Constraint Gives Way to Beauty

A Maxim for Education and Life

Classical Christian Education is a very certain kind of thing. Part of me wants to follow that first statement with, “and it’s not for everyone”, but I don’t actually believe that. I think it is for everyone. There is no denying, however, that this kind of education is not what everyone wants. Over my years of teaching in classical Christian schools I have run into a number of families who have come to our schools but would like for us to change what we are doing in one way or another. Typically this comes either in the form of wanting more focus on “S.T.E.M.” in the curriculum or wanting more “flexibility” in the curriculum for the sake of more creativity, personal interests, or “learning styles”.

In my opinion we should give no place to such requests.

As per the desire for more “S.T.E.M.”, our schools should already be offering rigorous math and science courses which serve as solid preparation for more specified fields in those areas. A K-12 classical school should not, however, get into technical or vocational training but rather should graduate students with a solid understanding of all seven liberal arts thereby making them ready to pursue whatever particular field of study they desire. To overload our earlier forms of education with S.T.E.M. is to strip away from students their opportunity to see and take part in the beauty of other areas of human learning. Each of these areas of study, in their turn, enhance our appreciation and understanding of the others. Mathematicians who can write beautiful poetry and prose are better than those who can’t. Historians who can work through complex algebraic expressions and who understand the workings of biology are better than those who can’t and don’t.

As per the other kind of push, for more “flexibility” for the sake of creativity and freedom to learn their own way, let me just say that this request betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about true creativity. Some people think education should be student driven and based upon their unique qualities and therefore we should have Individualized Educational Plans (IEP) to help them succeed and bring out their special qualities. In reality this approach very rarely, if ever, produces the best results when it comes to nurturing a student’s creative and intellectual potential.

Children, and people in general, need constraints. There is nothing but good sense in having a well thought out, fully formed plan of education that is given in the same way to everyone. This is not to say that all forms of education are equally good as long as you hold them rigidly. They are not. But almost any consistent plan of education, that at least has the good of the student as its focus, is better than the backward notion of student-driven, individualized education. Children do not know what they need to know. Children often don’t want to know what they need to know. Letting children make their own educational decisions is a terrible idea. The only thing worse than letting children plot the course of their own early education is to let the government do it.

A Classical liberal-arts education is an approach which has literally been formed, chiseled, and polished for thousands of years. What we are doing today in classical Christian school has its roots all the way back in Moses, David, Solomon, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle. Those roots went on to find fertile soil in Christianity, where it bloomed like never before, and it led to the heights of Western Civilization. The ways in which classical education has been delivered has evolved over time, of course, but the principles and focus have not. The seven liberal arts are themselves good and they are good for everyone. Everyone ought to go through this same course of study, everyone ought to drink from this same well of life, and everyone ought to benefit from the same tried and true pedagogical methods.

It is absolutely true that this places children “in a box.” It is a very good box. It is absolutely false that this will stifle their creativity. It will, in fact, give birth to their creativity.

There is probably no better example of this truth, that constraint births creativity, than in the visual arts (though it is equally true in all disciplines). Parents want their kids to have fun and to paint stuff. Finger painting is a blast. Twisting clay into some horror figure of an elephant is loads of fun. None of it is really all that creative though.

I know, I know…what a joy kill, right? No, not at all! By all means, have fun with finger paints at home. Have fun with play dough at home. But what we are doing at school is different. It’s harder. It also leads to something much greater and infinitely more fun. It leads to intellectually engaged creative beauty and it only comes from applying constraint, direction, and it must be reciprocated, by the student, with honest effort, in order to reach its full potential.

This is “The Triumph of Titus and Vespasian” by Giulio Romano painted c.1537 - c.1540. Take it in for a moment.

This painting is beautiful and loaded with incredibly interesting things to see and ponder on. Notice the detail and craftsmanship. Notice that it also points us to true historical events. Notice that it also has a theological message.

