all perceived symbols and forms” (p. 156). The capacity of a child to understand and construct the meaning of his/her world is largely directed and controlled through the making system and is “qualitatively enhanced by symbol use” (p. 158). The principles of making activity evinced in early development continue to be manifest during the symbolic stage; they are brought to bear on the

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manipulation of various symbolic elements, and are in turn influenced in a variety of ways by the child’s use of symbols. (Gardner, 1994, p. 159) Gardner (1994) continued to stress that the making system increasingly reflects the child’s symbol system of the culture and maintained that, “The dynamics and contours of his motor activities come to reflect the forms that he perceives and the instructions he receives” (p. 160). As a child is able to speak, sing a song, invent new songs, and portray something visually, the making system is operative through symbol use. “The choice of medium in which his making activity will continue to develop is influenced by his culture,…his proclivity for working with symbols, imbuing them with his subjective feelings, percepts, and knowledge” (Gardner, 1994, p. 161). Like Gardner, Arnheim (1969) was concerned by the neglect of the arts which created an “unwholesome split which cripples the training power of reason” (p. 3). The poetry presented in following chapters by children examines the arts as a cognitive tool that simultaneously served to spark, fuel and thus reveal the moral imagination of the child. Gardner’s work placed the arts as a cognitive enterprise necessary for the “whole” development of the child. Gardner pointed to the richness of arts experiences in the development of a child. A child begins to label perceived symbolic experiences and expressions as pleasing or painful, and as good or bad. Gardner’s (1994) conceptual framework and identified systems of perceiving, feeling, and making are appropriate to this research of at-risk children in urban and suburban schools. They may provide the building blocks for moral imagination and foundation for the investigation of moral affect, moral discrimination, and moral thought. These attributes of moral imagination provided the structural lens to analyse the children’s symbolic language in many unique poetic forms. Currently, very little is known regarding the moral imagination within children in general, and especially within children labeled at-risk. Children’s developmental systems of perceiving, feeling, and making, regarding artistic expression, have been greatly understudied or for that matter dignified as a critical field of study. Perhaps there is a connection between the marginalization of the arts and the understudied topic of moral imagination of children? The arts are a constant universal form of communication throughout all cultures, time, and place, and provide an integrated view of human development. There is a preponderance of curriculum programs (such as character education and service learning) implemented within the urban and suburban school programming. However, arts education, which may be a major impetus for the development of moral imagination is underdeveloped and underfunded. Eisner (1999) believed that “one of the great tragedies of many educational systems is their penchant for cultivating a logo-centric conception of mind

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that diminishes the imaginative and romantic side of human nature” (p. xi). Examining alternative curricular means that involves art as a pedagogical tool by which to understand moral imagination therefore, is justified. Eisner (2002) strongly believed that the arts “liberate emotions and [students] imagination…students learn how to use language imaginatively to describe felt qualities and to promote vision and advance understanding, their own vision and the vision of others” (p. 89). Historically this can be traced back to Dewey (1980), who stated: Imagination is the chief instrument of the good…the ideal factors in every moral outlook and human loyalty are imaginative…Were art an acknowledged power in human association and not treated as the pleasuring of an idle moment or as a means of ostentatious display, and were morals understood to be identical with every aspect of value that is shared in experience, the ‘problem’ of the relation of art and morals would not exist. (p. 348) Eisner (2002) built on Dewey and Arnheim’s (1969) research, which emphasized that the nexus of art and child development must be placed at the heart of the educational process. This research examined moral imagination of children through the viewing of art as recognized in the personal symbolic language expressed in the words and poetry of children, especially those labeled at-risk.

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Visual Thinking, Art & Cognition

Perceptual thinking is a form of induction and can be defined as the systemizing operations of all perceptual fragments collected by the child. All mental operations are cognitive and essential to a holistic perception, which involve receiving, storing, and processing information such as sensory perception, memory, thinking, and learning (Arnheim, 1969). Perception can be thought of as visual thinking, or a cognitive means of, “active exploration, …selection, simplification, abstraction, analysis and synthesis, …comparison, problem-solving, as well as combing, separating,” and placement of symbols in visual context (Arnheim, 1969, p. 13). Arnheim pointed to the integral aspect of being human in that our human mind “steadily exhibits through perception the psychological trait of groping for information that unites the outer and inner worlds” (p. 16). This key outcome of visual thinking and perceiving art is key to understanding the role the arts play in triggering the awakening of the moral imagination.

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Arnheim (1989) identifies three areas that the arts encompass in order to equip children’s minds with the abilities to unravel, discern, and cope with diverse curriculum demands. These three areas integral within the arts are comprised of philosophy, visual and language training. Areas, which constitute the artistic core of educating a child’s mind include: 1. Philosophy, instructing the student in (a) logic, the skill of reasoning correctly, (b) epistemology, the ability to understand the relation of the human mind to the world of reality and (c) ethics, that is, to know the difference between right and wrong. 2. Visual training, where the student learns to handle visual phenomena as the principal means of dealing with the organization of thought. 3. Language training enable the student to communicate verbally the fruits of their thinking. (p. 55) The arts represent children’s first language, a symbol system by which they can convey and communicate what they cannot write (Gardner, 1994). Educators in general and elementary and middle school teachers in particular have not yet realized that the arts act as a catalyst, stimulating the interplay between a child’s intuition and intellect. This interplay is crucial if the preadolescent is to cope with complex images and material (Arnheim, 1969). As preadolescents develop perceptual intuition, (Arnheim, 1969) they acquire the skill of cognitive scaffolding, or more notably, a way to identify, classify, explore, and understand the world around them. Such cognitive scaffolding can be linked to visual thinking. “Visual imagination is a universal gift of the human mind” (Arnheim, 1974, p. 142) and represents a way for children to invent objects from their experience and intuit new forms of artistic thinking and objects based on past experiences or context. We understand our environment through perception. Perception is interdisciplinary involving the study of philosophy, psychology, arts and sciences (Arnheim, 1969, Greene 1993). “Arnheim calls on us to cultivate the ability to see visual shapes as images of the patterns of forces that underlie our existence-the functioning of minds, of bodies or machines, the structures of societies or ideas” (Greene, 2001, p. 71). Arnheim (1969) identified the educational system, which is based on the study of words and numbers, as one that disdains the arts and thus maintains that by the first grade the senses lose status within curriculum practice. Cognitive scaffolding as explained by Perkins (1994) occurs through the preadolescent’s reflective intelligence and sensory impressions, primarily generated through thinking dispositions developed through visual thinking. Reflective intelligence is acquired through the interaction of sensory and perceptual dynamics and is dependent upon the degree in which the preadolescent is able

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to employ the perceiving, feeling, and making systems (Gardner, 1994). The content of the three systems create references for the symbols the preadolescent may make, in drawings and words, and operates by capturing detailed aspects of discriminations, creative thought, and feelings. According to Gardner (1994), the preadolescent is able to “handle a variety of symbolic media, to make and to perceive symbolic expressionism, therefore the awareness of his feeling system is tremendously enriched” (p. 162). Preadolescents label experiences as pleasing, painful, good or bad; thus, feelings are evoked specifically through either symbolic experiences or direct interaction. These symbolic experiences exert a reciprocal influence and are employed when viewing great works of art (Gardner, 1994). The preadolescent’s perceiving, feeling, and making systems are in a constant state of readiness to appreciate paintings, music and stories thereby securing affects and meanings in direct reaction to the inner and outer world. “Children use their drawings as a feeler, a spontaneous reaching out to the external world, at first tentative but capable of becoming the main factor in the adjustment of the individual to society” (Gardner, 1994, p. 349). Gardner’s (1974) study of “shattered minds” revealed that traumatic experiences by many at-risk children impairs the normal development of the imagination. Urban middle school students have often experienced grief, distress and shock within their life span, and thus may have been put at-risk by suspending the “normal development” of their imaginations. Art is critical to perception and it may be stated that the psychology of art within human development needs to be central to curriculum leadership and the transformation of schools. Human cognitive activity is replete with symbols, schemes, images, ideas, and other forms of mental representation (Gardner, 1989). Arnheim (1969) agreed with this stating that, “Truly productive thinking in any area of cognition is perceptual thinking” and quite simply “visual perception is an active concern of the mind” (pp. 57, 296). Gardner (1985) and Arnheim’s (1969) contention on cognition and visual thinking, grew out of a Gestalt psychology, that favors perceptual organization in that the parts are seen through the configuration of the whole. Arnheim (1974) contends that “perception starts with a diffuse, undifferentiated whole, which is progressively modified and elaborated” (p. 30). Gottfried Hausmann, a noted Gestalt psychologist, explains that, “perceptual cognition cannot be described as a simple, immediate, purely sensory mirroring. Instead it originates in a process of manifold, mutually intertwined, selective, abstractive and even creative acts of formation” (as cited in Arnheim, 1969, p. 30). Eisner (2002) builds on Arnheim’s Gestalt theory in that “perception itself is a cognitive activity” as seen by children that transform what they see (p.

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36). Clearly Gardner (1989), Arnheim (1989), and Eisner (2002) present a solid foundation of the critical importance regarding the role of the arts in child development. When perceptual thinking is viewed as the most effective form of thinking and reasoning for the preadolescent moral imagination, the arts will become central to the curriculum specifically developed for this age group.

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Visual Thinking and Human Development

Children relate to symbols in their search for meaning in the perceived symbol and object, such as found within great works of art. Children in the preadolescent age group have the capacity to take in a greater amount of detail and visual cues and can significantly recall details not focused on directly (Gardner, 1994). Between the ages of nine and thirteen, children have a greater propensity toward aesthetic perception. This arts-based research utilized Perkins’ (1994) visual thinking theory as a framework to investigate the perceptions of moral imagination in at-risk preadolescent children. It is important to note that this research is premised on the belief that all children are at-promise and unjustly labeled at-risk by social constraints and public education processing protocol. When children for one critical reason or another are struggling in school, the myriad of labels causes an increased sense of isolation and suffering, and many times they are designated to be placed in the marginalization camp. All the children presented in the following chapters were either labeled at-risk, or close to being labeled at-risk, or deemed average with no special gifts. The children were unable to reveal their hidden potential while forced to complete the daily structure of mandated school work. Their poetic expressions may be considered as a type of prayer for adults to ‘see’ and understand their beautiful and precious hearts and minds. Arnheim’s Gestalt psychology of art (1969) supported Perkins’ (1994) research on reflective intelligence, thinking dispositions, and perception. Both Arnheim and Perkins provided an arts-based anchor to Gardner’s theory of perceiving, feeling, and making. Gardner stated that at the middle years (ages 9–13) the child’s Gestalt perception has yet to develop (1994). Therefore, the arts provide the means to develop the child’s imagination as “the arts tell the [preadolescent] about the significance of direct experience and of his own response” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 301). Direct experience leads to Gestalt perception as the “individual outlook of each child counts only to the extent to which it contributes to shaping the one common conception of the phenomenon under investigation” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 301). Gestalt perception defined shapes, objects, and events, as displayed

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directly within a work of art, “evoking deeper and simpler powers in which a child will begin to recognize himself” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 315). Gestalt perception as referenced by Arnheim (1969) and Gardner (1994) parallels Perkins’ (1994) systemic “thinking dispositions theory.” This theory was utilized as a guide for children as they transitioned from experiential intelligence to utilizing reflective intelligence or, as Gardner (1994) stated, a “Gestalt perception.” Gestalt perception is formulized through reflective intelligence which is activated when viewing a work of art. Children examine their own thinking while simultaneously looking and perceiving. Reflective intelligence can be thought of as the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that contribute to mental self-management (Perkins, 1994). Perkins (1994) explained that our experiential intelligence is filled with an intuitive sense of prior experiences (that spontaneously guide us in many instances) and can be characteristically displayed with thinking attributes that are “hasty, narrow, fuzzy and sprawling.” Reflective intelligence utilizes the intuitive strength of experiential intelligence with “mental self-management” which is defined as thinking strategies that employ many different areas of experience (p. 82). In order to institute the aesthetic action of the “intelligent eye” four visual thinking dispositions come into play. The four dispositions that formulate reflective intelligence include the “dispositions to give looking time, to look broadly and adventurously, to look clearly and deeply, and to look in an organized fashion” (Perkins, 1994, p. 82). Perkins (1994) believed that looking at art develops thinking dispositions and offers a different form of perceptual cognition unlike other domains in education. These visual thinking dispositions prevent children from falling into “intelligence traps” (p. 82). Reflective intelligence cultivates an open mind versus a “narrow” mind, one that is quick to judge or grade the art. When striving toward a richer experience do not be “hasty”…a disposition to reach a quick resolution driven by rapid intuitive mechanisms of experiential intelligence…Give looking and thinking time to strive to capture the texture of the [aesthetic] experience…This disposition will offer the mind time to reflect, discover and underscore perceptions…that are specific to unravelling the artistic puzzle rather than quick “fuzzy” and “sprawling” impressions. (pp. 36–37) It is critical to note that Perkins’ (1994) aesthetic methodology (see below), the visual thinking process of activating a child’s reflective intelligence through art and building thinking dispositions, critically impacted the perceiving, feeling,

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and making systems of the whole child thus embracing the Gestalt paradigm. Perkins (1994) cites six aspects of reflective intelligence when viewing great works of art that include the following: – Sensory Anchoring: Art is physically present allowing children time to view, judge, weigh, think and suppose while directly checking visually, allowing immediate access for an extensive visual exploration. – Instant Access: Children can check something visually such as a visual clue or visual fragment with a quick glance promoting thoughts, discussions and thinking that are kept in the present tense. – Personal Engagement: Works of art invite sustained involvement with children and by their very visual provenance stimulate neural responses that can be oftentimes empathic in nature. – Dispositional Atmosphere: The character of thinking dispositions, that gives thinking time to be broad and adventurous, create a passionate endeavour for children, as the uses of the mind through visual thinking, call for concern and commitment, spirit and persistence. – Wide-spectrum Cognition: Building thinking around a work of art guarantees the involvement of multiple sensory modalities. – Multiconnectedness: Art tends to be multiconnected. We can find links with many things—social issues, aesthetic concerns, trends of the times, personal commitments, even science and mathematics sometimes. The multiconnectedness of art creates an opportunity to bridge thinking dispositions across to diverse other contexts explored in tandem with the work of art. (pp. 83–86) Perkins’ (1994) paradigm on visual thinking and reflective intelligence provided the framework of the aesthetic methodology, a process in which the children’s poetry were revealed. The thinking dispositions that were built through a series of aesthetic visual prompts allowed the children the chance to use multiple sensory modalities such as their “perceiving, feeling, and making systems” (Gardner, 1973). “Wide-spectrum cognition” is prompted through art and visual thinking dispositions that involved both the “pictorial and spatial perceptions and the verbal analytical thinking” (Perkins, 1994). The importance of developing the “intelligent eye” of children as maintained by Perkins (1994) parallels with Arnheim’s (1969) visual thinking research as well as Gardner’s (1994) research on human development. Gardner (1982) credited his most important mentor, Nelson Goodman, as the individual responsible for identifying the arts as the single most important

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communicative power. Gardner cited Goodman’s (1976) writing when he compared works of art to fabric swatches that “accurately reflect, literally and metaphorically, important forms, feelings, affinities, and contrasts to the fabric of life” (p. 63). The art’s “symbolically and metaphorically” act as a primary analytical tool providing preadolescents a means to discover conflict or ambivalence regarding themselves or situations (Gardner, 1982). Gardner’s research pointed to a clear finding that, “under certain conditions children are much more sensitive to the representational and denotational features of a work of art” (p. 59). A work of art to a preadolescent therefore, presents a genuine importance regarding what is “psychologically real” in terms of his/her “expressivity” of symbols and symbol systems (Gardner, 1982, p. 59). Gardner presented the above idea in a more simplified way stating, “Versions of the world that strike us as being “fair” or “right” are those that seem to capture significant aspects of our own experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and intuitions (p. 63). Similarly, to Perkins (1994), Goodman (1976) provided another source for the analytic study of the symbols and symbol systems in the preadolescent. Goodman’s “five symptoms of the aesthetic,” as presented by Gardner (1982) in Art, Mind & Brain, maintained that cognitive perception and productive thinking can be a primary result of perceiving an aesthetic work of art. Visual discriminations and notations are formalized within the preadolescent’s feeling and making systems. Gardner (1982) cites the following five symptoms of the aesthetic as stated in Goodman’s (1978) Ways of World-making, as follows: – Syntactic density: Where the finest differences may constitute a difference between symbols. For example, a drawing in which the finest, most subtle difference between two lines may convey important distinctions. – Semantic density: Where the referents of symbols are distinguished by fine differences in certain respects. For example, in ordinary English the meaning of words overlap one another in many subtle ways: it is impossible to say where “intentionally” or “deliberately” ends and “on purpose” begins. – Relative repleteness: Where comparatively many aspects of a symbol are significant. Here the difference between the stock market graph and the Hokusai drawing becomes germane. If the symbol functions repletely, one needs to attend to an indefinitely large number of aspects. If it is functioning in a non-replete manner, only numerical values count.

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– Exemplification: Where a symbol, whether or not it denotes, symbolizes by serving as a sample of properties that it literally possesses. A musical arrangement may for instance literally exemplify speed and metaphorically exemplify gracefulness. – Multiple and complex reference: Here the symbol performs several integrated and interacting referential functions, some direct and some mediated through other symbols. Rather than having a simple unambiguous meaning which is readily accessible and which lends itself to paraphrase or translation, the symbol carries a penumbra of overlapping and difficult-to-separate meanings, each of which contributes to the work’s effects. (p. 60) Gardner (1982) pointed to the importance of Goodman’s five aesthetic symptoms in that it contributes to the genuine significance that the psychology of art holds for research into the workings of a child’s mind and moral imagination. For this study, the preadolescent was the artistic perceiver who is sensitive to the repleteness a work of art naturally offers. The work of art Perkins (1994) asserted, is the aesthetic bridge between the complexity of visual symbols and symbols systems directly confronting the adolescent’s eye and the personal symbolic language of a preadolescent when unfolding and making meaning. When the preadolescent is exposed to an educational system that places them in a box labeled at-risk, this becomes particularly relevant. Gardner (1982) stated: Children are being short-changed if they are not exposed to these ways of thinking about the arts. Indeed, if children are left to acquire understanding on their own, the whole domain of the arts may remain for them as distant as a star, as mysterious as the speaker of a dead language. (p. 109) Thus, this points to the important function art plays for the preadolescent in the formation of his or her moral imagination. Gardner (1982) insisted that art is necessary “to alter the way we conceive of experience and hence may change our attitudes about what is important or feels right” (p. 63). Real world thinking allows preadolescents the chance to reason about things they see, and touch, and to apply physical and emotional affects to these experiences. Art promotes real-world thinking through the development of reflective intelligence. Reflective intelligence supports and guides the experiential intelligence of the preadolescent’s “innermost sensory world of actions and reactions” (Perkins, 1994, p. 85). Goodman’s aesthetic theory which builds visual thinking and reflective intelligence provides an additional framework for the aesthetic research, in

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order to view the preadolescent’s “never-innocent eye coming to see the world in ever-changing ways” (Gardner, 1982, p. 63). The preadolescent is an “incidental learner” (Gardner, 1994) and it is necessary for the curriculum to build bridges and connections to other contexts. It seems that these incidental learners, either because their attention is less focused or because their capacity to take in intricate displays is greater, recall a significant proportion of detail of the display toward which they were not explicitly directed. The prominence of incidental learning during the years of middle childhood may be one reason why children of this age have sometimes scored as well or better than older children on tests of aesthetic perception, where the capacity to assimilate a great amount of non-gestalt information is at a premium. (Gardner, 1994, p. 157) Art, by its very nature, is interdisciplinary in the sense that visual clues and fragments cognitively connect preadolescents perceiving, feeling, and making systems to the social, emotional aspects of personal experiences and knowledge, thus providing a deeper understanding toward the moral imagination of a child. Efland (2002), professor emeritus of art education, supports the research of Goodman (1976), the founder of Project Zero at Harvard, and maintains that Goodman’s predecessors, Gardner and Perkins, are forward thinkers in human development and cognition. Efland (2002) explained that the way we choose to look is largely pre-conditioned by prior knowledge and one can change a perceptual situation when the visual quest prompts the mind to search for “something missed in previous encounters” (p. 17). He presents the need for reflective intelligence training in education and emphasized that once students are mindful of their own perceptual activity, then perception has become personal. Personalized perception when realized through reflective intelligence creates new possibilities within one’s thinking, which makes new actions and new experiences possible for the individual’s reality. This may be particularly important for those children labeled at-risk. Efland (2002) elaborated on Gardner’s (1994) perceiving system for human development by stating that perception becomes an object for thought and, therefore, becomes a concept in our thinking. Efland contends that thoughts are created as a result of perception, whereby images and ideas are stored in memory. Memory, in turn stimulates thinking. Like Arnheim (1974), Efland believes that cognition begins with perception. “Vision is purposeful and selective…the activity of the senses is an indispensable condition for the functioning of the mind” (Arnheim, 1969, p. 19).

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19

Reflective Intelligence, Art and Moral Imagination

Nelson Goodman (1984) believed that perception is an active process under constant metamorphosis that is driven by our interests, needs, desires, and curiosities. Efland (2002) and Gardner (1994) point to Goodman who maintains that “emotion and cognition are interdependent: feeling without understanding is blind and understanding without feeling is empty” (1984, p. 8). Perkins (1994) placed importance on the act of thinking by perceiving, more specifically, “learning to think by looking at art.” Perkins asserted that works of art demand a cognitive outlook and points to a nationwide trend in education to improve thinking. Ironically students have yet to exhibit that they know “how to think with what they have learned” (p. 4). He emphasized the need for the arts in education to aid in the development of the imagination through thinking dispositions. Linking the arts to the development of the imagination provides the bridge for students to learn in a culture of thinking that is not “artificial and unappealing” (p. 4). Perkins (1994) identified a set of specific thinking dispositions that when employed by the preadolescent may expose a personal symbolic language through their affect, discriminations, and actions. Thinking dispositions reveal the intelligence of the “eye,” which is perception that is sensitive and emphatically conceptual in character (Perkins, 1994). Murdoch (1992) emphasized the importance of perception by maintaining that art and ethics are essentially imaginative enterprises. Perkins’ system of thinking dispositions when enacted by the preadolescent during encounters with great works of art, reveal how “new things come into existence, old things are reshaped, and our ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking…are transformed…The imagination is the key to the moral acts by which old conceptions and values are reshaped, our ways of perceiving and responding to situations and people are transformed and new realities come into existence” (Johnson, 1993, p. 212). Imagination, if the concept is in question at all, can scarcely be thought of as morally neutral. When we settle down to be “thoroughly rational” about a situation, we have already, reflectively or unreflectively, imagined it in a certain way. Our deepest imaginings, which structure the world in which “moral imagination” occur, are already evaluations. Perception itself is a mode of evaluation. (Murdoch, 1992, p. 314) Perception of a work of art is complex, encompassing a Gestalt psychology as outlined by Goodman (1976) in his ground-breaking work, Languages of Art. Goodman was one of the first to posit the psychological theory outlining the

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qualities, parts, connections and phenomenon of the aesthetic that are investigated when viewing a work of art. Goodman’s theory of aesthetics and symbol schema presented the complex nature of painting as one that cannot be “outlined, paraphrased, or generalized.” Arnheim (1969) theory of visual thinking supports Goodman (1976) in that, “Perception lays groundwork of concept formation within the imagination. Art and aesthetics recognized as visual form and visual form as the principal medium of productive thinking” (p. 71). Johnson (1993) responding to Goodman’s (1976) research stated that: Our conceptual system is, for the most part, structured by systematic metaphorical mappings…we understand more abstract and less structured domains (such as our concepts of reason, knowledge, belief) via mappings from more concrete and highly structured domains of experience (such as our bodily experience of vision, movement, eating, or manipulating objects). Language, and the conceptual system that underlies it, does not give us a literal core of terms capable of mapping directly into experience. (p. 10) Perkins’ (1994) theory of the “intelligent eye” when viewing art, was similar to Gardner (1982) in reference to the training of artistic skills that allows thinking to be a process of “unfolding as well as training” (p. 209). The intelligent eye for the preadolescent means direct access to mental self-management in order to delve “broadly and adventurously” towards greater understanding of his/herself in context with their world. Children are in a constant search for meaning within their world, and when viewing a work of art what they feel and know become intertwined. Dewey (1980) clearly pointed to myriad of possibilities as art experiences unfold within children stating, “Possibilities are embodied in work that are not elsewhere actualized; this embodiment is the best evidence that can be found of the true nature of the imagination” (p. 268). Dewey believed that “art is a great instrument of moral good” and that education in general is literal and thus excludes the arts in instruction (p. 348). Dewey (1980) stated: It is by way of communication that art becomes the incomparable organ of instruction, but the way is so remote from that usually associated with the idea of education. It is a way that lifts art so far above what we are accustomed to think of as instruction, that we are repelled by any suggestion of teaching and learning in connection with art. But our revolt is in fact a reflection upon education that proceeds by methods so literal as to exclude the imagination and one not touching the desires and emotions of [humankind]. (pp. 347–348)

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Gardner (1982) referred to the work of Susanne Langer (1941), who wrote Philosophy in a New Key. The published work of Langer was utilized by Goodman in his teaching at Harvard regarding human symbolic activity (Gardner, 1982). Gardner maintained that Langer’s work is highly influential supporting the impact art experience has on the development of reflective intelligence. Langer focussed on issues investigating the human values of truth and beauty as expressed within civilizations. Langer (1942) stated the following: Between the facts run the threads of unrecorded reality, momentarily recognized, whenever they come to surface…the bright, twisted threads of symbolic envisagement, imagination, thought memory and reconstructed memory, belief beyond experience, dream, make-believe, hypothesis, philosophy—the whole creative process of ideation, metaphor, and abstraction that makes human life an adventure in understanding. (as cited in Gardner, 1982, p. 50) Gardner (1982) maintained that Langer was one of the first to “posit a basic and pervasive human need to symbolize, to invent meaning, and to invest meaning in one’s world. It was a property of the human mind to search for and to find significance everywhere, to transform experience constantly to uncover new meaning” (p. 50). Like Langer, Johnson (1993) maintained a central belief that “human moral understanding is fundamentally imaginative and metaphor is one of the principal mechanisms of imaginative cognition” (p. 33). Both Dewey (1980), and by extension Johnson (1993), unite cognition and the development of moral imagination through art experiences.

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Moral Imagination and Art

Greene (2001) stressed that the development of the child’s imagination must be a central concern for all educators. Imagination provides the child with the power to mold experiences into something new. “When one encounters a great work of art, he finds the horizons of his own world, his way of seeing his world, his understanding, broadened; he sees in a new light” (Palmer as cited in Greene, 1978, p. 180). Johnson (1993) argues that “imagination is fundamental to moral reasoning” (p. 8). He stated that ethical and aesthetic experience must be a concern for the development of the child’s imagination. “Our moral experience shares in the peculiar density of art, and in everyday moral discussion…We deploy a complex densely textured network of values round an intuited center of good” (Johnson, 1993, pp. 325, 341). Similarly, Murdoch (1992)

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asserted that, “Teaching art is teaching morals…Imagination is—a moral discipline of the mind, which would, for instance help people not to become embittered or brutalised or stupefied by affliction. Why not call it courage” (pp. 322–323)? Yeats’ (1902/2011) aesthetic work titled, The Celtic Twilight, points out his concern that only “a few thousand out of millions—have understanding of imaginative things, and yet the imagination is the man himself.” He warns of the imaginative voice falling silent, “an impoverished imagination…[needing] an awakening of wise hope and durable faith” and calls for the “reawakening imaginative tradition lest we fall into a “spiritual poverty” (pp. 233–234). In the following excerpt from Yeats’ (1889/1994) poem titled, “The Stolen Child,” we can hear the call for the importance of the aesthetic in the life of a child amidst a violent world. The Stolen Child Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. Where the wave of moonlight glosses The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles And anxious in its sleep. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. Coinciding with Johnson’s (1993) view of education, Greene (2001) maintained that we live in an educational culture that discourages imagination and leads children to “the plain sense of things,” a type of apathy and boredom toward

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their perceived world. Greene criticized our culture’s tendency towards over-reliance on media that present “unquestionable windows.” Educators must build opportunities for the preadolescents’ “restless search for new sensations” and provide them with a sense of truth regarding reality, imagination and selfhood (Greene, 2001, p. 30). Greene (2001) sees the need to promote freedom and equity for the individual adolescent voice. She presents this idea with a poem by Wallace Stevens (1982). The Man with the Blue Guitar They said, “You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.” The man replied, “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.” You as you are? You are yourself. The blue guitar surprises you. (Stevens, as cited in Greene, 2001 p. 31) Greene pointed to the blue guitar as a metaphor, which emphasized the critical importance of developing children’s imaginations. Greene (2001) believed that the development of a moral imagination reveals the child’s “personal consciousness.” We have to try to move persons to think about alternative ways of being alive, possible ways of inhabiting the world. And then we may be able to help them realize the sense in which an active imagination involves transactions between the inner and outer visions. (p. 32) Greene’s (2001) contention of an inner and outer vision is fundamental to the artist’s conception of truth. “Artistic truth is, simply, an artist’s effort to communicate his thoughts and feelings as directly or completely as he can” (Gardner, 1994, p. 347). Gardner was asserting that art is not a series of facts that can be agreed upon, but rather the “execution and communication of subjective insights of an individual” (p. 347). In a more elaborate metaphor, Gardner (1994) equated the artist’s quest for truth as reminiscent of the deep trust formed at birth between a mother and child. This critical relationship intuitively begins to obtain and appreciate genuine feelings and thoughts by way of the acquired symbol systems. Gardner framed creative artists with imaginations that are propelled to discover and

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then to create an impression concerning all they have been able to ascertain from their world and about themselves. Greene (2001) proposed that the revelation of personal truth combined with imagination represent the significant link between the art and one’s imagination. She argues that a realization of a personal “truth” through the arts is essential for urban preadolescents and adolescents, and needs to be developed in educational practice. Gardner (1994) asserted that “the arts provide critical clues for the understanding of the minds of children.” Gardner believed that the three developing systems (perceiving, feeling, and making) continue to be in service throughout adult life. The actual “impact and import of the arts depends on certain universal qualities and forms, readily acquired from the first which can affect all [humankind]” (pp. 349–350). The study of arts, metaphor and the imagination in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science has barely begun (Johnson, 1993). Imagination seeks meaning and widening perception: but it also gives rise to a glimpse of possibility, to what is not yet, to what ought to be. It is beyond prediction. Imagination opens windows in the actual, releases people from the coercion so characteristic of the media-dominated time. What, after all, is the relation between imagination and moral life? I try to connect it, for example, to a kind of face-to-face morality—the morality that finds expression in coming towards another person, looking her or him in the eyes, gazing, not simply glancing. (Greene, 1995, as cited in Ayers & Miller, 1998, p. 156) For many children labeled at-risk it is imperative we utilize aesthetic experiences that ignite their perceiving, feeling, and making systems, in hopes that as reflective intelligence is developed, through visual thinking and encounters with rich works of art, their expressions, metaphors, and personal insights reveal their deepest moral and imaginative thoughts. The fragile nature of the development of a child’s moral imagination is expressed by John Paul II (1982, p. 82) in the following poem titled, “Children”: Children Growing unawares through love, of a sudden they’ve grown up, and hand in hand wander in crowds (their hearts caught like birds, profiles pale in the dusk). The pulse of mankind beats in their hearts.

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On a bank by the river, holding hands— A tree stump in moonlight, the earth, a half-whisper— The children’s hearts rise over the water. Will they be changed when they get up and go? Or look at it this way: a goblet of light tilted over a plant reveals unknown inwardness. Will you be able to keep from spoiling what has begun in you? Will you always separate the right from the wrong? In the following chapters the poetry of children is presented and one may think that the ideas expressed are well-beyond their years. Encased in a child’s heart are soulful ideas that awaken when the imagination is ignited by works of art. Not only is the children’s moral imagination manifested within their poetry and remarkable use of symbolic language captured, the awakening of the moral imagination as depicted, causes the adult to pause and wonder how and where these deeply felt perceptions originated. The poetic symbolic language inspired by works of art reveal the children’s moral affect, moral discriminations, and moral thought, as corresponding to their perceiving, feeling, and making systems (Clark, 2005a).

CHAPTER 2

Releasing Hope: A Spiral of Light Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight (1902/2011, p. 7)

… Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hughes, The dream keeper and other poems (1923/1994)

∵ The aesthetic and arts-based psychology, as presented in Chapter 1, is set as the basis for the creative process the children were engaged in. In Chapter 2 the readers are asked to reflect and embrace the free-style and poetic vision shared by the children, who chose to express their uniqueness and make sense of their experiences, as they walk along in this world. The children’s moral imagination is awakened and freely expressed, as a result of engagement with the artsbased aesthetic experience. The children’s poetic compositions may, for some, be a type of message, a reminder to renew hope and dreams that have dimmed with age. O’Donohue (1997) points to the great prophet Haggai who stated, “You have sown so much but harvested so little.” O’Donohue believes that at this time our world is starved for beauty and that “everything that happens to you is an act of sowing a seed of experience. It is equally important to be able to harvest that experience” (p. 166). The aesthetic process captures the beauty of a child’s imagination, as they try to make sense of their world and those around them. Once awakened, a child’s moral imagination is evident in their poetic visions speaking to us, on forgiveness, empathy, hope, friendship, family, and love. There is a world of truth in the voices of the children that we cannot ignore. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi: 10.1163/9789004432871_002

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I wondered when first reading the poetic symbolic compositions if the children instinctively connected with the artists introduced, for a seed of empathy grew as the children sensed the artist’s struggle and vision that gave life to the landscape and characters in the paintings. The children’s reality had no boundaries of time and thus their poetry revealed an internal expression of their interpersonal empathic awareness for others. Or, were their hearts inflamed by the beauty ignited in the aesthetic, their ideas and thoughts touching on the fringes of innocent soulful yearnings, as their moral imagination of what could be was released on paper. O’Donohue (2003) believes that creativity is a form of holiness, the Divine Imagination within our creative core, casts light on a path to unknown treasures. At once beauty is “the soul of the real…come alive to its eternal depth and destiny. True beauty can emerge at the most vigorous threshold where the oppositions in life confront and engage each other” (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 50). In this chapter we will hear from individual children that were profoundly impacted by the aesthetic experience and ultimately released a moral message for adults to begin to see, listen, and learn. The children’s poetry asks the reader to pause and reflect deeply on all that life has to offer. The children remind us to hold fast to love, and not be quick in judgement of others. Emily, Allison, Kathryn and Charrisa herald the poetic call for us to pay special attention to the tenderness they are evoking. As the children came to know the characters in the paintings in a private way, the immediate aesthetic experience resulted in an empathic stance, based on how the characters related to their personal life. What can we learn from the children’s perceptions? We hear a message from their pure soul, their imaginative force, not yet tinged with the darkest pain life brings that hardens adults; yet, these children have at their young age revealed their personal experience with loss and rejection. How does a teacher release hope within a child’s heart and mind through an aesthetic experience? Many children are naturally, by their very nature, poised to willingly accept the hope transferred by a teacher, to engage their imagination and passion for an expressive voice. The following story about Emily, age nine, represents the power that comes when a teacher and child collectively embrace and enter a symbolic dance of hope, within a spiral of possibility as relationships of trust deepen (Clark & French, 2014). The child recognizes their individual imaginative potential from the teacher’s encouragement and love. No-one was sent into the world without being given the infinite possibilities of the heart. It is sad that so many of us go through our lives without ever seeming to discover the depth and beauty of the heart. Most of us have only an inkling of who we are. (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 254)

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Emily began to willingly accept her ideas of hope. Through carefully chosen words and possibility Emily was deeply inspired when experiencing images of great works of art. In a profound and spiritual way, an endless spiral of light and hope naturally grew within her soul. She felt she could trust and began to release a series of unique ideas within her poetic compositions. Emily was “one who risks the eyes of her mind for the moment when the veil slips aside and the perpetual light shines through” (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 255). Prior to this interaction with Emily, she was not perceived by her teachers as a creative and talented writer within the school community. It was discovered later that Emily held a secret dream within her heart to read one of her poems in front of the entire school. How many children in our American public schools hold private dreams, like Emily, waiting to take flight?

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The Story of Emily

One of the most remarkable aspects of being an educator is meeting a child and not knowing what impact you might have on the child’s life or perhaps more significantly the impact the child may have on your life. There is no crystal ball available to guide the teacher in order to achieve success. The teacher must go by trust and take time to “see” the child. The teacher may intuitively look for, listen to, and pay close attention to hidden treasures, that are briefly lit by a dull classroom light. At the time I met Emily, in a suburban school in western Connecticut, the children’s writing scores fell much to the dismay of the teachers and administrators. Children across grade levels were becoming more and more reluctant to write. I was asked to experiment with merging the arts with the literacy curriculum, in order to inspire the children. I designed a series of sensory workshops in conjunction with a variety of masterpieces, inspirational guardians of the aesthetic, for Emily’s class in hopes of illuminating their natural and expressive voice. The beautiful works of art instantly triggered reflective conversations as senses were heightened with joy, and children connected to the images and characters within the painting to the stories in their lives. Writing became spontaneous and joyful rather than painful. While discussing each work of art, I observed Emily’s keen interest and excitement. Emily was inspired to create the most profound poetry. She would hand her poems to me on assorted scraps of paper after each visual thinking and sensory experience. Words beyond her age encompassing sophisticated metaphorical imagery filled the pages before my eyes. When I read her thoughts, I knew there was a secret world within Emily that was yet to be discovered by

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her teachers. She was a child holding remarkable gifts within, which were truly not yet visible in school. In order to see a child, we must cast a deeper line, reaching toward and then gently releasing what is going on within the child’s heart and mind. What are their deepest thoughts, fears, and wonderings? Eisner (2002) states that, “The arts contribute to the development of human consciousness” (p. 240). At age nine, Emily released her voice and at once became conscious of her poetic and moral imagination. As Emily’s writing grew, a piece of her gentle soul was revealed as her moral imagination awakened for us to see and hear a voice beyond her years. Her voice had been dormant only to be awakened through the arts, from the light of the imagination, a source of inspiration when triggered by the artistic senses within. The following poems (Clark, 1998) were composed after Emily (age nine), viewed Wyeth’s painting of his invalid mother titled, Chambered Nautilus (1956), as she looked out the window to the sea. The Enemy You Are to Yourself The countless enemies that lurk upon your total and complete destruction; The loveless fools that are your enemies And forever they will remain. You are a loveless fool, a countless enemy of your own And forever you will remain. My Inspiring Window The beauty of my words are in the mountains My poems in the trees and my stories in the field. In my room I lay looking out my inspiring window. After reading Emily poems I wondered what the teachers were doing for all children within a school community, in order to see their beautiful and hidden imaginative gifts? Emily’s poems triggered an idea. I decided it was time to display Emily’s poems to inspire her teachers to begin to “see” and understand her secret and hidden world. I put a spotlight on Emily’s writing by painting her poetry as calligraphic, four-foot tall totems down the main hallway. It was

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critical for Emily and her teachers to celebrate her true gifts. Her poetic voice and wonderings were illuminated, shared, and celebrated within our school community. The next morning, Emily came to school very sad, not looking forward to the daily drudgery. Emily did not like school and the various forms of academic interventions she had to attend and consequently miss recess. That day Emily entered the school in tears and was immediately shocked to see her poetry exhibited larger than life down the main hall for all to witness and read. The teachers, standing in front of Emily’s poetry, were mesmerized. They were whispering to one another and wondering how a nine-year old could have such soulful, expressive language. As a result, Emily was asked to read one of her poems at the next school assembly. Her dream came true, her identity as an artist and poet were realized, and the community witnessed the transformation. Once her dream was actualized and shared, no one could put Emily back in a box of fear and doubt. One could say that Emily’s poetry when shared, echoed possibility, and “whispered awake the deep well of love within” for herself and for the greater community (O’Donohue, 1997, p. 22). Emily began to know who she was and what she wanted and perhaps more importantly, she was able to express her hopes and dreams with confidence. O’Donohue (1997) explains how we become closer to understanding ourselves and others when we “invite this inner fountain to free itself” (p. 23). Where before there was hard, bleak, unyielding, dead ground, now there is growth, colour, enrichment and life flowing from the lovely wellspring of love. This is one of the most creative approaches in transfiguring what is negative within us. You are sent here to learn to love and to receive love. The greatest gift new love brings into your life is the awakening to the hidden love within…It is freedom…You become free of the hungry, blistering need with which you continually reach out to scrape affirmation, respect and significance for your self from things and people outside your self. To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call our soul. (O’Donohue, 1997, p. 23) Emily’s soul desired to express itself, her moral imagination emerged and flew to freedom through her creative expression. O’Donohue (1997) explains that, “Thoughts are the forms of the soul’s inner swiftness. Our feelings too can move swiftly; yet even though they are precious to our own identity, thoughts and feelings still remain largely invisible. In order to feel real, we need to bring that inner invisible world to expression” (p. 121). Emily’s poetry when awakened by great works of art, thus revealing her “inner invisible world, deeply longing for

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the possibility of expression” (p. 121). O’Donohue (1997) presents a poem from thirteen century Persia expressing a sense of a deeper soulful connection and presence to the past (p. 214). Some nights stay up til dawn as the moon sometimes does for the sun. Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of a well then lifted out into light. Something opens our wings, something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us, we taste only sacredness. The story doesn’t end however, when one day sixteen years later, I received an email from Emily, with a poem (see below) titled, On the Day to Write Elegies. Emily wrote: I’m in the poetry MFA program at Cornell University. I don’t know how to say this exactly. You painting those poems of mine across the hallway at Head ‘O Meadow is the most important thing anyone has ever done for me. It is the reason I went to college and have the life I have now, which I love, but more than that, it was paramount to my survival. I’m teaching now and I can see how much care would have to go into that act. I’m so grateful to you. As I slowly and carefully read Emily’s poem, her words wove a cloak of love around my heart. I instantly understood what happened sixteen years ago. On the day Emily viewed the display of her poetry, it changed how she saw herself, her ideas, and her poetry. She was awakened to a wellspring of hope as the school community recognized her talent. Emily had something to say to us at nine years of age, something profound, an expression of her moral imagination. How long had Emily “looked out her inspiring window,” hoping for someone to help her release her voice. Greene (2000) stated, “Not only do teachers and learners together need to tell and choose; they have to look toward untapped possibility—to light the fuse, to explore what it might mean to transform that possibility” (p. 42). Emily’s poem (2016): On the Day to Write Elegies …Another morning With the late bell hung at my neck,

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I saw my art teacher had painted what I wrote across the wall. Gracious calligrapher, she invented a language, one I was invited into, palm open, no bitterness towards what I shared with the unspeaking in the illegible fury. Ms. Clark, who I had read the words to, in the capture of her brave. God, that woman, light freckled and frizzy haired, the way she, in each letter, drew me out from a hard, young anger that could have turned into anything. When reading Emily’s poem, one cannot help being touched by the poetic language that painted a vivid portrayal of her daily frustrations at school. The pain she held within was masked by a smile at age nine. No one knew the profound gifts concealed within her heart. Emily said that from the moment she discovered the exhibition of her poems in the front school hallway, she experienced a significant shift in her life journey and increased sense of self. Thus, emerged her true-self. Emily’s journey continued to evolve and after completing an MFA in poetry, she was asked to teach at that university. At age nine Emily was on her way to be the profound artist she was to become. Greene (2000) poignantly expresses the importance of Emily’s story and transformation and relationship with a teacher she could trust. Greene stated: All we can do is to speak with others as passionately and eloquently as we can; all we can do is to look into each other’s eyes and urge each other on to new beginnings. Our classrooms ought to be nurturing and thoughtful and just all at once; they ought to pulsate with multiple conceptions of what it is to be human and alive. They ought to resound with the voices of articulate young people in dialogues always incomplete because there is always more to be discovered and more to be said. We must want our students to achieve friendship as each one stirs to wide-awakeness to imaginative action, and to renewed consciousness of possibility. (p. 43)

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As the teacher releases a sense of hope and the child chooses to accept, new possibility emerges. In Emily’s case, there was an awakening of her moral imagination as her awareness of herself was released through the aesthetic methods presented. Emily continued to compose her poetry when stimulated by a work of art, and shared her poetry with her teachers and school community. In this give and take that naturally forms within the arts and aesthetic experiences, a new form of empathic communication tenderly surrounds the child and teacher during exchanges both verbal and through a thoughtful eye to eye exchange. Merton (2018) states that when “we learn to take the risks implied by faith, to make choices that deliver us from our routine self and open to us the door of a new being, a new reality (p. 3). Merton (1983) further explores this contemplative process and impact of the aesthetic in “seeing” our real self and rejecting the skin of the false imposed self by stating: In an aesthetic experience, in the creation or the contemplation of a work of art, the psychological conscience is able to attain some of its highest and most perfect fulfillments. Arts enable us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve. (p. 34) Greene (2000) points out a key idea when the arts transform a school community perhaps into a more democratic functioning space. For Emily, space was provided for her to share her new-found recognition. Her voice echoed out toward the listening ears of other children as she stood ready to reveal her creations. Everyone was a witness to her steadfastness and belief in herself. At the same time in a reciprocal fashion, other children were inspired. Greene asks, “If we can link imagination to our sense of possibility and our ability to respond to other human beings, can we link it to the making of community as well” (p. 38)? It was my fear that day as I listened to Emily and watched the children sitting at attention on the gym floor, that educators are missing what is truly necessary in the development of each child. If educators utilized the arts and aesthetics on a daily basis perhaps the unspoken talents within children would be revealed. What other children were harboring talent lying dormant? I was struck with a horrible thought, that perhaps at best we tap into a very small percentage of our children’s potential. What about the children labeled with a deficit? Those children like Emily silently resenting mandated interventions

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that for some untold reason begin to marginalize and label children as less than. How many children are at-promise, yet no-one sought to see and reveal a myriad of possibilities within, through rich aesthetic and sensory experiences? The arts have a way of igniting possibility as long as the educator provides the opportunities and the school has a culture of celebration and sharing. Marginalized children silently endure each day at school. They can predict the day’s schedule so efficiently planned. Slowly their sense of self shrinks from increased isolation. Nurturing imaginative and moral possibility within children leads to a more democratic school community, whereby labels and targeted deficiencies do not prohibit a child from participation. .