Something like this could not have been produced by a person who was not constrained, over a prolonged period of time, to learn exactly how to hold a brush, how to apply various mediums to varying surfaces, how to reproduce what one sees with the eye onto a canvas, and how to make what one imagines and sees with the mind’s eye. This painting could not have been made by someone who hadn’t studied history to know that Titus and Vespasian conquered Jerusalem through siege in 70 A.D. This painting reflects someone who has considered the theological implications of the destruction of Jerusalem and who tried to show God’s approval of this Roman siege (as shown by the angel crowing Titus and Vespasian with golden crowns over and above their laurel wreath crowns). This painting came from someone who studied under masters (who also studied under masters) and spent countless hours working on minute details of his craft. He learned the rules of art and conformed to them and he made something amazing!

As a diamond is created by constraint and pressure so are great painters, writers, logicians, architects, etc. No one would say Leonardo da Vinci was lacking in creativity but da Vinci didn’t come out of nowhere. Almost every great name you can think of in the world of art, music, and the written word (and yes in the world of mathematics and science as well) are a product of formal constraint giving birth to creativity. Those who are left directionless to do whatever they like, however they like, rarely make anything that lasts or is noteworthy. Placing a child in front of paints and clay and saying “have fun” rarely yields greatness. Pedagogy, practice, pressure, pursuit, and passion are far more reliable when it comes to producing genius.

It is only once we have submitted to “the rules” of a discipline that we can also master them. Kicking against the goads does not give us Caravaggio it gives us Marcel Duchamp wrote his name on a urinal and called it “art.”

Poetry is another place in which it is completely evident that beauty comes from constraint. Consider Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The beauty of this poem, and countless others, is rooted in obedience to rules of language. Rhyme scheme, meter, and metaphor are all at play here. There is a subservience to the rules of grammar and a mastery of imagery evocative language and its final product is beautiful. And then there is this:

Who is the voice
in the wind?
Who is the candle
in the night?
Who will defend the children
Like a seatbelt
that defends children
or like a guy
whose job it is
to defend children?

— From “Our American Heroes,” by Isobel Nadine Shaffer

Wow. That was terrible. I am sorry I did that to you.

But hey, it makes the point, doesn’t it? Robert Frost loved the English Language, he studied carefully the use of words and their meaning. He knew how to use patterns and rhythms of speech, when to be repetitive and when to break from it. He knew how words call to mind pictures in our head and he thought philosophically about the choices we make and the permanency of our decisions for good or ill. He put all of that love and wisdom into his poetry. All the constraints of his education burst out into creative beauty that is so rarely paralleled in our day.

Those who master a liberal arts education, who know and love the history of the world, who have read and loved the greatest literature, have reveled in, and loved, the beauty of visual and performing arts, who have wondered at and loved the mathematical structure of the universe, those who have studied, loved, and played with languages in poetry and prose, etc., etc., they are those who are ready to create. They will create, it will be too painful to keep all of that goodness inside them. They will have to share it with others just as Jeremiah could not keep in the words of the LORD.

If I say, “I will not mention him,
    or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
    shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
    and I cannot.

Jeremiah 20:9

A classical education constrains by forming lovers of truth, goodness, and beauty. Conforming to reality and submitting to the truths God built into creation is not slavery, it is freedom. Proper constraint always yields goodness. Just as sexuality is to be constrained before marriage so that it may be fully and beautifully expressed in marriage (bringing us beautiful children and families full of love and satisfaction), so constraint in education gives birth to every kind of joy and creativity in arts and academics.

Nowhere in this process is the uniqueness of each person destroyed, by the way. These are not soul destroying methods, they are soul forming methods. A classical education is a mold into which souls are poured to help them grow and form in the image of their Savior, the wisest man whoever lived. Pouring something into a mold does not change its substance. What is poured retains its unique qualities but it gains a definite and distinct form. To be sure, everyone is molded and formed by something but some “educations” are more akin to spilling a soul on the floor than it is to pouring it into a mold of our Savior.

Classical Christian education is not a millstone around the neck, it is the key to the shackles of aimlessness.