It is through the imagination, the realm of pure possibility that we freely make ourselves to be who or what we are, that we creatively and imaginatively become who we are, while in the process preserving the freedom and possibility to be yet otherwise than what we have become and merely are. (Madison, 1988, as cited in Greene, 2000, p. 38) Greene (1995) reminds us, that children like Emily, “who are labeled as deficient, fixed in that category as firmly as flies in amber, have little chance to feel they can be yet otherwise than what they have become” (p, 39). The arts provided a gateway for Emily’s moral imagination to be released into the community. Through a series of arts-based aesthetic experiences whereby no grades were attached to poetic experimentation and expression, Emily found her voice and simultaneously other children were enticed to elicit their ideas. Emily’s words came faster than she could write them down. She stood at her desk with an intense passion to expel the words and ideas in her mind. Within minutes, Emily asked to share her poetry. Like freedom, [community] has to be achieved by persons offered the space in which to discover what they recognize together and appreciate in common; they have to find ways to make intersubjective sense. Again, it ought to be a space infused by the kind of imaginative awareness that enables those involved to imagine alternative possibilities for their own becoming and their group’s becoming. (Greene, 2000, p. 39) Like Emily, another child, Allison, found that the aesthetic experience inspired her poetic compositions to emerge. Allison expressed how her poems reflected actual experiences in her life in conjunction with her mother and stepfather. Allison was considered by her teacher to be an average student in most academic areas and below average in reading comprehension. Allison explained

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the meaning of her poem titled, “My Home,” created after viewing and discussing the painting Summertime, by Romare Bearden (1967) (see Figure 6). Allison stated, “You should always appreciate what you have because you never know once you lose it, you’re really gonna regret it.” Allison’s poem reveals her moral thinking and provides an important message to remember each day of our life. She was deeply struck by the character behind the checkered curtain, just barely peeking outside into the world. Bearden (1967) used a collage technique to capture the sense of isolation among many people living in the city during the 1960’s civil unrest as cities were facing an uprising against racial injustices. Allison captured that sense of despair people faced while living in tenements (Clark, 2005a, p. 117). My Home My home is all me Will I survive or die Shall I keep my faith Or let it go What will I do I don’t know where to go I cook I clean I feed my children. My home is a broken-down building I can’t take this anymore. I think my father will not make it Through his last few years So now I say I’m letting it all go. Allison continued to reflect on the meaning of her poem, “My Home,” after sharing it with the class. Allison explained stating, “It relates to my life because when I was a little bit younger it was the same life for me until my mom had a new job. I thought about my stepfather because it relates a lot to him. Like if he was the father and I was the daughter, the one that was having all the problems.” Allison kept writing after completing her first poetic composition. Her ideas were free flying, an instantaneous release, and moral imagination emerged as she imagined herself in the window behind the checkered curtain. Her second poem titled, “Faith,” moved deeper into a personal and spiritual connection with the character in the painting, wondering how she may survive. Her moral imagination and moral thought placed her into the heart of the character and

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the character’s voice is heard via Allison. Allison wanted this specific format to present her poem, “Faith” to emphasize the lower case i (Clark, 2005a, pp. 109–110). Faith is faith real or is it i don’t know Shall i have faith in my father Shall i or not in my kids it’s my faith shall it be in them how about me i don’t know i don’t know if i shall be alive in faith at all. Allison freely created the format above for her poetic ideas. She felt the freedom to experiment with her ideas by stepping into the character’s world and more deeply into the character’s heart. At this point it is important to wonder why a child, like Allison, with such sophisticated imagery and creative expression of a character’s voice, would be below average in reading comprehension. Allison was a strong visual thinker decoding detailed aspects of Bearden’s painting. Her excitement to share what she knew aided in her fluent recitation and emotional expression of her poem to capture the character’s feelings

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stating, “I don’t know if I shall be alive in faith at all.” Allison skillfully integrated her background experiences and knowledge to describe the scene and the character’s frustration, anxiety, and worry. Perhaps the motivation in obtaining reading comprehension comes more naturally when a child knows the experience is real. Another child, Kathryn, revealed profound moral feeling and moral thinking when expressing her empathy for the “desperate man,” sitting in a café in Hopper’s (1942) painting, titled Nighthawks (see Figure 2). Kathryn is perceived by her teacher to be socially at-risk, as she exhibits “young behavior,” within a social setting. After reading Kathryn’s poem titled, “Midnight Skies,” it is important to pause and reflect on the depth of empathy and curiosity for the “desperate man,” as Kathryn places herself inside the café (Clark, 2005a, p. 133). Her moral imagination is warning the man to be aware that, “loneliness [is] flying around him,” who may perhaps be considering a choice to enter the “forbidden apartment.”

figure 2 Hopper, Edward (1882–1967). © ARS, NY. Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas 84.1 × 152.4 cm (33 1/8 × 60 in). Signed l.r. “Edward Hopper.” Friends of American Art Collection, 1942.51. Digital Image Credit: The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY

Midnight Skies A desperate man Sitting with loneliness flying around him. Glass cups pinging together as ladies and gentleman make a toast

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to the ones they love most. Empty seats appear, Because of the midnight sky. A door leads itself to a forbidden apartment. That’s what my eyes seek tonight. If Kathryn is feeling a sense of social unfitness as perceived by the teacher, it is important to consider the myriad of labels upon children’s hearts and minds, whereby they are marginalized, thus the opportunity to see the truest nature and talent of children like Emily, Allison, and Kathryn is lost. These young minds have revealed their deepest awareness, empathy, worries and fears, triggered through an aesthetic experience, a moral imagination that is aware of others and aware of hope necessary in one’s life. Coles (1986) reminds us of Anna Freud, the leading child psychiatrist’s research, and her belief in children. Freud warns of labeling children stating, “…It is hard for us to know what to think about any particular moment of a child’s life…The better we know a child, the less inclined we are to see ‘normality’ and ‘pathology’ as distinct opposites. Children move in and out of various moods and it is the long-range view that we must seek if we are to understand them” (as cited in Coles, 1986, p. 249). The following poem titled, “The Self,” by William Carlos Williams (1988, p. 221), poignantly captures the myriad of facets joining the nature of a child with one’s imagination and poetic expressiveness of daily experiences, both joyful and tragic. The Self The poem is a discipline What you need to sober you is what you have Your children Let them children teach you the peach flower the grape globular locks

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curling pathetically about the temples their eyes their rosy cheeks the poem laid crudely delicately before you.

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CHAPTER 3

Meeting Ruby Bridges: Moral Imagination Released Where the Mind is without Fear Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depths of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. (Tagore, 1912) Chapter 3 presents the importance of aesthetic curriculum initiatives as witnessed by the poetry of children in urban and suburban districts composed while studying, The Story of Ruby Bridges (Coles, 1995). At this time, we continue to witness the trauma experienced by children in their everyday life such as poverty, hunger, abuse, violence in schools, child immigrant’s isolation and exclusion, homelessness, and bullying. As seen through the hearts and minds of the following children’s poetry, they secretly harbor their traumas and fears and silently hold them close in their heart as they attend school each day. No wonder the children when viewing the painting (see Figure 3) depicting Ruby Bridges titled, The Problem We All Live With, by Norman Rockwell (1964), felt an instant connection with the character at the center of the painting. They instinctively placed themselves in Ruby’s shoes and felt deeply for her difficult and painful ordeal. The children’s poetic works culminated with a profound and miraculous meeting with Ruby Bridges at their school a year later. For children experiencing assorted trauma within their lives, their curiosity was heightened by relating to the brave six-year old girl entering school, passing through an angry mob of white people. The children, both black and white, urban and suburban, felt an instant connection with Ruby and expressed their outrage and empathy for Ruby. The children related to Ruby’s courage when facing bullies, death © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi: 10.1163/9789004432871_003

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threats, and obscenities. Their passion and moral voice were released, revealing to adults their deepest fears and worries that lay silently buried. The power of storytelling through art and aesthetic experiences, creates a pathway for the moral imagination to be released, thus appearing within a child’s poetic writing and symbolism. The aesthetic experience and story of Ruby Bridges as told by Dr. Coles (1995), provided an opening by which the children could instantly relate to and at the same time, “open new perspectives, to identify alternatives” within their daily lives (Greene, 2000, p. 18). Rockwell’s (1964) painting titled, The Problem We All Live With, was selected as a painting for the children specifically because of the subject matter which resonated on a deeply personal and emotional level that was relevant to both urban and suburban pre-adolescents based on their life experiences. The narrative nature of Norman Rockwell’s depiction of desegregation genuinely pulls the children into “wide-spectrum cognition” as students’ reason about things they see, “thereby involving “multiple sensory modalities” (Perkins, 1994, p. 85). The “dispositional atmosphere” of reflective thinking emphasized thinking that provided personal engagement and transfer of experiences. As seen within the children’s poetic compositions they may have personalized the inherent trauma of the painting, which depicted a young girl’s steps toward a newly desegregated school. Within the children’s poetry after studying the painting by Rockwell (1964) a moral voice was released. Poetic samples of children’s lived experiences were created, examined, and presented as symbols of that which is purely spontaneous and imaginative and touched by what Robert Coles calls grace. The power of storytelling runs through all of Robert Coles’ teachings and experiences when referring to the moral imagination and ones “lived life” (Coles, 1986, 1989, 1997). The following descriptive sample reveals the empathic nature of moral imagination of a child after viewing Rockwell’s painting and hearing about Ruby’s walk to school. The visual data reveals the complexity of the child’s seeing, feeling, and thinking systems when triggered by the painting. The child steps into Ruby’s shoes and imagines what he or she might hear, feel, and see. One child, named Charissa, articulated her personal identification with the painting and described in succession the visual cues that inspired her. She stated, Her face [Ruby], the writing on the wall, the tomatoes, and the men all around her. It looks like she’s trying to smile, she’s trying not to cry. Her eyes are just trying to keep straight. It looks like she’s trying not to blink and keep her tears behind so she doesn’t cry.

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Charissa continued to elaborate on her visual thinking stating: “It’s just about a girl that’s trying to keep her face straight, just doesn’t want to be bothered right now. They can say all the things they want, but she doesn’t care, cause she knows that it’s not true.” Charissa later revealed that she felt the most important theme was, “Don’t cry in school just keep your face straight.” She said that this is what she attempts to do in school. She tries very hard to not show anyone that she is upset. Charissa revealed moral seeing as she was able to view the expression on the face of the character, Ruby Bridges in the painting, and connect that visual fragment of thought in relationship to her sense of self as she goes through her day in school. Perhaps many children in school are holding in their emotions, attempting not to cry, so that they can “just keep their face straight.” Like Charissa, Kathryn’s intrapersonal intelligence was revealed through her personal symbolic language that became increasingly complex and empathic. Kathryn’s poem titled, “A Cruel World” reveals that the visual thinking process impacted her intrapersonal thoughts through the use of imaginative metaphors. Kathryn created the poem titled, “A Cruel World” after initially viewing and discussing the painting, The Problem We All Live With (see Figure 3). Kathryn identified deeply with Ruby Bridges, the main character in the center of the painting and her determined focus to look straight ahead as she walked between the “two important men marching for her freedom.” Kathryn expressed a remarkable sense of being beside Ruby, as she describes Ruby’s dress as “ghostly,” on a “delicate little girl.” Perhaps most profound is the symbolism Kathryn used expressing the “racism floating around her body.” Kathryn’s imaginative and elaborative language gives the reader a sense of the critical importance of this historic civil rights event and how it holds special meaning in her life. Her moral feeling is expressed as she describes the difficult struggle Ruby Bridges had to endure to get to school. Kathryn’s poem (Clark, 2005a, pp. 150–151): A Cruel World Splattered and wasted food dripping on the wall. Horrible cruel words spray painted on the walls, The sound of laughing, cheering and crying people. A ghostly dress on a beautiful young lady, A delicate little girl With racism floating around her body, Two important men marching for her freedom. Kathryn’s moral thinking is evident as her language depicts the violent actions of the angry protestors that “splattered and wasted food dripping on the

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wall” and “horrible cruel words spray painted.” Kathryn’s moral imagination placed herself in Ruby’s shoes surrounded by angry faces and hearing hateful language from adults throwing food. One can only wonder if Kathryn heard similar language in her daily life. Kathryn expressed a moral feeling in relationship to the character and her own life. The painting inspired Kathryn to not take school for granted and how important Ruby’s courage was. Kathryn explained, “I think you should keep your dream when you know that you want to get to it and you should keep it cause it’s strong and it keeps you going cause it’s a dream you’re trying to reach and to get.” Kathryn continued to elaborate stating, “I have a dream and I’m trying to really make it but it’s hard.” Kathryn is perceived by the school-based assessments to be an average student. She lives with her grandmother and has many responsibilities at home. Perhaps the pressures she lives with and her daily struggle “to reach her dream” prevents her from truly showing her potential as witnessed by her poetic creations. Or, perhaps it is the “deadless sea of dreary habit” each day in school that prevents Kathryn from excelling (Tagore, 1912). At the time, Kathryn did not know that when Ruby was six years old, she expressed her ordeal walking through the mob each day to school as witnessed by Dr. Robert Coles (1980, pp. 4–9). Dr. Coles shares the following profound poetic composition by Ruby during one of his visits to her home. Six-year old Ruby wrote: They’re hungry. So hungry, they bark the pain. They would eat me Down to the last bone. But they’d still run and growl So, it’s lucky the police have a chain on them The mad white dogs! In contrast to Ruby’s poem composed at age six, Clare, age ten, wrote the poem titled, “6 Years Old,” after viewing Rockwell’s (1964) painting, The Problem We All Live With (see Figure 3). Clare captures a sense of what she believed kept Ruby going stating, the “powerful mind seeks love all the time” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J). 6 Years Old 6 years old and has no friends. 6 years old and surrounded by sin. 6 years old and sees hate all around.

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God is with me and the devils in the ground. A powerful mind seeks love all the time. Coles (1980) wrote explaining how he witnessed these profound thoughts from Ruby, at age six (pp. 4–5). In the course of a few minutes of innocent afternoon “talk,” and put marks between the various sentences, which following one another, just as they do above, Ruby intended no poem; yet, she was calling upon a sustained image, and her brief, pungent sentences, punctuated by occasional moments of silence—pauses which possessed great power—were not easily forgotten by my wife or me. Nor by one of the federal marshals, a big burly, somewhat morose fellow, who only gradually overcame some of his strenuous white, Alabama prejudices enough to take an obvious, if reluctant fancy to “the kid,” as he always called Ruby. One day the marshal, often ravenously hungry himself, had a comment for my wife and me: “She’s right, the kid. They’re crazy, those people on the street; and they’re hungry—for her. They would eat her up alive, if we weren’t there to protect her! She’s a smart one. She’s like a poet, she says these things, and you don’t forget them. I tell my wife what I’ve heard the kid say, and my wife asks how come our daughter doesn’t talk like that, and she’s nine, three years older. Maybe our daughter does, though; maybe we don’t hear her. It is important to carefully consider what Coles (1980) is trying to tell us via the words of Ruby and one of the marshals. Can we bridge the “knots of suffering within us,” in order to be more empathic towards one another? What would happen if educators believed that, “Poetical values are, after all values in human life” (Keats, as cited in Dewey, 1980, p. 347). Dewey (1980) inspired by Keats questions the absence of the moral imagination and moral function of art inherent within a democratic education states: What would be the result if every man spun from his imaginative experience “an airy citadel” like the web the spider spins, “filling the air with a beautiful circuiting.” For, [Keats] says, “man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his neighbor, and thus, be every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mold etherial, every human being might become great, and Humanity instead of being a wide heath of Furze and briars with here and there a remote Pine or Oak, would become a grand democracy of Forest Trees!” (Dewey, 1980, p. 347)

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Dewey (1980) believed that critical to fostering freedom of artistic expression in education is to understand and “restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience” (p. 3). We can see the power of free aesthetic inquiry through rich works of art, impacting ways of thinking in which the children’s moral discriminations, moral affect, and moral thoughts are revealed and captured as related to their life experiences.

figure 3 Rockwell, Norman (1894–1978). The Trouble We All Live With, 1964. Oil on canvas, 91 cm × 150 cm (36 in × 58 in). Artwork courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency, Rockwell Family Properties LLC and Norman Rockwell Family LLC | International Merchandising Company, IMG Worldwide, LLC

Like Kathryn, Patrice utilized several imaginary visual references in her poem, “Fear of All,” which was inspired after viewing the painting, The Problem We All Live With. Patrice moved to this country from Asia during the school year that she composed the following poem. Although she is highly motivated, the teacher stated that Patrice has many academically weak areas. Although not a follower, the teacher observed that Patrice works hard to fit in with her peers. Patrice utilized several imaginary visual references in her poem. Patrice moved between intrapersonal and interpersonal moral thought expressing the suffering the character endured due to the anger of others. We witness Patrice’s personal viewpoint of the tragic historical moment in American history as she poetically described the little girl walking on, “A path of pain and horror,/Not

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even a grown-up can walk on.” Patrice revealed cognitive understanding and knowledge of racism when describing the, “Discolored wall with a sign of hateness./Words with hurtful meanings/and empty sidewalks being blocked by people.” Patrice described the facial expression of the character, Ruby, when stating the, “Little girl hiding pain,” and continued to tell us what she thinks of the little girl’s character describing her as, “A sweet flower that doesn’t care what people think.” This last thought revealed Patrice’s intrapersonal intelligence as she is hopeful in thinking that the little girl as a “sweet flower,” like herself, that, “Doesn’t care what people think” (Clark, 2005b, pp. 433–434). Fear of All1 Bloody tomato being thrown, A path of pain and horror Not even a grown-up can walk on. Big man blocking a small girl. A gold-hearted girl that can’t be broken. Discolored wall with a sign of hateness. Little girl hiding pain. Words with hurtful meanings Empty sidewalks being blocked by mean people. A sweet flower that doesn’t care what people think. In Fear of All, Patrice expressed an understanding of the little girl’s struggle and strength to walk into the school that, “not even a grown-up can walk on,” as she doesn’t run away, even under such cruel conditions imposed by “mean people.” Patrice wanted us to remember that “running away can sometimes change your life, and hiding can sometimes change your life too.” Patrice revealed this moral thought after discussing her poetry. The moral thought originated from intrapersonal intelligence based on Patrice’s life experiences and moved to interpersonal intelligence in reference to difficulties she has felt from people that sometimes made her want to run away. It wasn’t until after a series of poetic compositions by Patrice, that she opened up and shared her secret desire to get away from everything at school and at home. The immigration to America and learning a new language in a new school had a significant impact on Patrice’s struggles with her fears and confidence in herself. The children represented moral thought (moral thinking) through their personal symbolic language by articulating intrapersonal meaning which originated from the characters in the artwork (Clark, 2005a, p. 202). For example, Julianna continued to express increasingly complex interpersonal and

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intrapersonal feeling in her poem entitled, Broken Mirror. Julianna presented the voice of Ruby via her intrapersonal moral feeling about Ruby’s sense of self after encountering such hatred from the people that surrounded her. She expressed a poignant understanding towards Ruby’s experience with people that tried to hurt her and how Ruby endured and changed (Clark, 2005a). Broken Mirror When I looked into the mirror this morning I didn’t feel the same As if something has changed When I looked into the mirror this morning I didn’t see myself I saw someone else When I looked into the mirror this morning I knew something was wrong Because everyone I once felt I knew was gone When I looked in the mirror this morning I felt I was in a different place Because everyone was treated unequal Because of their race The affective connection between intrapersonal and interpersonal feeling is captured by Julianna, as she speaks through the voice of the character Ruby. Julianna tells us that Ruby is aware of the crowds (interpersonal) and how they are hurting her when she said, “I knew something was wrong.” Julianna reveals intrapersonal thought expressing Ruby’s feelings stating, “When I looked into the mirror this morning/I didn’t feel the same/As if something changed.” Julianna’s empathic and imaginative voice expresses Ruby’s introspective thoughts within herself to maintain her sense of strength and courage in school. This is indeed evidence of complex moral thought by Julianna, considered an average child by her teacher, yet can understand and express a sense that Ruby was aware of the unequal treatment. Julianna believed that, “Ruby grasped onto her family and her mother’s love, which gave her courage and hope amidst the horror.” Julianna’s poem, “Broken Mirror,” exemplifies how the aesthetic visual thinking process revealed intrapersonal affective knowledge and impacts interpersonal feelings and cognitive thought. In a similar poetic style, a poem by Anne Frank (1942) to her dear friend echoes Julianna’s empathy for Ruby. Anne Frank wrote a poem titled, “Dear Cri-Cri,” her dear friend’s little sister, less than 4 months before her family went

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into hiding (as cited in Belefsky, 2016). Clearly Anne is providing hope and motivation reminding the little girl to do her best, to “take up your task.” One can only wonder if this poem expresses Anne Frank’s beliefs to try hard and amend all mistakes and a foreshadowing of the horrific ordeal to come. Anne’s poem: Dear Cri-Cri, If you did not finish your work properly, And lost precious time, Then once again take up your task And try harder than before. If others have reproached you For what you have done wrong, Then be sure to amend your mistake. That is the best answer one can make. Coles (1986) points to the moral imagination of children revealed, when they innocently express hope in people, and that they will wake-up and change and unfortunately do not. Ruby Bridges is a perfect example of having hope in others amidst horrific abuse as captured by the children’s poetry. Coles believes that children like Ruby [and the children featured here] represent in a way for us that at times “we are hopeful about others, thereby feeling safer about ourselves” (p. 238). After talking with Ruby about her daily experience with the mob outside her school, Coles (1986) explains: Ruby and other children reassured themselves when they marched past mobs on their way to school. Ruby’s words, ‘They say bad things, but they’ll change their minds one day. I’m sure, because they’ll get tired, and they’ll remember that it’s not right, God says, to talk like that, to swear and all, and I’m not sure, but I think some of them are saying the bad words, but they might be worrying if God is listening, and what He’ll do’. (p. 239) It is interesting to note the connection between Ruby’s thoughts and those of the children including Kathryn, Patrice, and Julianna. Likewise, Allison’s poem titled, Race, emerging from the intrapersonal realm, as Allison steps into Ruby’s shoes and echoes a critical message. Allison imagines Ruby stating in her poem, “A person is/a person/what makes/them different/their personality/ not their/race so/don’t be/mad cause/you are/a different/skin color” (Clark,

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2005a). Allison’s moral imagination, like Ruby’s, acknowledges that the threatening mob does not really know what they are doing. Coles realized that Ruby was sensing the adults were suffering from an interior “moral conflict” related to their actions against one small child. Children like Allison and Ruby are trying to understand the hateful world of adults. Coles (1986) explains, “Even as we learn to dread or dislike others, thereby feeling better about ourselves, we also learn to admire others rather uncritically, or to be hopeful about others, thereby feeling safer about ourselves” (p. 238). Coles emphasized that children use “moral attribution as a means of reassurance” when adults are failing to take care of their needs (p. 238). As Cole (1986) explained Ruby’s need to voice forgiveness for the mob, was in a sense her inner “yearning for unity and peace. Unity is the ultimate treasure. It is the place where, in the garden of humanity, each one of us can grow, bear fruit, and give life. This is what we yearn for” (Vanier, 1998, p. 154). Ruby’s story inspired the children to learn from her experience and like Ruby, know that “loving our enemies means to see them as individuals who are perhaps caught up in a cycle of fear, and of oppression, and in their character traits and need for power, but who are individuals nonetheless and are, beneath everything, sacred and precious. Their secret person is hidden behind walls of fear” (Vanier, 1998, p. 159). The following poem by Allison titled, “Race,” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J) exhibits the distress the children felt after viewing Rockwell’s painting, The Problem We All Live With (see Figure 3). Race I know I am black but I don’t care a person is a person what makes them different their personality not their race so don’t be mad cause

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you are a different skin color. As one reads the poems by children echoing Ruby’s ordeal, in relationship to their life, let us remember the important words by Anna Freud: Let us try to learn from children all they have to tell us…and let us sort out only later, how their ideas fit in with our own. Sometimes the children we see will even help us with our own problems, those of theory, because there can be many clues for theory in what a child chooses to say to an adult listener. (as cited in Coles, 1986, p. 15) Like Allison, James wrote a poem encompassing his deeply felt emotions regarding Ruby Bridges ordeal at age six. He decided to title his poem, “Horrible,” and to place the emphasis on Ruby’s suffering each day by repeating the word horrible between each line. James was labeled a below-average student by his teacher as he struggled with reading and writing. His language became increasingly elaborative as he viewed a series of paintings. James wanted people to understand exactly what Ruby had to suffer. He asks us to imagine how Ruby felt in his poem titled, “Horrible” (Clark, 2005a, pp. 162–163). Horrible A little black girl Being the only black child in the crowd Horrible. No one likes you because you’re black, Horrible. Imagine a bloody red tomato stain On that beautiful white dress, Horrible. So many prejudice and racist people, Horrible. Smashed thrown tomatoes, Horrible. Thinking the world would never change, Oh, that’s so horrible. Please God please forgive them.

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The thought-provoking book Becoming Human, by Jean Vanier (1998), captures the urgency to “cultivate our gifts and also to be open to others, to look at them not with a feeling of superiority but eyes of respect. It means to become men and women with the wisdom of love. For this, we often need help” (p. 3). Vanier believed in the inner beauty of every human being which inspired his work to establish the first homes of L’Arche for men and women that were discarded by their communities and families due to their disabilities. He implores us to understand the “inner beauty of every human being” which is “at the heart of all true education and at the heart of being human” (p. 23). The great cause of our loneliness is when we “start selecting and judging people instead of welcoming them as they are—with their sometimes hidden beauty, as well as their more frequently visible weaknesses—we are reducing life, not fostering it.” The children’s poetry revealed Ruby’s beauty and inner strength and thus “her hidden beauty rises to the surface where it may be more clearly seen by all” (Vanier, 1998, p. 23). Merton (2018), believes we have a choice in life to choose our identity and pathway in life. The children, through their poetry, are reminding us or rather challenging us, to have the courage to reveal our “hidden beauty.” Merton explains: We have a choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real and which lives by a shadowy autonomy for the brief moment of earthly existence, and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in who he subsists. (p. 77) Educators have a choice to re-examine their practice and theory in that, at this time, we are shutting down children from learning. Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 captured the drudgery he endured in his childhood, and the drudgery described continues to impact our public schools in the 21st century, in such a way that harms the young hearts and minds of children. The child’s inner imaginative beauty is stunted. Many children are siting for long hours in a classroom. Are they also defeated by the classroom walls that are, “straight walls staring at me with the blank stare of the blind?” Tagore explains: Our childhood should be given its full measure of life’s draught, for which it has an endless thirst. The young mind should be saturated with the idea that it has been born in a human world which is in harmony with the

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world around it. And this is what our regular type of school ignores with an air of superior wisdom, severe and disdainful. It forcibly snatches away children from a world full of the mystery of God’s own handiwork, full of the suggestiveness of personality. It is a mere method of discipline which refuses to take into account the individual. It is a manufactory specially designed for grinding out uniform results. It follows an imaginary straight line of the average in digging its channel of education. But life’s line is not the straight line, for it is fond of playing the see-saw with the line of the average, bringing upon its head the rebuke of the school. For according to the school, life is perfect when it allows itself to treated as dead, to be cut into symmetrical conveniences. And this was the cause of my suffering when I was sent to school. For all of a sudden I found my world vanishing from around me, giving place to wooden benches and straight walls staring at me with the blank stare of the blind. (Tagore, 1933)

Note 1 This poem originally appeared in Forum on Public Policy, Vol. 2005, No. 1, p. 434.

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Blue Lavender Wanderer: A Child’s Soulful Voice Revealed Research built upon a framework integrating the psychology of art and aesthetics, in which the spiritual and emotional realms were ignited, thus revealed the emerging moral imagination. “There are many different types of beauty; the beauty of the human face and form, spiritual, intellectual, and moral beauty…” (O’Sullivan, 2011, p. 11). The sensory realm is the place through which the imagination triggers our heart and mind in relationship to our natural world and each other when activated by great works of art and aesthetics. Developing the sensory realm is the most neglected in the child’s development of moral imagination currently in our school’s curriculum. O’Sullivan (2011) concurs stating, “The senses may be seen as the nurturers of our spiritual, emotional and intellectual being. They are the channels that can lead us to love, hope and understanding” (p. 65). It is through these sensory experiences in the child’s life that leads to moral development and the discovery of our true self. Steiner (1932/1966), stressed to educators that “if in our education we ourselves give the children images we are taking up cosmic activity”…meaning “[the child’s] soul nature is formed out of the cosmos, and also what he takes from the cosmos…Therefore, whilst as educators we acquire the power to work in images we must continually have the feeling: you are working with the whole [child]; it echoes, as it were, through the whole human being, if you work in images” (pp. 38–39). Steiner continues to develop a connection of the origins of our creation stating, “The spiritual Powers have so dealt with us that they have planted within us this image activity which works on in us after birth” (p. 39). The most intimate of sensory experience is meeting your truest self when face-to-face with a painting that speaks to the depths of your soul. For children, this is the pathway to releasing their voice as illustrated in samples of their poetry presented in this research. Like the children, in a similar way, Henri Nouwen (2007) an internationally renowned spiritual leader, teacher and author, when standing face to face with a Georgia O’Keeffe painting stated, “Seeing her art is seeing her life, and seeing her life is helping me see my own” (p. 86). The power of the shared sensory aesthetic experience in seeing oneself, when facing a work of art, is emphasized by Coles (1997) stating that, “children constantly ask their whys, seek the moral reasons upon which to gird their © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004432871_004

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search of meaning and purpose; to see an understanding of what truly matters” (p. 178). In response to the nature of the sensory realm and the impact on cognition, Arnheim (1996) stated: What confronts the senses: the dialogue of pine trees with the wind blowing across the ocean; or the way an assortment of fruit arranges itself on a table; or the majestic rising of a drawbridge that lets a boat pursue its course on the river. Such cognition is creative because it is much more than looking, hearing, or feeling. It explores the nature of things quite actively. (p. 96) As part of aesthetic methodology, it was of key importance to provide sensory experiences through visual thinking methods that awakened and released the moral imagination within the children’s poetry. As children reflected on visual associations and cues embedded in the artwork, moral feelings that originated in the intrapersonal realm eventually were expressed as interpersonal feelings toward family and others in the children’s lives surfaced (Clark, 2005a). “Blue Lavender Wanderer” was the first poetic composition by a nine-year-old child that poignantly expressed Evalyn’s feelings. After sharing her poem, Evalyn stated, “Now the fire is burning within me again.” It is important to note that this child was not necessarily deemed to be above grade level or identified for the school’s gifted program. The following is Evalyn’s poem titled, “Blue Lavender Wanderer” (Clark, 1998).

figure 4 Gogh, Vincent van (1853–1890). The Starry Night. Saint Rémy, June 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 × 36 1/4” (73.7 × 92.1 cm). Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

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Blue Lavender Wanderer When the massive marigolds of riches flutter in the velvet sky in purple haze, When the townspeople drift off to their world with tears and folds of dark and light And faces of satin that never seem to think But stand against a nameless wall, With a clueless person sagging inside of them, I drift to the starry night outside my world. The angels hold the stars like a tugboat in a darkened chalkboard world, While God’s gentle hands seem to reach out and soothe the pain of grieved people. To tell them they’re all right. To tell them his spirit is there and that they’re still loved. At that moment, I feel as if I have been lifted off the ground as if I were chosen to touch the stars. I slowly open my eyes and feel a warm breeze about me, as if I were spoken to, From somebody I know deep inside my heart, but will never see the face of or see his shadow against the bittersweet moonlight. The satin covered hills trip along the valleys, dark eyed shadows and personalities of the night seem to whisper a darkened word of wisdom and faith. I gaze up and let my spirit disappear into the soul of the stars. Through purple haze, into the spirit of the blue lavender wanderer inside my soul. Solitude emerges through my moody cornflower world of the mysterious, shadow reflected sky. As seen in Evalyn’s poetic and complex poem created after viewing The Starry Night by van Gogh (see Figure 4), it is difficult to fathom that she is nine-years old. One of the last sections of Evalyn’s poem magnifies Arnheim’s (1989) theory of the impact on cognition through the arts. One can clearly see the depth of Evalyn’s thinking, that captured a fragment of van Gogh’s soulful beauty and deepest thoughts while recovering in his hospital room and first envisioning an idea for a painting of the starry sky and mountains below his window. Evalyn’s perception gracefully moved into a depth of hope she willed van Gogh to

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have in her poetic composition, at the moment of conceiving The Starry Night. Did Evalyn realize that she had stepped into van Gogh’s spirit when composing, “I gaze up and let my spirit disappear into the soul of the stars?” Evalyn has depicted an emotional connection as if she was in the room painting, full of hope, alongside van Gogh. She continues, At that moment, I feel as if I have been lifted off the ground as if I were chosen to touch the stars. I slowly open my eyes and feel a warm breeze about me, as if I were spoken to, From somebody I know deep inside my heart, but will never see the face of or see his shadow against the bittersweet moonlight. Evalyn’s moral imagination captured the essence of van Gogh, and sensed a deep spiritual awakening. Evalyn’s poetic language emerged from her heart and mind, extending van Gogh’s message of The Starry Night, that if we listen, we can feel somebody speaking to us within our heart. Evalyn illuminates van Gogh’s voice stating, “feel a warm breeze about me, as if I were spoken to.” Evalyn did not know that van Gogh took one full year of agonizing over the composition of the most famous final depiction of The Starry Night (1889). It is remarkable to read how Evalyn imagines van Gogh in front of his easel painting and reveals in her poetic language the spiritual intensity of van Gogh’s thoughts. Evalyn continued: The satin covered hills trip along the valleys, dark eyed shadows and personalities of the night seem to whisper a darkened word of wisdom and faith. I gaze up and let my spirit disappear into the soul of the stars. Through purple haze, into the spirit of the blue lavender wanderer inside my soul. Solitude emerges through my moody cornflower world of the mysterious, shadow reflected sky. For van Gogh, The Starry Night was his Gethsemane, pushing deeper via his very soul, to express a sky of hope, and perhaps symbolizing a deeply spiritual experience. Did van Gogh know what he was trying to capture as he kept at it over a year creating many paintings until at last, he captured solitude, wisdom and faith? Bonafoux (1992) states, Vincent “had discovered the power of light in Arles, a challenge to his art and an illustration of a dream. Vincent wrote to

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his brother and said, “The sight of the stars always makes me dream, as simple as the black dots on a map representing towns and villages make me dream… Just as we take the train to go to Tarascon or to Rouen, we take death to go to a star” (p. 111). Soth (1986) cites van Gogh’s letter in 1877 to illustrate his belief. Van Gogh writes, “it is good to believe that now, just as in the olden days, an angel is not far off from those who are sad…And we, even if we should not see an angel, even though we are not like the men of old, should we not know there is strength from above” (p. 311)? Soth continues, “The Agony in the Garden would have had a strong appeal for Van Gogh in any case. He viewed human existence as a long suffering. The most one could give or receive during life was consolation for its sadness and strength to accept it” (p. 311). The Starry Night was a painting for all in need of consolation. Soth believes, based on van Gogh’s letters, that while trying to capture the episode of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane in the painting, Agony in the Garden, he “unconsciously merged [visions] and [the image] became The Starry Night of 1889” (p. 312). The Starry Night thus became the symbol for van Gogh to “project [his] emotional content onto nature and created a sublimated image of his ‘deepest religious feelings’. At its most profound level, The Starry Night is Van Gogh’s agony” (p. 312). Evalyn, age nine, intuitively captured a message of consolation while viewing the painting, The Starry Night. The following passage poetically expresses her understanding of consolation in her poem titled, “Blue Lavender Wanderer”: While God’s gentle hands seem to reach out and soothe the pain of grieved people. To tell them they’re all right. To tell them his spirit is there and that they’re still loved. At that moment, I feel as if I have been lifted off the ground as if I were chosen to touch the stars. Evalyn wrote, “Solitude emerges through my moody cornflower world of the mysterious, shadow reflected sky.” Van Gogh desired to create a painting “that would, through the use of the imagination, be something more than a realistic depiction of nature. Not only would such a painting be exalted beyond reality, but it would be consoling as well” (Soth, 1986, p. 301). Soth (1986) explains the origins of van Gogh’s imagination to express the desire to create a painting that would be a message of consolation. The following psalm is from a book of psalms set to music that van Gogh brought while serving the miners of the Borinage. Soth states:

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Van Gogh made one doodle in the 634 pages of that book, Van Gogh made one drawing, really just a doodle, but that doodle is in the shape of a crescent moon. It is in the margin of the following verse, which van Gogh underlined. It is a verse of faith and consolation…an emblem of faith and consolation…Starry night should be understood: an emblem of consolation in a painting meant to be consoling. (1986, p. 309) L’Eternel seul est ma Lumiere Ma delieverance et mon appui: Qu-aurai-je craindre sur la terre Puisque ma force est toute en lui? The Lord is my light, My deliverance and my support: What will I have to fear on Earth Since my strength is all in Him. Educators in general and elementary school teachers in particular have not yet realized that the arts act as a catalyst, stimulating the interplay between a child’s intuition and intellect, as seen in Evalyn’s poem, “Blue Lavender Wanderer.” This interplay is crucial if the preadolescent child is to cope with complex images and material (Arnheim, 1989). The work of van Gogh and his life’s passion to create provides the imagination a window to evaluate one’s own passion for life. For Vincent, he was the first to admit his limitations and errors, yet also honestly expressed “his search for many things.” Vincent wrote to his friend van Rappard stating, “I did not know of any painter who had as many faults as I have myself, but that even so I was not convinced that I was radically wrong.” Yet even when faced with his own critique and that severe criticism of another, Vincent lamented to his friend expressing moral feeling and thinking, And still, even if I do keep on producing work, containing errors (errors that appear, chiefly, when they are searched for), I do believe that my work has a life of its own…which will out thunder all the mistakes— given a public with character enough to look at the things with a reflective mind. And with all my mistakes, it won’t be an easy task to out-thunder me…I am too convinced of my aim, I know what I want too well; …I am too sure that I am on the right track when I paint what I feel, and feel what I paint; I am too sure of being on the right track to worry about what people say of me.

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Still, that does sometimes make life difficult for me. I think it quite possible that there will come a time when some people will be sorry about the things they have said of me, about opposition or indifference with which they treated me. (as cited in van Messel, 1936, p. 218) In this highly private and personal letter by Vincent, he expressed that, his work had always revealed a sense of loneliness. Similar to Hopper’s sense of his painting titled, Nighthawks, depicting a sense of, “our ultimate loneliness” (Lyons, 1995). Hoppers (1942) and van Gogh’s (1889) sense of alienation within their paintings, Nighthawks and The Starry Night, touched the preadolescents’ imagination and allowed them to recall subtle incidents when they experienced a sense of alienation with people in their own lives. In a similar way, the emotional and sensory realms ignited by The Starry Night, the children were drawn to the lonely street and deserted sidewalk in Nighthawks (see Figure 2), with three faceless subjects seated at the diner. Van Gogh painted a world, his personal Gethsemane, an artist alienated from society, while enduring a personal search for love, as represented symbolically in The Starry Night. Like van Gogh, Edward Hopper was also known to live as a recluse, as “his own silences and the sense of forbidding silence implied in most of his paintings (Charles Burchfield spoke of Hopper’s paintings as “silent poetry”) inevitably suggest the image of a bleak personality” (Marker, 2005, p. 17). Hopper described himself stating, “I’m a self-seeker,” directing us to understand his deeper message and mystery for reverence in his life and art by simply explaining that, “the whole answer is there on the canvas” (Marker, 2005, p. 17). Hopper’s “silent poetry” made an instant impression on Jonathan. When first viewing Nighthawks, Jonathan was immediately drawn to the characters’ position in relation to the setting and felt the isolation depicted. As he studied the painting, he began to locate Hopper’s characters in the context of the painting and provided language to capture the loneliness he imagined in the café, “dark as night” (Clark, 2005a, p. 96). Nighthawks People hiding from others. Store, dark as night So still, no sound Windows look abandoned like a sunken ship. Bar filled with sadness Mysterious like a guy in a trench coat. Man looks sad.

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Like Jonathan, Kathryn was first drawn to what she called, “the empty feeling of the painting, Nighthawks, and to the shadows within the painting. Kathryn expressed what she saw stating, “I keep looking at the background really. I keep looking at the windows and the empty house in the sold-out store. It looks very interesting because it looks like there’s shadows.” Another child, Patrice, when also viewing the painting, Nighthawks, said she was drawn to the “expression on these faces,” and the characters, “working in the dead of night.” Patrice continued stating, “I think about how the artist felt and I think about the colors and all the details that the artist included. They make me feel like I’m kind of in a dream.” Patrice then created the following poem titled, “Lonely Night” (Clark, 2005a, pp. 138–139). Lonely Night Lonely night, lonely street, lonely man How did they get there? Walking or driving? Seats are empty Dark as paint Why are they out at night? Stores closed, Abandoned houses. A lonely man without anyone to talk to. Where does that door go to? What are they drinking? Why is everything so lonely Like lonely street, lonely man and lonely night. When Rachel first viewed Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper (see Figure 2), she was also drawn to the “mysterious and dangerous” faces on the characters in the bar scene. Rachel said if she were in the bar with the characters she would want to “be aware” and she would “keep looking back” behind her. She initially described the lady in the painting as “weird” and noticed the men in “dark hats and dark suits.” Rachel’s intrapersonal feeling was expressed simply as in “being aware.” She sensed an uneasy feeling that she described as mysterious with a sensation of danger. Rachel’s interpersonal feeling increased in complexity as she participated in the visual thinking process. For example, when Rachel viewed the painting The Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh (see Figure 4), her initial intrapersonal feelings revealed as she described what she felt stating, “sadness, melancholy, peace, prayer, and painted in sorrow.” Rachel

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made a list of feelings as she stepped into the scene of Nighthawks, beside the men in “dark hats and dark suits.” Rachel then composed a poem titled, “That’s the Way I Feel.” Rachel speaks through the voice of the character expressing empathy that is interpersonal in nature at first, then she goes deeper expressing such despair for the future. Her despair is felt at her very core, “in my soul/ in my heart/in my spine/in my mind everywhere/everyday. Her intrapersonal feelings, empathic in nature, reveal a moral imagination for all people living without hope (Clark, 2005a, pp. 131–132). That’s the Way I Feel lonely abandoned scared alone crying emptyhearted uninterested bored distracted thinking remember thought gloomy frustrated That’s the way I feel today tomorrow forever in my soul in my heart in my spine in my mind everywhere everyday all the time As Rachel continued to think visually her personal symbolic language increased in complexity when viewing The Starry Night by van Gogh. When expressing van Gogh’s hope to be as “thick and blue” as the brush strokes,

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Rachel metaphorically compared hope to the action of his painting. This complex comparison is illustrated in Rachel’s poem, “I Can Only” (Clark, 2005a, pp. 129–130). I Can Only I have hope Well…it’s almost gone What is left of it is all alone It’s there alright But doesn’t that mean my hope will come true It’s on thick and blue At least the little that is left I can only HOPE. That my hope will come true and make me happy. Rachel expressed intrapersonal feeling through the voice of van Gogh as he painted The Starry Night (see Figure 4). Her personal symbolic language increased in complexity when using the comparison between clinging to the only hope held inside Vincent which is as “thick and blue” as the painted sky. Once more this example is stunning and sophisticated cognition. Reflecting on van Gogh’s letter to his friend, juxtaposed with Rachel’s moral thinking defining hope in relation to Vincent’s thick painterly style, one can distinctly see the poignant relationship between Vincent’s and Rachel’s sense of moral imagination. Rachel could not believe Vincent would give up all hope. In a poignant style beyond her years, she described van Gogh’s hope, captured within his brush strokes, stating, “It’s on thick and blue/At least the little that is left.” I wondered if Rachel was sensing a lessoning of hope in her life and in others at ten years of age. Like Rachel, Kathryn also stepped into the place of Vincent van Gogh in her imaginative poem, “My Guardian Angels,” which was inspired after viewing van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night. Kathryn used the voice of the artist looking out the window while in her imagination she was painting, she stepped into the life and mind of Vincent. She expressed a sense of hope, inspired from nature as she looked out the window. She stated, “The whirling wind believing in me/and giving me hope./The biggest star I see tonight,/Guiding me toward my destination.” She continued to elaborate with imaginative description an inspirational scene of love for nature stating, “The tall midnight trees/keeping me and my life guessing./The moon always singing in my ear,/Telling me my

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destiny./Town shows love and light/and tells me I should have faith in me and my art.” Nature’s scene, in van Gogh’s paintings, becomes an imaginary reference as her “guardian angel.” Kathryn had a personal goal to keep, to do well in school. Kathryn was raised by her grandmother and her many responsibilities were weighing her down and she expressed worry that she was not doing well in school. Her poetic voice captures hope, a belief in her destiny, a renewed belief in herself, and trusting love; perhaps she does have a guardian angel. Kathryn’s poem (Clark, 2005b, p. 436): My Guardian Angels1 The dark crystal skies Looking like ocean waves Moving back and forth. The whirling wind believing in me and giving me hope. The biggest star I see tonight, Guiding me toward my destination. The tall midnight trees keeping me and my life guessing. The moon always singing in my ear Telling me my destiny. Town shows love, and light and tells me I should have faith in me and my art. Mountain black as a cat telling me why I was brought to earth and what my art brings out to people. Church bells ringing in my ear telling me what I shall do, Where I shall go from here? Kathryn’s personal symbolic imagery captures an empathic understanding of the rejection van Gogh suffered as an artist and his isolation in the hospital. Kathryn’s moral thought, revealed through intrapersonal feelings, speaks to a hopeful artist, one that needs to “keep faith in her art and her life.” Kathryn’s deeply reflective thinking represented hope found in the spirituality of nature by the struggling artist. Kathryn’s poem portrays a sense of doubt van Gogh may have held, suffering from isolation and despair, as she reminds us that the “Town shows love and light/And tells me I should have faith in me and my

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art.” Her moral thought is revealed during a discussion about her poem, as she reminds us to “keep our faith in ourselves” and to do “whatever you want to do without anyone stopping you…just have fun with your life while you still can.” Kathryn identified specific lines in her poem such as, “Mountain black as a cat telling me/why I was brought to earth/and what my art brings out to people,” revealed her hope; that her art may in some way help people. In a subtle way, she was telling van Gogh to be hopeful and not to stop painting. Kathryn questioned her future by saying, “Church bells ringing in my ear/Telling me what I shall do./Where I shall go from here?” Kathryn’s viewpoint moved from the intrapersonal to the interpersonal realm to create an important message for us to consider. In many ways Kathryn did indeed capture the doubts creators have during the creative process, especially those that are deemed weird or misfits by society, such was the case during van Gogh’s lifetime. Another child, Shay, at age nine, was considered by the teacher to be a “reluctant writer” and was identified for special education services by the school. After viewing Vincent’s painting, Shay wrote a profound poem titled, “Sadness” that instantaneously was revealed. Shay’s poem titled, “Sadness” (Clark, 1998): Sadness I’m looking at Mr. Gogh’s, “The Starry Night” and there is Sadness I cannot explain, Like a million lumps in my throat. There is power in the simplicity of Shay’s expression. There was “no need to write anymore,” he proudly stated. That one sentence completely captured a sense of what Shay thought “Mr. van Gogh” was feeling after completing his painting. We can only imagine how van Gogh might have felt upon completing his masterpiece, The Starry Night, after a year of work. Perhaps Shay did capture van Gogh’s agony, as he gazed at his painting after the ordeal in the hospital; van Gogh passionately expressed aloud, there is a, “sadness I cannot explain/Like a million lumps in my throat.” Perhaps van Gogh believed the creation of, The Starry Night, “prepares the way for God who makes his presence felt by leading me out of my time and place into his being where there is neither time nor place, only a mysterious sense of peace and a longing for eternity” (Baucom, 1999, p. 153). In a letter to his dear brother Theo, van Gogh shares his love of beauty in nature that takes over his imagination stating:

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I have never had such a chance, nature here being so extraordinarily beautiful. Everywhere and all over the vault of heaven is a marvelous blue, and the sun sheds a radiance of pure sulfur, and it is soft and as lovely as the combination of heavenly blue and yellows…it absorbs me so much that I let myself go, never thinking of a single rule. (as cited in Bonafoux, 1992, p. 134) The Starry Night is a masterpiece of beauty, one is which “the collision between awareness and signifying form, between perception and the aesthetic, is among the most powerful” (Steiner, 1998, as cited in Waldron, 1999, p. 162). Waldron (1999) points to the divine in us and the moral imagination, stating, We must enter into a self-forgetting—the ego and all its demands must be placed on the back burner of our minds so that we can give ourselves wholly to the [aesthetic]…Such is the power of the [aesthetic], that we feel we have discovered new planets and stars, but what is often discovered is something about ourselves along with an intense realization of the moment…Consequently, we feel more alive because, in a vicarious way, we too become present to the very beauty that initially moved the poet, that is now captured forever in verse. (Waldron, 1999, p. 163) Indeed, the children are sharing moral messages from their pure soul, their moral imagination revealing another sense of time and place—such as Shay’s poetic expression of sadness, a “million lumps in my throat.” The children’s poetry captures a sense of time and place where goodness, beauty, hope, and love thrive and where awareness and care for another are expected. There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all those victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs. (Wiesel, 2006, p. 120) Wiesel (2006) is reminding us that our life has a greater purpose for all. The children’s poetry speaks to us of what is essential to them. Their moral imaginative voice lifts us to a place where we can see new and are reminded of what is truly important. Within the aesthetic longing for beauty, our moral

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imagination seeks joy, to be lifted above the secular value of power and possession, to a plain sense of what matters—for our soul—we have long neglected. Van Gogh suffered greatly to capture and paint the truth and the light from a higher source, inviting us into the holy moment of a greater power. Children like Evalyn, Kathryn, Rachel and Shay, open our eyes as educators in perhaps a shocking way, in that it is very possible we are missing the boat in public education on matters of real aesthetic experiences and curriculum. Here are children, preadolescents, that have exposed the depths of their soul, empathic thinking and moral imagination for van Gogh, an artist, a human they can relate to from a different time and culture. Arnheim (1969) states that, Artistic activity is form of reasoning, in which perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined…A review of what is known about perception, and especially about sight, made me realize that the remarkable mechanisms by which the senses understand the environment are all identical with the operations describe by the psychology of thinking…Truly productive thinking in whatever area of cognition takes place in the realm of imagery. (p. v) Arnheim (1969) warned educators that “a split between sense and thought, which caused various deficiency diseases in modern man” (p. v). As seen through the above examples by Rachel, Jonathan, Evalyn, Kathryn and Shay, the children’s poetry as cognitive symbolic products, that originated from both the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences, are empathic in nature. Their personal language and ideas, a product of cognition, were collected during the sensory and visual thinking process. All the children’s language, visual data that was captured, represented their “build-in limits of knowing” (Gardner, 1991) in reference to their definitive ways of defining objects and characters into broad categories. These categories are “tangible or intangible, living or nonliving, feeling or nonfeeling” and reflect “ways in which they know about their existence regarding “personal developed theories of mind, matter, life, self, and other ontological realms” (Gardner, 1991, pp. 102–103). The children’s poetry represented a creative symbolic product whereby new ideas and imagery surfaced within their imagination. The interface, of an aesthetic dialogue, between the art and the child, created a sensation that they were confronting a mysterious gift created by the artist. The children were intrigued by the artist’s struggle to create an idea. “When we are moved by art we are grateful that the artist lived, grateful that he labored in the service of his gifts” (Hyde, 2007, p. xv).

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The children’s poetry was read, shared, and discussed and represented new forms of thinking formulated from imaginary references inherent in their visual data collected in personal journals. They assembled and arranged their ideas, placed on assorted post-it notes, into symbolic poems. The children’s ideas quickly advanced as they studied and reflected on their original notes. New ideas came surging, like waves to the shore, revealing individual thoughts on relationships that were empathic and deeply personal. As evidenced by the above poems, moral seeing, moral feeling, and moral thinking is manifested as the children’s sense of self as a writer and artist deepened. They began to trust the process, and did not question or doubt their ideas, just simply recorded them. As a result, many children created multiple poems at a time. It’s also important to note that as the children’s confidence in their imaginative possibilities increased, they were more and more excited to share their poetry with other children, many standing and seriously reading their work, with profound silence by all at the end. Suddenly after the words floated in the air and into our hearts, applause would break out, cheering one another on, a compassionate artistic community was born, where all ideas and views were accepted. The children began to understand one another, to see one another in new ways as a result of sharing their innermost thoughts, feelings, and beliefs derived from interfacing with the arts and aesthetic experiences. They discovered that they were not isolated in feeling anxiety, fear, loss of hope, trauma, or bullying. The children became Blue Lavender Wanderers, as their soul voices merged with the soul of the artists, freely communing in the artist’s world; the characters bearing the weight within the paintings, away from the world of school, of judgement, of harassment, of labels, of being less than. Remarkably, one may view the cycle of art and aesthetic experiences as a gift, as pointed out by Hyde (2007), explaining how the artist first receives a gift of his imagination and ideas via his senses and experiences, and secondly, the idea was created in such a way that the artist perceives they received a gift, as if from a higher power. D. H. Lawrence when asked about creating his work stated, “Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me” (p. xiv). Hyde describes the paradox of the aesthetic as a gift stating: The creation of the work—what we might call the inner life of art; but it is my assumption that we should extend this way of speaking to its outer life as well, to the work after it has left its maker’s hands. The art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift is received. (2007, p. xiv)

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Lastly, in the cycle of art, we look at the children’s poetry, who willingly received the aesthetic gift from the artist when facing their great works of art. The cycle of art continues, for now we have the children’s stunning poetry, messages for our tired heart and soul, feeding us hope. What gift will we create? My World This is my world in my words. The bay is tan and covered with birds. In the middle of nowhere you can hear a pin drop. The sound of the water is plip, plop, plop. Children like the individual who wrote, “My World,” after viewing Winslow Homer’s painting, Breezing Up, of fishermen out in the sea, clearly tells us that her poetry is hers and hers alone by writing, “This is my world in my words.” (Clark, 1998). She is mindful and present within the painting, her senses ignited. She is in the boat, waiting, waiting for something; perhaps she is waiting for something meaningful in her life, listening, eyes wide-open. Her poise and grace illuminates Williams famous quote, “Outside myself there is a world.” I can only wonder if children naturally escape to their sensory and imaginative world, where they wait. Where they wait for hope, for joy, for kindness, for trust, for love to find them. Perhaps for the children school feels like a sea, “in the middle of nowhere…”

Note 1 This poem originally appeared in Forum on Public Policy, Vol. 2005, No. 1, pp. 436–437.

CHAPTER 5

Poetic Imagination May the nourishment of the earth be yours, May the clarity of light be yours, May the fluency of the ocean be yours, May the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow Wind work these words Of love around you, An invisible cloak To mind your life. O’Donohue, To bless the space between us (2008, p. 11)

∵ What do we know? What do we think about? What do we wonder about? As touched upon in the previous chapters our senses are a key integral of activation for the moral imagination when experiencing works of art. Aesthetic education methods utilizing sensory experiences gives a “voice” to the children that may otherwise exist in a “culture of silence, rather than being encouraged and equipped to know and respond to the concrete realities of their world” (Freire, 1997, p. 12). Children begin to naturally retrieve memories from their mind, sifting through webs of experiences that engagement with characters and nature imbued when viewing art. Their language through the sensory activation of memory, provides a much-needed bridge into their wonderings; what they know, think about and imagine, what they fear, have anxiety over, and hope for. We begin to see within their imaginative threads, a personal voice is revealed; a pathway created towards understanding what the children know and wonder about, as related to their life, family and experiences. Possibly what children wonder about, captured and perceived by their poetry and moral imagination, © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004432871_005

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is a form of prayer that the world might be better? Perhaps they hope all people would have kindness for others that are invisible, “peeking out from the curtain,” not seen, living on the fringes of society. The children have important messages for us as their moral feelings and thoughts grew, when inspired by the complexity of the paintings they experienced. Oftentimes, the children’s voices were closely aligned and empathic in regards to the painting’s characters, portrayed and perceived to be living on the fringes, abandoned or abused. Arnheim (1969) stated, “what is accessible to perceptual imagination at least in principle, can be expected to be open to human understanding…so every great work of art…is probably greater than the mind that made it” (p. 293). Children revealed perceptions and feelings inspired by the works of art, through their knowledge of self (intrapersonal) and their knowledge of others (interpersonal) in relationship to their environment, their culture, and their experiences when interfacing with specific works of art. The following sample illustrates evidence of imaginative thought in relationship to landscape, experiences with family, and shared experiences with others that were intrapersonal in nature. The highly descriptive language expressed in the poem, “The Wild World” by a nine-year old child (Jay) created after viewing the painting titled, Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Rousseau, 1891), captures the power of nature (Clark, 1998). It is remarkable when one considers the last three poetic ideas, “Bushes with hands that grab the midnight ghost/One thousand daggers stab the purple sky and it starts to pour with/gruesome rain.”

figure 5 Rousseau, Henri (1844–1910). Le Douanier. Tropical Thunderstorm with a Tiger, 1891. Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London, Great Britain. Erich Lessing/Digital Image © Art Resource, NY

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The Wild World Leaves as red as the rising sun. Dark green trees like a forest with no end. Light yellow tall grass squiggling in the wind of worms. Lightning as white as a ghost and as skinny as spaghetti. Bushes with hands that grab the midnight ghost. One thousand daggers stab the purple sky and it starts to pour with gruesome rain. It is evident in Jay’s poem, “The Wild World,” that the arts and aesthetic experience awakened this child’s moral imagination, releasing their inner voice and perhaps providing clues to larger questions of identity, place, home, family and goals of life. Changemakers and peacemakers throughout history having a deep moral sense that developed at childhood through sensory and aesthetic experiences supports the critical need to develop moral imagination in the early years. For example, Jane Goodall (2014) shares her remembrance of the beauty of nature from her first experiences with nature on the river and after reading the classic childhood story, The Wind in the Willows. The aesthetic and sensory experiences shaped Goodall’s thinking (p. 13). Seeds of Hope is a wellspring of Goodall’s moral imagination inspired from her early years, to awaken people to act to save and heal our Earth. All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all! Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails, Yellow feet a-quiver, Yellow bills all out of sight Busy in the river (The Wind in the Willows, as cited in Goodall, 2014, p. 9) The arts continue to be marginalized and isolated within curriculum mandates, with reform movements continually relegating the arts and aesthetic experiences as non-priorities. Innovative methods of aesthetic education unlock a child’s moral imagination thereby releasing their imaginative voice especially those children deemed at-risk (Clark, 2005a). At the heart of the aesthetic methodology enacted lies artistic and critical civic engagement celebrating the compassionate community when children’s

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voices celebrate social responsibility and compassionate action towards others (Clark & French, 2014). This research represents a multi-method approach, utilizing a natural setting (university campus, urban classroom, local community venues), for the collection of interview data, focus group data, symbolic messages, student reflective journals and poetry (Clark, 2005a). For example, after organizing and participating in the university’s New Britain Museum Compassionate Community Celebration, with second grade children from surrounding urban and suburban communities, the following poems were inspired by the children after viewing and discussing selected paintings from the museums’ collection (Clark & Button, 2011). Poem Number One: If I were in the painting I hear the creek rushing along. I smell the cool spring air. I feel the soft new grass. I wade into the water. It is cold. I can just see the city in the background. It is peaceful. Poem Number Two: Ssssssoooooo. I heard as a little wave crashed down on top of me but now I could see a huge wave for miles. I tried to warn everybody. No One listened to me. Similarly, to the second-grade children, when viewing Romare Bearden’s painting, Summertime, the ten-year old children were deeply touched and instantly related to the character’s in the painting (see Figure 6). Summertime represented a complex visual banquet presenting a collage as a statement of Bearden’s personal life and memories. Bearden was influenced by the sensory images that the blues and jazz provoked in his heart and mind. One can see how a myriad of collaged images placed in a unique fashion provides an intimate dance of life for the human eye. In many ways, Bearden’s painting, Summertime, would raise the conscience of city life for Black Americans as it had a profound impact on the children’s expressive poetic imagination and empathic voice. The visual cues, vividly depicting the summer city scene with multiple characters, and gritty city objects, provided a more intense and diverse aesthetic visual palette by which the children could select from. The children visually applied and integrated the following elements of the reflective process,

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including sensory anchoring, instant access, and personal engagement (Perkins, 1994). At this stage of the visual thinking process the children may have achieved a personal understanding as to how their experiences, prior knowledge, attitudes, and memories can be mentally self-managed and redirected to arrive at more personal and deeper meanings when interacting with a work of art. The children naturally became more confident in their visual thinking skills and opinions, and began to see that a work of art contains many facets of life ready to be unravelled and explored. Reflective intelligence at work within the children’s visual thinking may have allowed multiple images and themes within the artwork to transfer instantly to the children’s lives. The children’s poetic imagination revealed moral feeling and thought and, in a sense, had important messages for us to pay attention to those characters we ignore on the street, homeless and struggling, that may have more in common with us than we thought. The children’s poetic and moral imagination at once depicted an empathic consciousness, via moral imagination, expressing a responsibility for those individuals cast away from the social norm. For example, Keith was inspired by the character that was hiding in the back ground behind the checkered curtain in the painting (see Figure 6), Summertime by Bearden (1967). Keith utilized the character, a visual clue, as an imaginary reference in his poem, “Not Afraid to Fight for Life.” Keith’s poetic and personal language represented the voice of the character. Keith explained to me that “the world may seem to be against you, like the character behind the curtain afraid of the shadows on the wall and voices down the hall, but you gotta fight for your life.” Keith’s cognitive symbolic language revealed moral

figure 6  Bearden, Romare (1911–1988). Summertime, 1967; Collage on board; 56 × 44 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Minority Artists Purchase Fund 22:1999. Digital Image © 2019 Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by ARS, New York, NY

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thought as he represented his view of “other peoples” existence and marginalized life within society in his poem titled, “Not Afraid to Fight for Life.” Not Afraid to Fight for Life Shadows on the wall Voices down the hall Life doesn’t frighten me at all Tap, tap, tap Stranger on the walk Whis, whis, whisper The crowd talking But no I still say Life doesn’t frighten me at all No, no, no Life is not a fright When things are not right I fight for my rights I say that I’m not afraid of life at all. Keith’s poetic language revealed both intrapersonal and interpersonal moral thought. He wanted people to think about the following profound idea for a ten-year old child, writing, “When things are not right/I fight for my rights.” Keith moved between intrapersonal moral thought writing, “Shadows on the wall/Voices down the hall/Life doesn’t frighten me at all” into interpersonal moral thought explaining to the reader, “I fight for my rights.” Keith’s poetic language captured his moral imagination that clearly represents that he has an empathic awareness of society’s class structures, regarding how others judge people living in isolation or poverty, so vividly depicted in the painting, Summertime (see Figure 6). Keith shared that he has experienced this in his life. Like Keith, another child, Patrice, delved deeply into the character’s private thoughts, by entering into an imaginary hidden, secret and isolated world, after also viewing the painting, Summertime. Although highly motivated, the teacher stated that Patrice was extremely quiet and shy. Patrice’s self-imposed isolation due to fear made it very difficult for her to make friends and feel part of the class. At first Patrice said she could not write and did not know how. After she completed her poems, a second poem composed immediately following the first, Patrice said she “felt strong.” She trusted and shared that she often felt the urge to run away from home. She was very quiet in class however

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highly observant of others. In her poem titled, “Hiding from Myself” we hear a profound call for help from Patrice to recognize and “see” her (Clark, 2005a, p. 139). Hiding from Myself Faces hiding from the enemies Eyes hiding a secret door Waiting to be open. Shining like the bright light on the Broadway Street. A game bringing a kid in everyone. Joy to the kids everywhere on the cold streets. An invisible dress vanishing in the air. When Patrice was viewing the painting Summertime, by Bearden (see Figure 6), she equated a sense of isolation in relation to the abundance of empty space within the painting. Patrice discovered that her eye would return to one specific detail in the painting, which made her begin to wonder about the character in the painting. Patrice stated: I think he’s alone and he’s trying to find somebody to talk to because there’s a lot of empty space with nothing in there. I kept staring at the man because I think whoever drew it is lonely and might want some attention. As Patrice continued to develop her visual thinking her symbolic poetic language provided evidence of personal reflections in relationship to her life that originated from the characters in the painting. The distinct visual fragments within the painting, Summertime, by Romare Bearden, related to Patrice’s personal internalization of the artwork. Patrice explained: The lady wearing the fade away dress and the curtain, the girl hiding behind the curtain trying not to be known and nobody would know her. The fade away dress is how I got my title and my story and the dress was a very interesting thing to see. I thought about what matched better with the lady and I thought it was the girl because that looked like her when she was younger. Like Patrice, Clare thoughtfully identified with the characters in the painting, and was drawn to “the depressed man in a chair on the city street.” Clare

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distinguished this visual cue and decided to descriptively capture the character’s feelings and emotions by beginning her poem with, “Being troubled in this city is heart-aching.” Clare denoted her relationship to the sad man in black by imagining he was searching for hope and “trying not to think of all my troubles.” Clare quickly captures an element on the city street not visible in the painting. This idea is purely from Clare’s imagination as experience and memory unite cognitively, igniting the idea of children playing with bubbles. She uses this idea and profoundly writes, “Seeing the children’s bubbles/Lifting away in the sky/Thinking of being lifted up/In a bubble with no worries/Or troubles.” Clare’s poem (Clark, 2005b, pp. 339–440): Troubles1 Being troubled in this city is heart-aching. Trying not to think of all my troubles. Seeing the children’s bubbles Lifting away in the sky. Thinking of being lifted up In a bubble with no worries Or troubles Wondering what it would be like with No troubles Moving on with my life. Troubles. The children shared their poetry and were duly impressed by the diversity of poetic imagination and descriptive language depicting life in the city. One child, Rachel, was inspired to write a poem titled, “So What,” after viewing the painting Summertime (see Figure 6). Her moral thought is revealed when she refers to the line in her poem, “raggedy behind dress” as being, “ripped and stained and worn, till it’s just cloth,” and she continued saying, “I love it.” Rachel expressed hope amidst despair through love for her family and for a dress that most people would throw away. This rejection may be compared to the way Rachel perceives society rejecting impoverished and isolated people. Rachel’s voice in, “So What,” moved between intrapersonal and interpersonal moral thought. She bets she can beat us at her fame because she wants, “to buy some milk for my mom.” Her strength is expressed in winning a

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game of jacks but deteriorates in the end when she stated that, “We are pretty poor.” Hope emerged at the end of, “So What,” as Rachel expressed moral thought and stated, “But I’ll survive,/I’ll survive.” Rachel reflected on the meaning behind her poem stating that it is important to remember to “just be yourself and really look at what someone else is doing…try to relate to them on a really comfortable level…understand and be patient.” The character speaking in, “So What,” wants to be understood having both a sense of pride and a sense of not caring, which is expressed in the repeated use of the line, “So what.” Rachel explained that she capitalized the repeated line as, “So what,” for emphasis within the character’s voice (Clark, 2005b, pp. 438–439). So What2 I live in the city Yeah, so what My family is poor So what. I have an uncle who’s a drunk, An aunt who’s mental, And a grandfather who’s a drug addict. So what. My family has love that’s what I love about it most Ya’ll say that’s all that matters First I tell you all this and you Still judge me, What a waste, You know what? I don’t care what ya’ll think, Yeah I have a raggedy behind dress It’s all ripped and stained and worn Till it’s just cloth But I love it. So what. I bet you I’ll whoop you up in the game I feel like a king off of what I gain. My life will get back to the same eventually My family has love.

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I’ll bet you a quarter To match me in a game of jacks I wanna use the money To buy some milk for my mom We are pretty poor But I’ll survive, I’ll survive. Rachel presented her life experience and view of city life. Rachel shared that she is very knowledgeable of family problems that many people face in her neighborhood. Through the voice of the character Rachel describes a tragic life by creating a sense of poverty, despair, drug addiction, and mental illness. Moral thought emerged as Rachel expressed that even though life is so tragic her “family has love.” She continued to speak to the “other,” the stereotypes impoverished, disenfranchised people and stated, “Still judge me,/What a waste,/You know what?/I don’t care what ya’ll think.” In a similar style, Clare reacted to the painting, Summertime, and wrote a poem titled, “The Mystery City” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J). Clare takes the reader “down the path of nowhere…leading to an abandoned place.” She reminds us of the invisible world where people, like the character in the painting, that is, “Peeking out, alone, and scared of this crowded world…being a complete stranger.” Clare comes full circle back to her sense of the world, “Standing in the way of everybody and everything. Being me.” The Mystery City Walking down the path of nowhere. Stairs leading to an abandoned place. A man who never gets noticed stands “invisible” to the world. Being a mystery to the world having no meaning. A weird world with basically no feelings. Peeking out, alone, and scared of this crowded world. Being a complete stranger. Looking on the bright side, Trying to be beautiful. Hiding from this mystery city.

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No place to stand for your kind of life. Standing in the way of everybody and everything. Being me. Dewey (1980) points to “how art exercises its humane function” (p. 346). Dewey explains: …poetry is a criticism of life; namely, not directly, but by disclosure, through imaginative vision addressed to imaginative experience (not to set judgement) of possibilities that contrast with actual conditions. A sense of possibilities that are unrealized and that might be realized are when they are put in contrast with actual conditions…It is by a sense of possibilities opening before us that we become aware of constrictions that hem us in and burdens that oppress…‘Poetical values are, after all, values in a human life’. (pp. 346–347) Why is it, as Dewey (1980) states, that art has yet to be “the incomparable organ of instruction” in education, as a way to release the knowledge and experiences children hold so dear to their heart and soul (p. 347)? William Carlos Williams (1974) teaches us how he discovered more about his self, in relation to the aesthetic of nature’s beauty. One can see ways in which his poetic voice expressed values of “a human life” as Dewey asserted. Williams (1974) passionately states: Words do not satisfy me; I will take colors and go out. Now I understand! I will go out; I will see this beauty, find it, but I will make it mine. Mine, mine, as if I can possess anything. Further that, I will give, I will give the beauty to the world in my expression. What, is nature so poor that her work must be done a second time, or have you ceased to search entirely and now are merely exhibiting? To give to the world in my expression! The thought comes with a thrill of delight. Now I think I know why I am being urged to express. It is that beauty may be given larger scope. Yes, I have ceased to search, it is true…I go forth gladly, then, looking at the sky, the streams, the trees, with a big heart to make this beauty mine. (pp. 161–162) In Williams (1986) poem titled “Smell,” we can feel the relationship of his senses and feelings toward the beauty of the earth (p. 92). Williams sees the unity between his sense and his actions and unabashedly stated, “What tactless asses we are, you and I, honey nose, always indiscriminate, always

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unashamed…” Williams continues to speak to the overpowering nature of his senses and questions it’s power, asking, “Can you not reserve your ardor for something less unlovely?” Smell Oh, strong-ridged and deeply hollowed nose of mine! What will you not be smelling? What tactless asses we are, you and I, honey nose, always indiscriminate, always unashamed, and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggles poplars; a festering pulp on the wet earth beneath them. With what deep thirst we quicken our desires to that rank odor of a passing springtime! Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors for something less unlovely? What girl will care for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways? Must you taste everything? Must you know everything? Must you have a part in everything? The arts trigger our sensory systems, what we perceive, feel, and think, and within that human paradigm we sense a greater purpose within our soul. Children begin to learn how to see, opening their eyes and composing poetry from their heart. At once, when they read their poetic compositions, their soul is awakened, they begin to see themselves in new ways. There is an instant joy for the personal creation; it is theirs, and no one can take that away from them. They own it. The poem acts as a symbolic pillar of who they begin to perceive their self to be and who they may become, as in Emily’s story (see Chapter 2). Children naturally employ their senses when viewing and thinking about the characters in a painting. When viewing Henry Tanner’s painting titled, The Banjo Lesson, Kathryn explored interpersonal relationships between the characters. Her sensory system expressed in complex forms to embrace and capture as Tanner did the loving relationship between the old man (teacher) and young boy (learner). It is important to note that Kathryn was perceived by her classroom teacher to be average. However, within Kathryn’s poetic expression it is clear that she was in fact, profoundly beyond her years, as she utilized her senses to capture the beauty of human love. One could say in a sense as startling as William Carlos Williams. Kathryn’s poem titled, “Life’s Sounds,” was created after viewing The Banjo Lesson (1893) by Henry Tanner (Clark, 2005a, p. 150).

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figure 7 Tanner, Henry O. (1859–1937). The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Oil on canvas, 49 × 35.5” (124.5 × 90.2 cm). Digital Image © Collection of the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA

Life’s Sounds The soothing sound of the banjo playing softly and gently. Tiny fingers struggling to reach the strings of the banjo. The sounds of pots and pans Are like drums going wild Playing freely among us. A golden tablecloth reflecting the light of the sun. Isn’t life the most precious thing you ever heard of?

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Another poem by Rachel also inspired by Tanner’s painting, The Banjo Player, beautifully reminds us of how important family and love are to a child. Instinctively, Rachel knows that memories of love remind us of who we are. Rachel wrote, “I just wanna sit here and suck up his laughs/And my memories/I suppose I’ll member/Them for the rest of my life and his.” After participating in the visual thinking process, the level of visual thought increased in complexity as Rachel began to describe what she believed to be the inner quality of the character as depicted form the detailed expression on the character’s face. Rachel described both her thinking, “a spark in my mind” as well as distinct parts of the painting The Banjo Player, by Tanner (see Figure 7) that inspired her poem (Clark, 2005a). Rachel explained: The part where he is looking down at the banjo really serious like and his father looks like he has a grin on his face and he’s looking at the child like he was doing the right thing and it kind of put a spark in my mind and made me think about maybe the mother’s over there cooking something and she’s there with them and she’s kind of admiring them from a distance. Rachel reported that she used the painting The Banjo Player, by Tanner for the inspiration of her poem. Rachel selected one section of her poem to illustrate how her idea evolved. Rachel imagined that a mother was at the stove cooking while the banjo lesson was taking place. Moral imagination (moral seeing) is evident within Rachel’s personal symbolic language that articulated the sense of love within family life in her poem titled, “I’ll Remember” (Clark, 2005a, p. 98). Visual thought increased in complexity as Rachel’s mind’s eye expanded the painting beyond the physical boundaries. Like Patrice’s aesthetic phrase, “The invisible dress vanishing in the air,” the complexity of Rachel’s moral seeing increased to include an imaginary element. Her poem placed herself within the painting’s borders and conversation cued the maternal figure as she explained, “The mother’s over there cooking something and she’s there with them and she’s kind of admiring them from a distance.” Rachel’s poem titled, “I’ll Remember”: I’ll Remember Laughter fills my heart When I play the right tune I hear the noisy plumes At the same time I hear his heart laugh Ma says the aftermath of us practicing

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I gotta go to bed or go to the river to bathe I’ll do just that in the morning though I just wanna sit here and suck up his laughs And my memories I suppose I’ll member Them for the rest of my life and his. Another child, Clare, selected her favorite poem titled, “Learning,” she created after viewing Tanner’s painting, The Banjo Player (see Figure 7). Clare expressed the importance of the poem’s theme to be, “Family members helping…never to give up.” Clare identified her need for support in her life and explained that the line, “Gentle loving hands helping me along the way,” was important to her because, “family is there for you and helps you when you need help.” Clare’s poetic imagination painted a scene for the readers to feel as if they are in the room Tanner painted, breathing in all the distinct sensory imagery of the family home. Clare’s imagination deepened as she desired that depth of love and connection with family. In Clare’s poem, “Learning,” we clearly see what family means to her life (Clark, 2005a, p. 115). Learning Looking at the banjo as serious as can be. Wanting to learn more about my banjo to be. Gentle loving hands helping me along the way, Loving voices guiding my every movements. Country tunes playing in my head. Rusty old pots laying around. Trying to concentrate. Taking my mind off the squeaking old floor. Warm golden bread filling the air with scents. Not giving up trying my best. Success fills my mind, I have succeeded. My proud grandpa congratulates me. The day is done, so happy, so proud. No time to spare, bed is near. The day is done, I learned. Clare was so touched by her own poetic imagination after she created, “Learning,” that she was immediately inspired to compose a second poem titled,

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“Feelings” (Clark, 2005a, pp. 188–189). Clare was confident in her creative and poetic voice. She could sense her ideas developing throughout the process of viewing diverse works of art. She had the freedom to create and could deeply feel how much her poems meant to her. Clare wanted to share that message with everyone. It is important to note here, that at this time, Clare was deemed below grade level for reading. Feelings To be creative use pieces of life. You can be creative by being mad, sad and realistic. If you’re lonely express your feelings on paper. Art is a piece of life. Mysterious nights on a quiet day gives you feelings and thoughts. The way you feel gives you life. To breath, to like, to love, to hate. Life gives you everything. To hold, to feel, to see, to smell, to touch, To be you. Don’t be immoral, be smart. You be you and I’ll be me. Listen to your heart and soul, Be wise and make great decisions. Be a leader not a follower. Walk into the door of life. Find your soul, Find your heart, Find you, be you. Be the best you can be. In a similar style like Kathryn, Shane, juxtaposes the painting of the characterless bedroom in van Gogh’s (1888) painting titled, Vincent’s Bedroom in Arles, with his sense of hearing. At first, he hears nothing when viewing the painting, then in an almost intuitive gesture, Shane places himself in Vincent’s perfectly clean bedroom, and captures a profound thought that he hears “a silence, that it is almost noisy” (Clark, 1998). Shane gives the sound a color, “a white noise,” the noise perhaps the silent soul of van Gogh cleaning his room. Shane captures the intensity of van Gogh’s feelings, while preparing his room for his friend Paul Gauguin to arrive, in hopes of starting an artist colony in the southern France.

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figure 8 Gogh, Vincent van (1853–1890). The Bedroom at Arles, 1889. Oil on canvas, (57.5 × 74.0 cm). Inv. RF1959-2. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski. Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France. Digital Image © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY

Shane’s poem, “Bedroom in Arles”: Bedroom in Arles A room that is full with silence. So much silence, that it is almost noisy. A white noise, from all the feelings that were set free from their eternal prison, the body of a human. The room so silent, waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever will. Everything so neat, with no loose ends, fixed long, long ago, by the era’s styles and trends, so neat, so well kept, a shame that no one will see it, until the white noise turns black. Shane is considered an average student with no identification for gifted programs nor data showing he is a gifted writer, yet how do we explain this remarkable expression and ideas from a nine-year old child, that reaches deeply into

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the soul of van Gogh? When educators witness this remarkable phenomenon taking place, they must question the approaches and status-quo of curriculum mandates and testing that is completely stifling, damaging, and shutting down this type of creative and innovative expression in children to take place. Shane was quietly writing and within minutes he had something to share. How does a poem from a nine-year old child, actually create a physical reaction among the listeners within the classroom space? That day both teachers as witnesses, looked at each other and knew a miracle had occurred. There was a different light within the classroom and perhaps a type of electricity that may come with children’s imaginations transcending space and time. The teachers acknowledged to one another that they experienced a type of chill, a physical sensation, a shiver from the gooseflesh from excitement, as Shane revealed his poem, “Bedroom in Arles.” Something happens after children choose to share their poetic work; the class becomes very still, and there is a pause as if everyone has temporarily stopped breathing. Perhaps a miracle has occurred, we are “becoming more fully human” and begin to see one another in new ways (Vanier, 1998). Vanier explains: Human beings are in continual evolution. Every generation wants to achieve more than the preceding one. We are in a culture of competition. The strong, the beautiful, the intelligent, and the capable are magnified and extolled. The weak and the vulnerable are often put aside. Our world is characterized by the huge gap between the rich and the poor, the oppressors and the oppressed, and by the continual horrible conflicts between national, ethic, and religious groups…So to become human implies two realities. It means to be someone, to have cultivated our gifts, and also to be open to others, to look them not with a feeling of superiority but with eyes of respect. It means to become men and women with the wisdom of love. For this, we often need help. (p. 3) The moral imagination brings forth a glimpse of joy in the midst of joy or great suffering. The moral imagination brings meaning to our very existence as humans, our need for meaning in life—for love—for beauty, and for understanding and purpose. During his time in a concentration camp Frankl (1984) drew on the aesthetic in any variety of poetic or natural forms that could hold his memories that surfaced during this horrific time of trial in his life. He found meaning to keep his heart & mind hopeful. Frankl stated, “Finding meaning in life is by experiencing something—such as goodness, truth and beauty—by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness—by loving him” (pp. 134–135). Days after Frankl’s liberation from the concentration camp he said:

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I walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. Larks rose to the sky and I could hear their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around, and up to the sky—and then I went down on my knees. At that moment there was very little I knew of myself or of the world—I had but one sentence in mind— always the same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”…Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being. (p. 111) While in the concentration camp Frankl utilized the aesthetic memory of past life experiences by speaking to fellow prisoners and drawing from past joys and “how its light shone even in the present darkness” (p. 104). Frankl lifts his soul and others bringing beauty and inspiration and moral strength to the decadent situation in the camp and quotes a poet stating, “what you have experienced, no power on earth can take away.” Frankl continues to provide solace stating, “not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind” (p. 104). Frankl (1984) utilized the aesthetic in sharing a story to provide hope, a form of spiritual food. Frankl explains, “It was the nature of this sacrifice that it should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the world of material success. But, in reality our sacrifice did have a meaning.” Frankl said, I told them of a comrade who on his arrival in camp had tried to make a pact with Heaven that his suffering and death should save the human being he loved from a painful end. For this man, suffering and death were meaningful; his was a sacrifice of the deepest significance. He did not want to not die for nothing. The purpose of my words was to find full meaning in our life, then and there, in that hut and in that practically hopeless situation. (p. 105) Frankl continues stating: Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings,

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reaches into the lowest depths and become apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp. From all this we learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this case, no group is of “pure race”—and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards. (p. 108) Waldron (1999), draw’s out attention to “life’s immediacy” with poetry by D. H. Lawrence. One can make a similar connection to Frankl’s use of a poem and story and the need to bring hope to a hopeless situation. “Lawrence writes: Life, the ever-present, knows no finality, no finished crystallization. The prefect rose is only a running flame, emerging and flowing off, and never in any sense at rest, static, finished. Herein lies its transcendent loveliness. The whole tide of all life and all time suddenly heaves and appears before us as an apparition, a revelation…It is the source and issue, the bubbling up of the stream. Here, in this very instant moment, up bubbles the stream of time, out of the wells of futurity, flowing on the oceans of the past. The source, the issue, the creative quick. (p. 163) Frankl’s (1984), greatest message was to “choose your attitude towards suffering that you cannot change” (p. 172). Van Gogh suffered throughout his life as he described and shared through letters to his brother Theo. However, van Gogh kept on painting amidst a similar agony of the soul that Frankl experienced. Frankl captures the human need for the aesthetic stating: A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of humans is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving

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contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.” (p. 57) The children, like Shane, began to sense something greater was present as each individual shared their creation; their poetry. We do not expect children to think or express these remarkable poetic thoughts well-advanced for their age. One can only imagine that perhaps the moral imagination of a child when revealed is divine and deeply spiritual, as they are witnesses to how poignantly other children feel and perceive life at such young ages. At once they move closer into understanding one another and instantly developed a greater sense of caring and tolerance. Labels and stereotypes disappear, when children are faced in a very real sense with possibility for the first time; knowing one another and coming closer to touching the beauty of life, of art and creating something new that a few minutes earlier did not exist. They are the creators and we sense that the Creator is stirring something deep down within them to express hope, love, and forgiveness. Frankl (1984), stressed the importance of finding meaning in life which “is by experiencing something—such as goodness, truth, and beauty [the aesthetic]—by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness—by loving him” (pp. 133–134). C. S. Lewis in a similar sense to Frankl, spoke of a deeper longing for joy, to reawaken joy in such a way as to experience deeply a desire, a “stab of longing” in such a way for example, to “possess autumn.” Lewis stated, It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire…but joy is never in our power and pleasure often is…It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, “in another dimension.” (as cited in Baucom, 1999, p. 151) “Humans cannot define what constitutes their humanity. It transcends them. As we work for forgiveness, we are called to reflect that as human beings, each of us is created in the image of God, the most Merciful. This is our calling, our mission: to become mirrors of mercy” (Muller-Fahrenholz as cited in Vanier, 1998, p. 158). Was van Gogh’s painting, The Starry Night, and other great

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masterpieces, mirrors of mercy? In order to truly understand what the children are expressing it is critical to “unmask” the false self-image we all tend to carry as a form of protection (Vanier, 1998). Vanier explains, We all tend to wear masks, the mask of superiority or of inferiority, the mask of worthiness or of victim. It is not easy to let our masks come off and to discover the little child inside us who yearn for love and for light, and who fears being hurt. Forgiveness, however, implies the removal of these masks, an acceptance of who we really are: that we have been hurt, and that we have hurt others. (p. 158) As adults and educators, it is a miracle to witness the voice of a child emerge within a highly personal poem; children that are largely perceived by the school to not become much of anything in the future. Educators must be vigilant, aware and concerned for the buried potential of young hearts and minds and what we may be at risk of losing for our future. What will our communities suffer and lose if we do not utilize the arts to teach thinking, create ideas, heal, transform, and bring us together empathically and compassionately? Dewey (1958) brings light to the phenomenon of human expression and experience that highlights a sense of self for the child via their personal seeing, feeling and thinking systems. The modern discovery of inner experience, of a realm of purely personal events that are always at the individual’s command, and that are his exclusively as well as inexpensively for refuge, consolation and thrill is also a great and liberating discovery. It implies a new worth and sense of dignity in human individuality, a sense that an individual is not a mere property of nature, set in place according to a scheme independent of him, as an article is put in its place in a cabinet, but that he adds something that he marks as a contribution. (p. 172) The following poem by Leah, a middle school child, who was a poet beyond her years, brings to life Dewey’s (1958) phenomenon of discovery and liberation for the individual through the aesthetic experience. Leah was discovered when her middle school friends revealed that she kept a secret book of poetry. At the time I was Leah’s art teacher, and she felt she could share her private book of poetic collages and emotional compositions. In a similar way, as described in Emily’s story (see Chapter 2), I was instantly overwhelmed by the pure expressive quality and honesty of a child so young. Leah presented her poetry during a school community art opening. With grace and confidence Leah read her poetry and instantly her gifts were shared. Another miracle became evident,

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as in the previous chapters, that when the moral and deeply spiritual voice of a child was revealed, the hearts and minds of the parents, and community members present, were awakened. In that moment, Leah’s words and thoughts silenced the adults as they took pause to consider what is at risk if we do not nurture this expression and understanding of our American children? Leah’s poem: I Was Locked Inside I was locked Inside A room of darkness Going nowhere Doing nothing. Someone opened the door the light blinded me. My eyes adjusted and now I am in a hallway filled with doors. This someone gave me a key I can unlock any of these doors, and the ones that follow. I was once trapped but now I am free. At the end of the aesthetic education program for the community Leah gave me her poem and a book titled, Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman (1993) and inscribed the following note inside. Leah wrote, “I just want to thank you for showing me the light. I now know I can go anywhere. I really think you touched a lot of people. May you touch more people and always believe in one.” Like Leah, many children in public school feel “locked inside a room of darkness-going nowhere.” Merton explores an historic moment of peace and beauty on this earth in comparison to the chaos and dangers of our current earthly world that our children experience and anxieties build and deepen

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each day. Merton (2018) in a profound way, describes the symbolism behind the greatest aesthetic event that has been captured in music, poems, and great works of art over centuries; the Nativity. Merton explains, It was therefore impossible that the Word should lose Himself by being born into shapeless and passive mass. He had indeed emptied Himself, taken the form of God’s servant, man. But he did not empty Himself to the point of becoming mass man, faceless man. It was therefore right that there should be no room for him in a crowd that had been called together as an eschatological sign. His being born outside that crowd is even more a sign. That there is no room for Him is a sign of the end. Nor are the tidings of great joy announced in the crowded inn. In the massed crowd there are always new tiding of joy and disaster. Where each new announcement is the greatest of announcements, where every day’s disaster is beyond compare, every day’s danger demands the ultimate sacrifice, all news and all judgement is reduced to zero. News becomes merely a new noise in the mind, briefly replacing the noise that went before it and yielding to the noise that comes after it, so that eventually everything blends into the same monotonous and meaningless rumor. News? There is so much news that there is no room left for the true tidings, the “Good News,” The Great Joy. Hence The Great Joy is announced, after all, in silence, loneliness and darkness, to shepherds “living in the fields” or “living in the countryside” and apparently unmoved by the rumors or massed crowds. (pp. 69–70) Is there “no room left” for our children that are suffering from homelessness, hunger, despair, and neglect? Like the little baby boy who had no room and was born in the humblest of settings among animals into a world of greed, violence, and hunger, likewise, the ten-year old child Tashema reminds us of the importance of hope. Like the baby in the Nativity, a little boy’s hope is as “tall as a sunflower yellow moon/Light as the golden crystal sun/Large as an ocean.” Tashema’s poetic and moral imagination, is expressed in her poem titled, “Guess Who” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J) after viewing van Gogh’s (1889) painting The Starry Night (see Figure 4). Guess Who It’s as tall as a sunflower yellow moon, Light as the golden crystal sun,

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Large as an ocean It’s Hope!! Tashema wanted to inspire people to see hope everywhere and utilized themes of beauty in nature in a creative way. She describes the color of hope as “a sunflower yellow moon.” Tashema captures the essence of hope stating, “It’s as light as the golden crystal sun.” Tashema has empathy for people without hope and was inspired to write her poem. She wanted people to know that hope is as, “Large as an ocean.” She makes us wonder how this could be? Tashema explained that she was worried people were losing hope. She saw many people begging on the street and started to wonder about the differences between rich and poor. She wanted people to know how important hope is. What a surprise it was to hear Tashema read her poem with such beautiful expression. A child reminding us to have hope, just like the child born in a stable so many “sunflower yellow moons” ago. Tashema’s poem builds on the immensity of hope and intuitively senses in her way and at her young age that “the soul needs love as urgently as the body needs air” (O’Donohue, 1997, p. 8). O’Donohue (1997) states that “all the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul…and “possibility is the secret heart of creativity…this quiet world of the eternal is our soul…and love is our deepest nature, consciously or unconsciously each of us searches for love” (p. 9). Tashema’s poem about hope, with a heart full of hope and love to give to everyone, is supported by Fromm’s (2006), theory in which he explains the importance of giving: The most important sphere of giving, however is not that of material things, but lies in the specifically human realm. What does one person give to another? He gives of himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other—but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness—of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other’s sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness…Giving implies to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life. (p. 23) Fromm’s poignant research on love celebrates Tashema’s message of hope in her poem, “Guess Who.” She was inspired by van Gogh’s (1889) painting, The

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Starry Night, and his depiction of a loving and serene heavenly star-lit sky over a small modest village, to bring hope to everyone that viewed his paintings. A similar theme is captured in Tanner’s (1893) painting titled The Banjo Lesson (see Figure 7) between a little boy sitting on the lap of an elder, a grandfather figure. The grandfather is giving to the little boy a precious moment of learning. Both Tanner and van Gogh captured a deeply spiritual human need for hope, love, and communication. Fromm (2006) poetically frames these ideas writing: If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, I love you, I must be able to say, I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself. O’Donohue (1997) warns us that, “If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still…In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and external, ancient and new, together (p. xvi). Merton (2018) builds on O’Donohue’s warning stating: We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration. (p. 71) In a time of “no room,” the children act as our guides, through their poetry, that “we might hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance…and catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing” (Merton, 2018, p. 79). Merton portrays the depth of the cosmic dance in words, and perhaps a sense of how van Gogh was feeling when painting of The Starry Night (see Figure 4), a true depiction of the artist dancing within the cosmos. Merton explains:

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When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash—at such time the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. (2018, p. 79) O’Donohue (1997) reminds us that “humans are new here. Above us, the galaxies dance out towards infinity. Under our feet is ancient earth…In your thoughts, the silent universe seeks echo” and that “the human journey is a continuous act of transfiguration…for the imagination is the great friend of the unknown. Endlessly, it invokes and releases the power of possibility” (pp. xvi, xvii). O’Donohue poignantly expresses that, “against the infinity of the cosmos and the silent depths of nature, the human face shines out as the icon of intimacy.” The children’s poetry captures a key concept that “the heart is the inner face of your life” and “once the soul awakens, the search begins…” (pp. 6–7). In Goethe’s poem titled, “Blessed Longing,” we reflect on the importance in life to search for the power of love and creativity that seeks possibility within the uniqueness of self (as cited in O’Donohue, 1997, p. 17). Blessed Longing Tell only the wise, no one else, For the crowd will sneer. I wish to praise what is fully alive, What longs to flame towards death. When the calm enfolds the love-nights That created you, where you have created An unknown feeling steals over you While the tranquil candle burns. You are no longer surround By the gloom of the penumbral You are stirred and new, you desire To ascend to exalted creativity. No distance makes you ambivalent.

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You come on wings, enchanted In such hunger for light, you Become the butterfly burnt to nothing. So long as you have not lived this: To die is to become new, You remain a gloomy guest On the dark earth.

Notes 1 This poem originally appeared in Forum on Public Policy, Vol. 2005, No. 1, p. 440. 2 This poem originally appeared in Forum on Public Policy, Vol. 2005, No. 1, p. 438.

CHAPTER 6

Envisioning Thinking: Heart to Heart This awakening is a movement of the Word in the substance of the soul, of such greatness and dominion and glory, and of such intimate sweetness, that is seems to the soul that all the balms and perfumed spices and flowers in the world are mingled and shaken and revolved together to give their sweetness; and that all the kingdoms and dominions of the world and all the powers and virtues of heaven are moved. And not only so, but all the virtues and substances and perfections and graces of all created things shine forth and make the same movement together and in unison…Hence it comes to pass that when this great Emperor moves in the soul, Whose Kingdom, as Isaias says, is borne on His shoulder…then all seem to move together… St. John of the Cross, (as cited in Merton, 1979, p. 318)

∵ In this chapter, there is a specific emphasis on the critical importance of an arts and aesthetic curriculum in education for children in order to nurture moral inquiry and moral imagination. Greene (1988) proposed aesthetic education as the vehicle towards social imagination, the relation of the imaginative moral life, and a connection to the other, through the arts, as related to a sense of the self, the intrapersonal awareness or intelligence of a state of being. Gardner’s theory (1994) of developmental systems included the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences, are according to Gardner key towards developing a “sense of self.” Steiner (1982) points out to teachers that “the knowledge of the body is highly developed,” however there is a wall in education, “if we wish to acquire a knowledge of the soul, we, with our present day views, are confronted with an impasse, for everything related to the soul is merely a word (p. 18). Steiner stresses that “life as a whole is a unity and we must not only consider the child but the whole of life; we must look at the whole human being…it is not enough to know the child, we must know the human being” (p. 22). Steiner points to subject matter as the “soul milk” and “spiritual food” from the teacher, in that “teaching must not be made up of units but all that the child receives must be © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004432871_006

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figure 9  Mustard Seed of Change: The Awakening. Mixed-media on paper 3 × 3 in (© Clark, 2009)

a unity…he must have soul milk” (p. 31). Steiner (1982) believed in the importance of the arts imploring teachers to “address the heart, the rhythmic, must be engaged…the result is with this kind of teaching the child never gets tired because you are engaging the rhythmic system and not his head” (p. 131). “The child feels from the very start, that he is standing on the living earth. This is a great significance for his whole life” (Steiner, 1982, p. 58). Aesthetic education is that “spiritual food” that opens a cultural and social arena providing a space to be reflective among shared experiences with others. Dewey (1980) stated that, “the first stirrings of dissatisfaction and the first intimations of a better future are always found in works of art” (pp. 345–346). According to Dewey aesthetics including poetry and paintings among other works of art give our culture “a sense of possibilities opening before us that we become aware of constrictions that hem us in and of burdens that oppress” (p. 346). Greene (1993) asserts that, “we all need to recognize each other in our striving, our becoming, our inventing of the possible. And, yes, it is a question of acting in the light of a vision of what might be—a vision that enables people to perceive the voids, take heed of the violations, and move (if they can) to repair” (pp. 219–220). Aesthetic entry points elicit reflective discourse and critical analysis thus making critical thinking visible (Tishman, Jay, & Perkins, 1993). Aesthetic education is critical for children in revealing emotions and sense of self. In a way the aesthetic experience acted as an emancipatory possibility (Greene, 1988) for the children in that their thinking was made visible and their profound voices were thus released within a community setting, as hearts joined with hearts. It appears after studying the sample poems by the children throughout the chapters a purveying sense of great love for others is expressed. A sense that people do suffer and keep secrets including these young children. Are we to

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keep them hiding from revealing their truest and deepest potential? Their voices ring true for us, an echo over and over with something important to say to adults. Children wonder and worry, as we do, yet children in our public school continue to go unnoticed. Perhaps it is time to identify what is worth doing in our classrooms, and who and what is most important to us, data or children’s lives. Greene’s (1988) passionate voice for the importance of aesthetic education raises the urgent need for aesthetic experiences in education as “the arts will help open the situations that require interpretation, will help disrupt the walls that obscure the spaces, the spheres of freedom to which educators might someday attend” (p. 132). In stressing to educators that “we must consider the child in body, soul and spirit as an absolute unity,” Steiner (1982) believed that “the teacher must have an artistic feeling in his soul, he must be of an artistic disposition” (p. 49). In most cases [the child] will not be speaking of what is burdening his soul…all the same one has to know that this really comes from the innermost depths of his soul and the teacher must then find the right approach…An enormous amount depends on this for the whole future life of the child is concerned…He must be drawn to truth, goodness and beauty simply because he is drawn to you yourself [the teacher]…the important thing is to find a loving word, a word filled with warmth of heart. (Steiner, 1982, pp. 51–52) The children’s voices and poetry presented here call to adults to provide a sense of hope for their future. The children are reminding us as did Niebuhr (1952) in the following quote: Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. (p. 63) We don’t know what the future holds for our children in the twenty-first century. We must however provide our children an aesthetic arena of real experiences in order to learn about themselves as related to one another, whereby empathy and compassion are believed to be critical qualities to nurture. Elie Wiesel (2006) composed Night, after his horrifying time in a concentration camp, a book that has been deemed aesthetically worthy. Wisel states:

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When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe… There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism and political persecution. (pp. 118–119) The development of children’s intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences is critical within their aesthetic and arts-based curriculum experiences in all subjects. Intrapersonal intelligence, an emerging sense of self, was revealed while learning through the aesthetic experience, in order to build empathy and greater moral intent towards others (Clark, 2005b, p. 444).

figure 10 Wyeth, Andrew (1917–2009). © ARS, NY. Christina’s World, 1948. Tempera on panel, 32 1/4 × 47 3/4” (81.9 × 121.3 cm). Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/ Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

When children first viewed Wyeth’s (1948) painting titled Christina’s World, they immediately were concerned with Christina’s weak arms reaching for the horizon. Wyeth was painting this image in honor of his deceased father. While working one day Wyeth saw his neighbor, Christina, sitting out in the field. Wyeth was captivated by Christina’s struggle to drag her body across the grass, and reaching out towards the hill. Christina was handicapped suffering from a severe lack of coordination with her arms, legs, and wrists. After concentrating

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on Christina’s World, one child, Charissa, wrote, “Look Out Far” (Clark, 2005b, p. 433). Look Out Far1 Alone as you Crying by yourself Strong, Strong enough to do a hundred push-ups Without breaking a sweat. Trying to relax. Proud, Proud of yourself running the mile race, Breathtaking, Relaxed as a cloud in the sky. Beautiful, Look out far, look out far. Charissa’s empathy immediately surfaced for the painting’s character, Christina, in the painting (see Figure 10), stating that “Christina was trying hard and that it is important to “look out far” and to be “proud of yourself.” Charissa’s imagination is swept up with the emotion portrayed by Christina’s image. This reaction is similar to the artist, Andrew Wyeth, when he saw her for the first time while looking outside his studio window. Wyeth explains the idea for Christina’s World stating: I was in an upstairs room in the Olson house and saw Christina crawling in the field. Later, I went down on the road and made a pencil drawing of the house, but I never went down into the field. You see, my memory was more of a reality than the thing itself. I didn’t put Christina in till the very end. I worked on the hill for months, that brown grass, and kept thinking about her. (as cited in Kammen, 1998, p. 202) Wyeth reflected on his desire to capture Christina’s struggle stating that he wanted, “to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless. If in some small way I have been able in paint to make the viewer sense that her world may be limited physically but by no means spiritually, then I have achieved what I set out to do” (as cited in Small, 2017).

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Another child, Patrice, wanted to express what she perceived to be Christina’s loneliness in her poem titled, “Christina’s World.” Perhaps at the same time, Patrice captured Wyeth’s philosophy in her poem (Clark, 2005a, p. 144): Christina’s World Feeling like a lonely soul finding its place, Empty as a lost baby, Sad as a lonely heart, Big as a black hole, Grass is like a chameleon changing colors. A horizon full of goals for her, Horizon full of hope and mysterious, Hands as stiff as a stiff stick. Hands pulling her towards her future. Patrice imagined that even against all odds, Christina would make it to the top of the “mountain.” Patrice made the connection first in her life and her struggle in school stating, “I have to remember my life is full of goals and to not give up hope.” The emergence of Patrice’s “sense of self” in her poem, “Christina’s World,” may be a transformational experience. When a relationship results between one’s inner feeling (intrapersonal) and the outward pressures of the other (interpersonal) when cued by a work of art and shared with others, this heightened awareness of one’s life thus becomes transformational. An example of a heightened awareness of others is found within the following poetic sample by a child, titled, “What is Peace.” The child was inspired to create a poem after experiencing an emotional connection to Ruby Bridges presented within an arts and aesthetic curriculum program titled, The Peacemakers. Children studied great changemakers in history through art methodology including: Abraham Lincoln, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. The following poetic composition was created by a child, age nine (Clark, 1998). What Is Peace? If one shakes another, another should not punch one in the eye, but ignore this violence that does not settle anything. This helps push that peace that we must find one day and hold it close to our earth.

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Peace does not mean no more wars, it means to stay away from violence, but to help other people as we help our self. O’Donohue (2003) unveils a higher order in regard to our moral imagination or as he believes, our soul, whereby the awareness of the variations of our true self unites. What can we be or become? As we consider the variety of poetic expressions of the children and awareness of their moral imagination we can only wonder, given this glimpse into the fragile child’s nature, that we have a moral obligation in education to ensure our children are thriving for the greater good of our families and one another. The children’s “beauty is not a dissolution but a transfiguration where the signature of your essence glows in the mountain of Being,” as O’Donohue (2003) states, In God, the ultimate portraiture of the soul fills out. All our different selves unite: the selves we are and were and could have been and could be, the unchosen selves, all our nights and all our days, our visible and invisible lives. It is impossible for language to express the nearness for in the end every thought is an act of distance. Even words like ‘nearness,’ ‘intimacy’ or ‘love’ still indicate separation. Only the strained language of paradox can suggest the breathtaking surprise of such divine closeness. God is breath-near, skin-touch, mind-home, heart-nest, thought-forest, otherness-river, night-well, time-salt, moon-wings, soul fold….As Eckhart says: ‘Height is Depth’. Perhaps this was the field that Eckhart glimpsed and that glimpse burns through the Everest of his thought. To enter that beauty is not a dissolution but a transfiguration where the signature of your essence glows in the mountain of Being. (p. 258) Merton (1979) explains how poetry can be a natural mysticism, leading us into a world of spiritual reality and ultimately paradise: union with God. The development of conscience increases our own self-respect. Merton explains that within a sense of moral imagination revealed, that revelation is personal, ambiguous and leads to a rich but sometimes painful personal growth. The force and light of God makes us see everything differently. When we are drawn towards God, we are drawn together with ourselves and with others. Our life has meaning and purpose. We ought to be alive enough to reality to see beauty all around us. Beauty is simply reality itself, perceived in a special way that gives it a resplen-

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dent value of its own. Everything that is, is beautiful insofar as it is real— One of the most important—and most neglected—elements in the beginnings of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendor that is all around us in the creatures of God. We do not see these things because we have withdrawn from them. (Merton, 1983, pp. 32–33) The moral imagination of children when revealed points to an empathic voice that is uniquely human and necessary for our children’s future. This idea is poignantly expressed in Tashema’s poem titled, “Her World” (Clark, 2005a, pp. 158–159) created after viewing Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World (see Figure 10). Her World Her leg is as lifeless as a dead person. Her arm is as small and fragile as a chicken’s egg. Her hair is as dark as the devil’s heart, As quiet as a dead person’s ears. A head as small as a four year old’s mind. The hill as big as God’s love.

1

What Do We Know?

We know by now that children have the capacity for a tremendous and at times unusual curiosity about others, life and the world. The paintings and poetry presented within this text capture a preadolescents curiosity and reveals through their poetry, their inner most wonderings, hopes, and worries. The aesthetic of paintings with rich visual textural data, encompassed themes of racism, public persecution, and entrapment. When confronted by a preadolescent, these themes were especially poignant in the following paintings; the three faceless diners in Hopper’s painting, Nighthawks; the little girl dressed in white with words of hate spread out on a wall behind her in Rockwell’s painting, The Problem We All Live With; and the isolated, forgotten individual behind a curtain in Bearden’s painting, Summertime. It is evident that the preadolescent, as seen in their poetry, expressed personal symbolic language related directly to the artwork via their experiences, thus revealing a child’s interpersonal and intrapersonal worlds. The children were drawn to the loneliness and mystery in Hopper’s painting, Nighthawks, and related to van Gogh’s sense of hope and forgiveness evident

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in The Starry Night. The personal symbolic language in their poetry reflected the children’s sense of hope for their life amidst difficult times and at the same time revealed deeply empathic and spiritual insights. The children’s poetry manifested an intuitive understanding of life experience. These insights developed and originated from the characters in the artwork and held intrapersonal and interpersonal meaning in a variety of ways for each individual child, as the variety of artists were from various ethnic backgrounds. Gardner (1994) asserted that art has the singular potential for bringing individuals closer to the “other” or those that are different by highlighting common traits. It is the means by which individuals may relate to the “experience and subjective life of others.” In this sense, therefore, the children’s poetry represents critical insights for all children especially those deemed at-risk, to guarantee “medium of expression,” in order to “communicate their thoughts, desires and precepts freely and passionately” (p. 349, as cited in Clark, 2005b, p. 430). How can one truly understand how a child can compose within minutes, such poignant poetic compositions? Children related to symbols in their search for meaning in the perceived symbol and object held within the painting’s composition. The preadolescent, has the capacity to take in greater detail of visual displays and can significantly recall details not focused on directly (Gardner, 1994). Between the ages 9 and 13, children have a greater propensity toward aesthetic perception. Moral seeing became evident through the poetry and reflected their imagination in association with visual cues and relationships the artwork presented. Children were instantly drawn into the painting and into the world of the characters. Even the characterless painting by van Gogh, The Starry Night, held the children’s imagination. Van Gogh, himself, touched the children’s hearts and minds as they perceived within their imagination, the artist, lonely and isolated, striving for love through his paintings. The children’s hearts united with van Gogh’s longing for love. Thus, one heart speaks to another (Nouwen, 2008). In a spiritual sense, the visual and aesthetic psychology impact the spiritual longing a human child holds within. Nouwen points out the visceral reaction he had when reading and viewing great works of art by artists such as van Gogh, whereby the viewer senses the artist’s “intense search for intimacy and solitude is part of the art (2008, p. 86). The artwork presented an authentic direct experience in that the participant could define shapes, objects, and events in relationship to the “self,” as a personalized form of knowing. Eisner (1989) builds on Arnheim’s Gestalt theory in that such theory “recognizes the inventiveness through which children transform what they see” as a form of making meaning” (p. 3). This conclusion is supported by Arnheim’s (1969) theory which contends that “the arts tell the preadolescent about the significance of direct experience and of his own response” and thus begins to see within oneself (p. 301).

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Administrators, teachers, parents and community members need to understand and internalize the critical importance of art in education for urban, suburban, and rural children and its potential to develop moral seeing and reflective thought. As seen within the children’s poetry their capacity to increase the complexity invoked in distinguishing visual associations and cues embedded in the art in relationship to their burgeoning sense of self. As Eisner (1989) stated, we need to be concerned with fostering “perceptivity.” It was Eisner’s contention, that artwork presented to children call their “attention to the particular qualities of the world…what is this person like?…what does the leaf really look like?…what do I see for the first time” (p. 6). Eisner (1989) explained the essence of Arnheim’s (1989) research maintaining that the arts “perform an epistemological function—they help us know…as perception is a cognitive event,” therefore, “interpretation and meaning are an indivisible aspect of seeing,” as expressed in the children’s poetry, and “that the educational process can thwart or foster such human abilities” (p. 7). Gardner (1994) championed the key role of arts in education for “the arts provide critical cues for the understanding of the minds of children. Because children see, feel, and think as a means of understanding their environment, all of their “experiences enrich the systems on which their eventual participation in the aesthetic process will be based” (p. 349). A child’s feeling life or feeling system is thus influenced by symbols and objects and as concluded within the children’s poetry represented, visually thinking when viewing a work of art provides an authentic experience for students. The artwork presented to the children acted as a mirror, by which to “think about the emerging “self” to use, investigate, and build on the pre-existing intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence” (Gardner, 1983, p. 251). When presented with a work of art the children’s thinking expressed in their poetry represented a cognitive and affective connection to what they saw and to what they felt in association with what they knew about their life and others (Clark, 2005a). The visual stimulus cued the imagination to move into the intrapersonal and interpersonal realm. Moral discrimination and moral feelings build toward moral thought in that this thought is both intrapersonal and interpersonal in relationship to “other persons” and in obtaining a “sense of self” and what one morally imagines. (Clark, 2005a, p. 208) Gardner, (1983) explains that pre-adolescence is that period of life in which individuals bring together these two forms of knowledge into a larger and more organized whole, or “sense of identity…a sense of self.” Moral affect or

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moral feeling was revealed through the children’s poetry and reflected both intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. Their poetic language exposed references to their “feelings and aspirations” as a “form of knowledge” in relation to norms, rules, or traditions of family or others (p. 251). When presented with a work of art, the children associations were focused on a personal viewpoint and on individual perspectives. As the visual thinking process progressed, the children’s introspective tendency to focus on the “self,” naturally moved to points of references, intrapersonal in regards to self and interpersonal, in regards to family or others. Moral affect or moral feeling when expressed within the children’s poetry was intrapersonal and interpersonal in nature, in that Gardner, (1994) contends, the children “were inextricably impelled to focus on others, as a clue to himself [herself]” when making visual associations within a work of art (p. 248). One can only imagine what would result in our public schools if the arts were utilized in such a way as a vehicle within social, emotional curriculum; academic curriculum including creative writing programs, developed in tandem with the children and designed to draw out their authentic feelings, both intrapersonal and interpersonal in nature. A poignant example is the following poetic composition (Clark, 2005a, appendix J) by a child (Rachel) after viewing the painting Nighthawks by Hopper (see Figure 2). Full My heart is full My mind is full My soul is full My body is full My thoughts are full Full, full, full, full, full Full of sadness Full of heartache Full of pain Full of tears Crying on the inside Feelings I can hide I never show them I hold them Inside my heart Inside my soul Inside my mind

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Inside my thoughts All locked up You never knew I didn’t tell you. Rachel continued to deeply portray her feelings by stepping into van Gogh’s heart and mind as he painted The Starry Night (see Figure 4). A profound portrayal for a ten-year old child, revealed van Gogh’s feelings, as she was deemed average by her teacher. Rachel created a poem titled, “Feeling van Gogh” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J): Feeling van Gogh Sad So sad My heart is so sad I feel despair I’ve lost hope no reason to move on in my life I am so alone so sad I’m hurting, hurting in every crevice doesn’t anyone notice? I’ve had many years of heartache by far, thus far is the worst someone else feel my pain no love for me hurt hurting hurting. Van Gogh would pass a short time after completing The Starry Night. In many works regarding van Gogh’s life, the passion of feeling expressed by Rachel is similar in expressiveness to van Gogh’s letters to his friend, Rappard. Van Gogh writes: People let us give our soul to our work and let us work with our heart for our cause and—love what we love. To love what we love, what a

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superfluous warning that seems, and still what an enormous significance it has!!! How many people still give their best efforts to something that is unworthy, treating that which they love as a step-child, instead of surrendering themselves frankly to the irresistible impulse of their hearts? (1936, p. 18). Let us not forget the many voices of children that were excluded, marginalized, labeled, diminished of their potential, disregarded and many times hurt from accusatory words, while existing, not thriving in our public schools; for what is the larger goal of education and democracy? Freire (1997) argues that we must also fight for the freedom to create to be truly free and presents Fromm’s (1956) theory that humans must have “the freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and to venture” in order to fully become (as cited in Freire, p. 50). In a similar way like Freire, John Paul II presented a poignant message at the XI World Youth Day (1996) that the future belonged to the younger generation stating, Life is a talent entrusted to us so we can transform it and increase it, making it a gift to others. No human is an iceberg drifting on the ocean of history. Each one of us belongs to a greater family, in which we have our own place and our own role to play. Love opens eyes and hearts, enabling people to make that original and irreplaceable contribution which, together with the thousands of deeds of so many brothers and sisters, often distant and unknown, converges to form the mosaic of charity which can change the tide of history. Eisner (1989) supports the critical importance for arts and aesthetics and the study of a child’s moral imagination in our public schools stating if “ideas about art and the mind were acted upon in American schools, considerably more attention would be devoted to helping children learn how to experience the unique features of the world they inhabit, [rather than just the mechanics]. High on our education agenda would be not merely looking, not even seeing, but recognizing what is distinctive about an object, a person, a field,” thus schools would be fostering moral feeling and a deeper sense of what is distinctive about other’s in relation to the self (p. 6).

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Imagination suggests the searching, joining, light-seeking, semi-figurative nature of the mind’s work, which prepares and forms the consciousness for action. In a context of reflection, one elaborates, a distinction and defines a concept, so as to see further…What do you do with your mind when you are in prison? Or bereaved or suffering irremediable injustice, or crippled by awful guilt? What you are able to do with it then will depend very much on what you were doing with it before. The mysterious power of the artist, creation ex nihilo, the attentive waiting for the response of the unconscious power, is not remote from the moral imagination, it is like, or is, prayer. (Murdoch, 1992, p. 323) The children’s poetry indeed represents their personal power to create something, to blend their experiences and share to the world their deepest empathy for others and furthermore illustrates how young children do have the ability to put themselves into another’s place (Greene, 2001, p. 30). Williams Carlos Williams (1986) captures in his poem titled, “Dawn,” what may help us visualize the awakening of a child’s moral imagination. The soul has echoed from its depths, the purest perceptive array of possibilities held within a child’s heart. As depicted throughout the previous chapters, the poetic compositions are quite startling, especially from children labeled by the public-school system as less than, below-average, or in special need of interventions, and are excluded from enrichment or gifted programs. When will we allow a dawning of our children’s imaginations to burst forth “from the hollow vastness” and “bit by bit above the edge of things,—run free at last” (p. 85)? Dawn Ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings— beating color up into it at a far edge,—beating it, beating it with rising, triumphant ardor,— stirring it into warmth, quickening in it a spreading change,— bursting wildly against it as dividing the horizon, a heavy sun lifts himself—is lifted— bit by bit above the edge of things, —runs free at last

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out into the open—! lumbering glorified in full release upward— songs cease The beauty of the aesthetic and the arts are necessary to human psychology, and evokes the moral and divine within us in hopes of understanding our life and existence. Perhaps through the development of their moral imagination children will realize their profound uniqueness within their poetic vision for the world. In an endless search for meaning, the moral imagination emerges as a portal to the Divine, to meaning of our existence, hopes, dreams and suffering. Our children’s voice captured here on these pages are our angels—messengers to “awaken a second life” (Frankl, 1984). Developing the moral imagination via the aesthetic and arts develops the interplay between the intra and interpersonal realms and deepens a sense of soul, whereby the multi-sensory human has reverence for life (Zukav, 1989, p. 56). We become more fully human, whereby forgiveness comes to the surface of our minds and our role and life’s purpose deepens. This is expressed in Frankl’s (1984) thoughts while being in a concentration camp. His experience called him to deepen the mystery of life while all sense of decency was stripped away. In the same way as the horror of the concentration camps, Frankl survived, the indescribable suffering caused from the Irish famine in the 1840s. Horror, courage and hope were expressed within the iconic song, “Fields of Athenry.” Coogan (2012) presents the power of the song’s aesthetic to move the heart and mind. Coogan explains the remarkable strength of the Irish, that “emanated from deep in the Irish folk memory and said in effect, “We survived the Famine and we will get over this also” (p. 102). Like Frankl, the suffering had purpose and is a reminder for the Irish of their love for their culture and strength to survive. The following is the song, “Fields of Athenry,” by Pete St. John, as presented by Coogin (pp. 102–103). The Fields of Athenry By a lonely prison wall I heard a young girl calling Michael they are taking you away For you stole Trevelyan’s corn So the young might see the morn. Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay. Low lie the Fields of Athenry Where once we watched the small free birds fly.

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Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing It’s so lonely ‘round the Fields of Athenry. By a lonely prison wall I heard a young man calling Nothing matters Mary when you’re free, Against the Famine and the Crown I rebelled they ran me down Now you must raise our child with dignity. Low lie the Fields of Athenry Where once we watched the small free birds fly. Our love was on the wing we had dreams and songs to sing It’s so lonely ‘round the Fields of Athenry. By the lonely harbor wall She watched the last star falling As that prison ship sailed out against the sky Sure she’ll wait and hope and pray For her love in Botany Bay It’s so lonely ‘round the Fields of Athenry. Like the song, “Fields of Athenry,” many great works of art are conceived by artists during private moments of suffering and loneliness. Van Gogh and many other artists saw and felt the desire to express hope, truth, beauty, and emotion. Their longing for capturing a beauty, so powerful, connects us to the divine creator (O’Donohue, 2003). “At the deepest level, creativity is holiness” (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 152). Van Gogh painted the holiness within his life-long search and longing for hope and love in his masterpiece, The Starry Night. Ultimately, The Starry Night is a portrayal of the artist’s personal Gethsemane—his agony—his climb to the summit, to reach the stars, reminding us to never lose hope. Vincent van Gogh’s suffering had purpose and ultimately touched a nineyear-old child and continues to provide a consoling legacy for all those to view and deepen an understanding within their life journey. Van Gogh and many aesthetics like him left a legacy of forgiveness within their art, as by chance one child will cast their gaze to the stars—to become a consoler—as one is consoled. John Paul II stated, “None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands” (as cited in O’Donohue, 2003, p. 151).

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Children like Evalyn and Shane captured in their poetic words a sincere expression of Van Gogh’s desire, to paint hope, to capture a holy moment. When Shane at age nine wrote the poem, “Bedroom in Arles,” he released a connection to the divine. This intense and joyful connection gets more difficult as we get older and slips away from us. Baucom (1999) points out Merton’s view of a “scar over the place where…joy exulted for a moment” (p. 153). Baucom believes that the aesthetic sense of the divine, “prepares the way for God who makes his presence felt by leading me out of my time and place into his being where there is neither time nor place, only a mysterious sense of peace and a longing of eternity” (pp. 152–153). At this point it is important to revisit the nine-year old child, Shane, and his expressive moral and imaginative voice released within his poem, “Bedroom in Arles” (see Chapter 5). Shane describes visiting van Gogh’s room within his imagination and experiencing a type of silence that is “almost noisy…a white noise, from all the feelings that were set free from their eternal prison…The room so silent, waiting…” (Clark, 1998). Bedroom in Arles A room that is full with silence. So much silence, that it is almost noisy. A white noise, from all the feelings that were set free from their eternal prison, the body of a human. The room so silent, waiting for something to happen. Merton (2018), like Shane, knows something is alive in the silence as expressed in his poem titled, “In Silence.” The divine imagination portrays the mystery of silence, while sensing a deeper wonder of life; “I will try to be my own silence” (pp. 10–11). In Silence Be still Listen to the stones of the wall Be silent, they try To speak your Name. Listen

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To the living walls. Who are you? Who Are you? Whose Silence are you? Who (be quiet) Are you (as these stones Are quiet). Do not Think of what you are Still less of What you may one day be. Rather Be what you are (but who?) be The unthinkable one You do not know. O be still, while You are still alive, And all things live around you Speaking (I do not hear) To your own being, Speaking by the Unknown That is in you and in themselves. “I will try, like them To be my own silence: And this is difficult. The whole World is secretly on fire. The stones Burn, even the stones They burn me. How can a man be still or Listen to all things burning? How can he dare To sit with them when All their silence Is on fire?” Michelangelo, like Merton, reflected deeply on the fire within, and as the ultimate aesthetic, he transformed the stone through the unity between his creativity and faith. Michelangelo awakened the silent stone he sculpted to reveal the divine in Creation. In this aesthetic way, Michelangelo is deeply reflective,

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transfigured by the aesthetic longing for his creator in a similar sense as Merton. Michelangelo’s poetic voice in his old age clearly captures that aesthetic longing for the eternal, through “universal themes—for love and longing, time and death, art and salvation,” bringing meaning to his later years in life (as cited in Saslow, 1991, p. 1). The following poem by Michelangelo connects his creative fire within to the fire used by his creator, reaching inward and questioning his ultimate destiny (Saslow, pp. 157–158). Michelangelo writes: Only with fire can the smith shape iron From his conception into fine, dear work; Neither, without fire, can any artist Refine and bring gold to its highest state, nor can the unique phoenix be revived unless first burned. And so, if I die burning, I hope I rise again brighter among those whom death augments and time no longer hurts. I’m fortunate that the fire of which I speak still finds a place within me, to renew me, since already I’m almost numbered among the dead; or, since by its nature it ascends to heaven, to its own element, if I should be transformed into fire, how could it not bear me up with it? So kindly to the cold stone is the fire within it that if, drawn out from it, the flame surrounds it so it’s burnt and shattered, it lives in another form, itself binding others eternally in place. Thus, if it survives the kiln, it can defeat summer and winter, and claim a higher price than before, As a soul, purified, returns from hell to be among the high, worthy of others in heaven. If, drawn out from me in this way, the fire that plays within me secretly, dissolves me, burnt and extinguished I can have further life. For, if I live, turned into smoke and dust, once hardened by the fire I’ll be immortal; by such gold, not in iron, am I struck. We can grasp and deepen our understanding of the great importance of the arts and aesthetics, woven within Michelangelo’s poetic message, from Tolstoy (2005) stating:

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Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man—we know the well-being of man lies in union with his fellow-man. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science guided by religion, that peaceful cooperation of man which is now obtained by external means—by our law-courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.—should be obtained by man’s free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. (2005, p. 185) The poetry of the children are echoes of their innermost innocence and innermost longings for love. Children are closer to the mother soul, perhaps because of their innocence or purely a child’s natural sense to release a creative voice; they are closer to knowing the divine and we are witnesses to this phenomenon expressed through their poetry. As they share their poetic vision of their world and as they share their individual symbolic poetic prayers the world may indeed become kinder and more compassionate. Moral imagination leads us to consider forgiveness and become more fully ourselves which is essentially at the heart of our soul (Zukav, 1989). We now know and are motivated to heal, to peel back the scar, to once again let the dreary burden of anger and hate dissolve. “To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man” (Fromm, 2006, p. 123). Kathryn wrote the poem titled, “Confused,” after viewing Wyeth’s (1948) painting titled Christina’s World (see Figure 10). Kathryn’s imagination steps into the shoes of the character, Christina. Kathryn assigns the wind the force of eternal power; “it’s lifting me off my feet./Lifting me to a destination I’m supposed to be.” Kathryn gives the character hope sensing a greater destination through poetic and symbolic language from nature (Clark, 2005a, appendix J). Confused A girl hypnotized into tall steep hills. A cottage hidden in the shadows making it look mysterious and abandoned. The tall mid sky mixed with the yellow sunlight of the sun.

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Long grass mixed with the dew of the sky. Dancing wind making it seem like it’s lifting me off my feet. Lifting me to a destination I’m supposed to be. Like Kathryn, Rachel composed a poem titled, “Christina’s World,” after viewing Wyeth’s painting (Clark, 2005a, p. 153). Rachel’s interpersonal voice is revealed as she moves back and forth between the circumstance and conviction of the painting’s character, to remain hopeful and at the same time presented a very personal faith-based belief from the teachings of her grandmother. After writing her poem, Rachel in a deeply reflective style expressed hope for her future by reading the last two lines of her poem, “I’m sure I’m going to make it/Whatever I do.” Christina’s World Don’t feel bad for me I’m gonna be alright, I don’t need to be pitied, I have faith in God and myself. My grandma told me always to have faith, And I do, I’m sure I’m going to make it, Whatever I do. Rachel continued to write, inspired by Wyeth’s painting, Christina’s World. In a sense, Rachel had something very important to say to everyone, as if she has been waiting a very long time to get her message out. Rachel’s second poem after viewing Christina’s World (see Figure 10) is titled, “Girl” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J). Rachel wanted to reveal the source of her courage, which was her faith. Once again through the voice of the painting’s character, Rachel reveals intrapersonal intelligence and a moral voice reminding everyone to “believe in hope…stand strong…and overcome all of this.” Girl I’ve got God on my side I’m happy, hopeful.

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I believe in hope. Yeah I might be thin and fragile, but my mind and Soul stand strong. I might not look well visually, but spiritually I do. At least I think I’m beautiful But if other people don’t I shall overcome all of This! I Shall!!! Clare created a special poem titled, “Feelings,” after reflecting on all of her poetry (Clark, 2005a, appendix J). Like Rachel she has a deeply spiritual message for us to consider as we, “Walk into the door of life.” Feelings To be creative use pieces of life. You can be creative by being, mad, sad, and realistic. If you’re lonely express your feelings on paper. Art is a piece of life. Mysterious nights on a quiet day gives you feelings and thoughts. The way you feel gives you life. To breathe, to like, to love, to hate. Life gives you everything. To hold, to feel, to see, to smell, to touch, To be you. Don’t be immoral, be smart. You be you and I’ll be me. Listen to your heart and soul, Be wise and make great decisions. Be a leader not a follower. Walk into the door of life. Find your soul, Find your heart, Find you, be you. Be the best you can be.

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One last thought is expressed in an instantaneously poem of sorts created and composed to capture this author’s feelings, as a type of blessing for the reader at this juncture titled, “Infinite Search”: Infinite Search In our infinite search for meaning, may the children’s words and thoughts float through your inner sky, like soft falling snow that brings beauty to a mud-caked frozen earth. (Clark, 2020)

Note 1 This poem originally appeared in Forum on Public Policy, Vol. 2005, No. 1, p. 433.

EPILOGUE

Moral Imagination in an Island Culture: The Aran Island Child God is the time-circle where all possibilities unite. O’Donohue (2003, p. 258)

∵ As we come full circle discussing the moral imagination of American children in our public schools, it is important to share new research based on the aesthetic images from the Aran Islands of Galway, Ireland. One is easily drawn to the Aran islands to experience the vast landscapes, miles of rock walls and rugged terrain. This was a perfect environment to begin to understand the Irish child’s sense of freedom and imagination while growing up on this western most island within a tightly woven and compassionate community life. While exploring the island and visiting local shops, visitors will witness the joy and adventurous spirit of the island children. What is the difference between an American child’s sense of aesthetic expression and the Irish child raised within a community that cherishes art as a daily expression of life?

figure 11 Aran Island of Inis Mòr (photograph by A.L.A.S. Art, 2016) © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi: 10.1163/9789004432871_007

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In understanding the Irish child’s imaginative world, it is necessary to delve deeper into the works by O’Donohue to capture the essence of the Celtic imagination and urgency for creative expression and freedom which comes from the depths of the Irish soul in relation to nature, and the rugged relentless landscape, both invigorating and frightening at times. The hearts, minds, and voices of our American children, introduced in previous chapters, remind us that at a significant time, we must acknowledge and consider all children worldwide as the truest messengers of this world. Messengers like Ruby Bridges who bravely walked through an angry crowd to school for civil rights and Greta Thunberg, who courageously spoke to the United Nations on climate change, or Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate for female education, and the child Anne Frank, whose message lives on through her diary. These soulful voices awaken our moral imagination and are keepers of hope for the future. Children hold the purest imaginative vision of what could be. The poetic expressions from children, illuminated in previous chapters, have no boundaries. When a child’s natural way of being in this world is nurtured within an open and free environment, much like the wild, limestone landscape of Inis Mòr, the possibilities for expression are infinite. For instance, when arriving at the ancient fort of Dun Aengus or staring down into the natural rock pool of Poll na bPeist, the Serpent’s Lair on the coast of Inis Mòr, one immediately senses that the mysteries of this Earth do indeed abound with the natural wonder of our Creator. The wonder of another time and place while standing within these ancient sites, opens an imaginative portal of the mind. The children’s poetic messages, in previous chapters, evoke a similar mysterious feeling when created and revealed in such an immediate and instantaneous way. There are mysteries to behold on the island world of Inis Mòr and many are not tangible and or explainable like the natural rectangle pool of Poll na bPeist. The mystery of creation in nature is similar to the mystery of expression via the moral imagination of a child. Perhaps the message from the children is to grasp our fullest potential, lying dormant within us, and as adults provide hope for our future, while at the same time nurture the moral imagination of our children through the arts and aesthetics in our daily life.

1

Creating the Island Map Mural

In order to capture a glimpse of the Irish child’s imagination, Drs. Clark & French journeyed to the Aran Islands, located off the west coast of Ireland in 2016 with a map mural designed to capture the children’s ideas and artwork

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related to their daily life. The journey began on the smaller Aran island of Inis Oírr, arriving as visitors and artists to learn and share. Synge (1990) captured beautifully the sensory elixir one confronts when arriving on any one of the Aran islands. Synge stated: It has cleared, and the sun is shining with a luminous warmth that makes the whole island glisten with the splendour of a gem, and fills the sea and sky with a radiance of blue light. I have come out on the rocks where I have the black edge of the north island in front of me, Galway Bay, too blue almost to look at, on my right, the Atlantic on my left, a perpendicular cliff under my ankles, and over me innumerable gulls that chase each other in a white cirrus of wings. (p. 35)

figure 12 Aran Island of Inis Oírr Rolling out the Aran Island Map Mural at the Inis Oírr Community Playground. Photo is a still image from the documentary film, Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017) (original photograph by A.L.A.S. Art)

The protocol involved designing and utilizing a map mural, a visual artifact, depicting the three islands juxtaposed to one another to promote the awareness of place and time for the children and community participants. This journey would be completed over two years, traveling from island to island with the mural to capture the Irish child’s imagery. The following year we returned to climb to the summit of Croagh Patrick, a holy site of pilgrimage in Mayo, Ireland. At the summit the mural was opened to the earth, sea, and sky, representing a form of prayer for children all over the world and for the healing of our Earth. Utilizing an aesthetic mural format throughout this odyssey naturally focused the importance of the arts and moral imagination within the daily island life of an Irish child, to further reveal intrapersonal thought whereby

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interpersonal understanding is highlighted within the children’s imagery. The purpose of this journey was to investigate Aran Island children’s moral imagination through their visual language derived from their perceptions, feelings, and creations, and the premise that art and morality are intertwined (Clark, 2005a). Stories and drawings were inspired when creating imagery on the expansive mural. The mural traveled from Inis Oírr, to Inis Meáin, and finally to Inis Mòr. On the Aran Islands one is amazed when landing in a “frontier of beauty.” The children live on the edge of this beauty in all its forms that nature provides as expressed in the map mural. Through the aesthetic map mural process the children were blessed by their parents and communities to believe and express their “infinite possibilities of the heart” (O’Donahue, 2003, p. 254).

figure 13 Island of Inis Meáin: “I am swimming off the island,” Families Gathering in Local Pub, Osta Inis Meáin. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017)

The Aran Island communities, including families and local business owners, were excited to participate. The parents were side-by-side with their children during the entire map mural process. Parents and community members engaged in the design of the mural images and provided space to initiate the development of the mural. The Aran islands environment allowed for the most natural setting representing an Irish child’s daily life including playgrounds, pubs, and community halls. Inherent in this aesthetic research was to explore possible evidence of moral imagination through children’s personal symbolic language and drawings, and within a community-commons setting (French & Clark, 2012). The final mural was displayed at the Halla Ronain on Inis Mòr, a local community meeting hall. Parents agreed to allow their children to be photographed

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and videotaped. The Aran Island community wanted the world to know of their pride and love for their children and the Aran way of life. As one elder of the community expressed his love of his island home, “for the day that’s in it,” through the words and thoughts of William Butler Yeats: Dance there upon the shore What need have you to care for wind and waters roar and tumble out your hair That salt drops have wet. JS The parents and communities’ daily mission is to continue to sustain their free and creative community life in the 21st century. They felt strongly that participation in this aesthetic mural process would be a healthy endeavour for communication with the outside world. The Aran Island Map Mural measured 8’ × 20.’ The island shapes were outlined, filled in green and surrounded by the blue of the ocean. The mural’s expansive size, captured the islands in geographical context, inspiring the children to play, imagine, and step into the mural to swim and create beautiful and spontaneous dances. The size of the mural became a veritable playground as younger children moved their bodies across it as if they were a dolphin or mermaid. Once the children interacted with the expansive size of their island community they settled down, newly inspired, and identified where they would begin drawing. The children discussed life on the Aran Islands, located their homes on the mural, and roughly estimated geographical locations for fishing, schools, and playgrounds. They freely designed imagery and expressed poetic language to symbolize what was important in their lives (see Figures 13, 14, 15 and 16).

figure 14 Angels Appear on Inis Meáin. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017)

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The map mural provided a visual aesthetic representing the island context and inspirational arena for the island children to play, move, and dance between island shapes, share personal stories, writings, and drawings that were inspired when creating symbolic imagery on the mural. The emerging imaginations and visual realities of the Aran Island children were revealed. Cognitive thinking and perceiving increased through the development of images, stories, and poetic language. Intrapersonal intelligence was evident, as cognitive and visual symbolic language were personal in nature (Clark, 2005a). Remarkably, this mural project coincided with the Centennial of the Easter Uprising. As memories of the Easter Uprising (1916) triggered emotions and stories, imagery emerged and grew on the mural map as it traveled to each Aran Island. As one 8 year-old child wrote in a powerful and emotional message below her drawing: It has been 100 years from the 1916 Easter Uprising when Ireland’s people won their country. Community members including children, parents, and business owners shared thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions regarding how they view their island life in relation to one another and the world.

figure 15 Mermaid Appears, Spring 2016. Inis Mòr: Mysteries in the Ocean. Photos are still images from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017)

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The mural, an aesthetic community centerpiece, promoted a visual thinking process (Perkins, 1994) instantly collecting visual imagery in which community members and children were inspired to discuss and reflect on their island life. The visual imagery inspired mask-making, a metaphysical extension of their daily life, fears, hopes, and dreams (see Figure 17). The masks acted as a vehicle to further express their intrapersonal (how they perceive their life) and interpersonal thoughts (how they perceive one another) as imaginative expressions to perform stories (Clark & French, 2014).

figure 16 Inis Mór: Mermaids, Dolphins, Ancient Forts, Sail Boats, Hidden Caves, Fairies, Starfish, and Snails Appear. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017)

figure 17 Aran Island Children in Masks in Front of the Aran Island Mural. Photo is a still image from the documentary film Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2017)

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The children’s poetic expression, sense of humor, stories, masks, and visual samples, were rich in context. Perhaps O’Donohue’s (2009) poem, Afterwards, captures the Irish imagination, and the imagination of children in general, that “rise like a new moon unclaimed” (p. 113). Afterwards After All the words spilled out in seas from the clay wells of human sounds, and the air crocheted with bird calligraphy everywhere, every earth pore calm with dusk, still you would rise, like a new moon, unclaimed. Much like the stories of O’Flaherty (1986), the Aran Island communities perceived the aesthetic mural process as a way to broaden the outside world’s perspectives of the Aran way of life. Much can be learned from the Aran children as they were not in the least bit hesitant to release their imaginations when facing the Aran Island Map Mural. They were intent on making meaningful symbolic messages about the Easter Uprising (1916), and the importance and beauty of their island way of life, within the mural space. Significant details and wonderings simultaneously appeared on the mural, not only from the children’s hearts and minds, but also from their parents and community members. This aesthetic quest engaged the community in meaningful discovery, building relationships within and between community contexts in spontaneous ways. The Aran island community celebrated their children’s imaginations and revealed the moral imperative that they love and want to preserve their island way of life and cultural heritage. Aesthetic education deepens the art experience in a highly personal and profound way (Clark & French, 2014). The Aran Island Map Mural provided the

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Aran children with a unique way to create meaning in order to express who they are. “This is exactly what we do in morality. We portray situations, delineate character, formulate problems, and mold events. When we act we engage in various forms of creative making…it is precisely what morally sensitive and perceptive people must do” (Johnson, 1993, p. 212). When we meet and learn from children and families living within creative and compassionate communities like the Aran Islands, we have a renewed sense of hope. When children’s art and way of perceiving their life are dignified and celebrated in authentic ways such as the Aran Island Map Mural project revealed, communities may have a renewed potential to flourish with and empathic understanding for others. We “recognized that imagination is the key by which new things come into existence, old things are reshaped, and our ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, and thinking are transformed. Imagination is the key to the moral acts by which old conceptions and values are reshaped, our ways of perceiving and responding to situations and people are transformed, and new realities come into existence” (Johnson, 1993, p. 212). With this revelation in mind Drs. Clark & French were inspired to go on a pilgrimage to pray for the children of Aran and the world.

2

The Aran Island Map Mural Travels to the Summit of Croagh Patrick: A Prayer for the Children of Our World

Returning to Ireland in 2017, the possibilities were infinite to begin the odyssey to the summit of Croagh Patrick to celebrate the beauty within an Irish child’s mind and heart. This was a pilgrimage to reveal the wonder of the Irish child and of all children. During the climb on the holy mountain to the summit of Croagh Patrick, we captured a glimpse of Ireland’s past and future as rainbows illuminated Clew Bay; a holy horizon and pathway whereby thousands of Irish pilgrims have laid their prayers. At the summit of Croagh Patrick, we unrolled the mural of the Aran Islands filled with the artwork and symbolic messages. Other pilgrims nearby reached for the edges and ran for stones to secure the mural, while rainbows were spreading color and light over the small islands below. There at the summit the children’s aesthetic voices were revealed to the wind and stone. Captured mural imagery of their island adventures, their island homes and playground, mermaids swimming off the coast, fathers in boats fishing off the island coast, buried treasures, sea life, rainbows and ancient forts, were now released as blessings and prayers. The child’s imagination is like a lantern. It is up to us to choose to see and understand a child’s

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imagination that “illuminates the inner-landscapes of our life and helps discover it’s secrets archaeologies” (O’Donohue, 2003, p 155). Everything that is—every tree, bird, star, stone, and wave—existed first as a dream in the mind of the divine artist. Indeed, the world is the mirror of the divine imagination and to decipher the depths of the world is to gain deep insights into the heart of God. The traces of the divine imagination are everywhere. The beauty of God becomes evident in the beauty of the world. I once asked a brilliant young sculptor who her favourite sculptor was and she said: ‘the divine sculptor’. The curvature of mountains, the angular stillness of rocks, the variations on the seashore, the white graffiti of stars on night’s high black wall, all belong to God’s masterpiece; and like any great work of art, it invites endless contemplations. It has an inexhaustible depth and a fluency of presence that can meet us in all the different phases of our awareness with ever surprising invitations. The divine imagination has infused the things of the world with secret depths. (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 151) This was a symbolic prayer and tribute to not only thank the Aran Island people and all they inspired within us as they go through their daily life, but also a tribute to their children who demonstrated diverse and aesthetic visual expressions of love for their island homes. The children are our greatest teachers and communicated important imagery about their island homes and family life. They are an inspiration of love, beauty and hope. All children’s imaginations are miracles to behold. This is the message that needs to be shared and held within our hearts. This spiritual food gave us strength and carried us on the arduous climb to the summit. When you consider the neglected gifts that are in all of us juxtaposed beside the voice and life of a child raised on one of the Aran Islands, it’s very disturbing and comforting as the same time, as O’Donohue would say, that the children are actually a sign-post for us. A sign-post that reminds us to dream of possibility, to dream of engaging deeper with why we were created and why we were put on this earth. It is a form of contemplation and prayer when one listens to the deepest yearnings of our imagination, to climb a summit for a greater good and glimpse God in nature. O’Donohue (2003) captures this earthly potential before us by stating, “We are neither strangers nor foreign bodies in a closedoff world. We are the ultimate participants here—the more we give ourselves to experience and strive for expression, the deeper it opens before us” (p. 150). As we climbed to the summit of Croagh Patrick we prayed for Ireland, we prayed for the children, we prayed for the Aran Islands, we prayed for our

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country, America, and all the children throughout the world; that their hearts and minds would be dignified and celebrated, so that children—like Emily, Patrice, Kathryn, Tashema and Charrisa—can enter more fully into their dreams. Through the children’s art “our world is graced with wonder. When the imagination awakens, the inner world illuminates, we begin to glimpse things that no-one can imagine. The imagination awakens the wildness in our heart… our empathy and our minds are engaged with the depth and complexity of our hearts” (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 155). Sprinkled throughout the map mural were messages filled with emotions and love, a testimony to the Irish spirit and strength to fight for freedom of expression. There at the summit the hearts and minds of the Aran island children represented a greater message to the outside world, that we collectively must shoulder the responsibility to preserve freedom of expression, the arts, and compassionate, creative communities. The awakening to the beauty of your creativity can totally change the way you view limits. When you see the limit not as a confining barrier but as a threshold, you are already beyond. The beauty of the imagination helps you to see the limit as an invitation to venture forth and view the world and your role in it as full of beautiful possibilities. You become aware of new possibilities in how you feel, think and act. The interim, the in-between world is brisk with possibility. And possibility is the gift of creativity. (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 243) Our “time circle” now completed as God blessed the Irish children’s prayers for their home and families, “we surrendered to the beauty that would secretly sustain us” and possibilities awakened for a future united. We prayed for all children throughout the world especially those suffering from war, poverty, greed, abuse, trafficking, neglect and marginalization. At the summit our hearts and minds reflected the message in O’Donohue’s (1997) poem, “A Blessing” (pp. 146–147). A Blessing May the light of your soul guide you. May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the sacred love and warmth of your heart. May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul May the sacredness of your work begin healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work. May your work never weary you.

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May it release within you well springs of refreshment, inspiration and excitement. May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences. May the day never burden. May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises. May evening find you gracious and fulfilled. May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected. May your soul calm, console and renew you. In closing, it is important to stress the fact that we must never reject the critical nature of our moral imagination. We owe it to our children to renew our starved and ravaged world by celebrating and nurturing their innermost wonderings and gifts. Possibility leads one to choose, and our imaginations can lead us to innovation and creating new, a vital goal in facing the critical 21st century issues. The imagination has opened [her] inner door to eternal treasures. Once when we begin to glimpse who we really are, many lonesome burdens and false images fall away; our feet find new freedom on the pastures of possibility. (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 255) Perhaps O’Donahue captures what we need to do first as adults. We need to get back to our creative core and connect with our child’s eye, our child’s heart, our child’s soul and not forget our early days of innocence. With my child’s eye I could imagine a sweep of green after-grass breathing in the silver-realm of heaven. Heaven is not elsewhere. It is here, in the unseen, beside us. (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 222)

figure 18 Croagh Patrick Summit & Sheep Constellations: A Reflection of the Divine Imagination during the climb. Photos are still images from the documentary film A Prayer for the Children of Aran (Clark & French, 2019)

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All through your life, the most precious experiences seem to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in this world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love, and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret. (O’Donohue, 2003, p. 217) Let us pray we can begin to revere and dignify our children’s moral imaginations and ultimately become fully human, fully loving, fully caring and fully present. One last child’s poem is presented to ponder the treasure held within children’s hearts and minds; treasure to dignify and celebrate. Clare, age ten, is our last messenger who was inspired to create a poem titled, “Creative Night” (Clark, 2005a, appendix J). Clare stepped into the life of van Gogh, to capture his inner artist, as he looked out his window to the mountains, and to the sky. At the same time Clare tells us that wherever you are even “from your hospital bed/you find your hope to fill your soul/for new feelings and thoughts.” Clare beautifully integrates themes from nature whereby past, present and future are woven in a warm cloak for one’s heart, revealing the secret world of the artist. Creative Night Swirly multi-color clouds Unique patterns in the heart. Bright glowing reflecting sun. Fiery shaped mountains Standing tall and strong. Friendly loving caring town, Laughter all among us. Silent, mysterious, peaceful world surrounding our hearts and souls.

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Different people, new faces, Creative mind working on new pieces. From the hospital bed you find your hope to fill your soul for new feelings and thoughts. Being the spark to spark your brain To find a whole new world.

Acknowledgement The epilogue was coauthored by Barbara A. Clark and James Joss French presenting recent international aesthetic research (2019).

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Index aesthetic education ix, 4, 71, 91, 97–99, 127 inquiry 45 memory 87 methodology 1, 14, 15, 54, 71 perception 13, 18, 105 affective realm 7 art-based psychology 1, 12, 13, 17, 19, 26, 53 artistic expression 9, 45 arts-based aesthetic experience 26, 71 at-promise x, 13, 34 cognition 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, 21, 41, 54, 55, 62, 66 cognitive scaffolding 11 divine imagination 27, 113, 129, 131 echoes 6, 95, 99 empathic thinking 2, 66 voice 72, 104 experiential intelligence 14, 17 expressive voice 27, 28 freedom ix, xi, 4, 23, 30, 34, 36, 40, 42, 45, 65, 84, 87, 99, 109, 120, 121, 130, 131 forgiveness xi, 26, 49, 89, 90, 99, 104, 111, 112, 116 Gestalt perception 13, 14 holistic perception 10 human development 1–4, 7–9, 12, 13, 15, 18 imagination ix–xii, 2–13, 17–27, 29–31, 33–35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53, 55–59, 61, 62, 64–67, 69–74, 76, 82, 83, 86, 89, 92, 95, 97, 101, 103–106, 109–111, 113, 116, 120–123, 125, 127–132 imaginative possibilities x, 67 interpersonal intelligence 46, 66, 97, 100, 106, 107 intrapersonal intelligence 1, 42, 46, 100, 117, 125 intuition 3, 11, 16, 58

moral affect 5, 9, 25, 45, 106, 107 discriminations 5, 9, 25, 45, 106 feeling 37, 42, 43, 47, 54, 58, 67, 70, 73, 106, 107, 109 imagination ix–xii, 2, 4–10, 13, 17–19, 21, 23–27, 29–31, 33–35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 48, 49, 53 54, 56, 61, 62, 65, 66, 69, 71, 73, 74, 82, 86, 89, 92, 97, 103, 104, 109–111, 116, 120–123, 131, 132 life 24, 97 thought 5, 9, 25, 35, 45, 46, 47, 63, 64, 74, 76–78, 106 voice 41, 117 perception 7, 8, 10–16, 18–20, 24, 25, 27, 55, 65, 66, 70, 105, 106, 116, 123, 125 perceptual dynamics 8, 11 personal symbolic language 10, 17, 19, 42, 46, 61, 62, 82, 104, 105, 123 poetic composition 26, 28, 34, 35, 41, 43, 46, 54, 56, 80, 102, 105, 107, 110 imagination 69, 72, 73, 76, 83 language 32, 56, 74, 75, 107, 124, 125 possibility xi–xii, 6, 18, 20, 24, 27, 28, 30–34, 67, 79, 89, 93, 95, 98, 110, 116, 120, 121, 123, 128–131 preadolescent 2, 5, 11–13, 16–20, 23, 24, 41, 58, 59, 66, 104, 105 Project Zero x, 18 real-world thinking 17 reflective intelligence 11, 13–15, 17–19, 21, 24, 73 sensory experience ix, 28, 34, 53, 54, 69, 71 realm 53, 54, 59 soul ix, xi, 2, 27–31, 53, 55, 56, 61, 65–68, 79, 80, 84, 86–88, 93, 95, 97–99, 102, 103, 107, 108, 110, 111, 115, 116, 118, 121, 130–133 spirituality ix, xii, 28, 33, 35, 53, 56, 63, 89, 94 symbolic language 2, 7, 9, 10, 17, 19, 25, 42, 46, 61, 62, 73, 82, 104, 105, 116, 123, 125

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index prayer 129 systems 3, 7 thinking dispositions 11, 13–15, 19

true self 1, 32, 53, 103 visual thinking 1, 8, 10–15, 17, 20, 24, 28, 42, 47, 54, 60, 66, 73, 75, 82, 107, 126