Last week I was asked to speak at the College of Teacher’s meeting on the topic What is Beauty? Typically, in responding to such a task, I would turn to our literary greats. I would refer to Keats’ definitive “Beauty is truth. Truth is beauty. That is all ye need to know.” I would quote Lord Byron’s “She walks in beauty like the night.” Or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “She was beautiful, but not like those girls in magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad.”
I would also look to the philosophers. Kant would tell us that beauty is purposeful in that it serves a purpose. The brightest flowers attract the pollinators. The male bird’s plumage entices a mate. Beauty is pragmatically about survival of a species. Plato would argue that beauty has nothing to do with art or nature but is instead the object of love and goodness. Aristotle defines beauty in metaphysical terms, attributing beauty to a mathematical science in things like symmetry. (Michelle Pfeiffer is apparently regarded amongst Mathematicians as having the most perfectly symmetrical face and is therefore heralded as one of the great beauties of our ages.)
A popular Steiner quote cast around schools is that “You must be for the children, the representative of the good, the true, and the beautiful.” Many of us are probably not as symmetrical as Michelle Pfeiffer and so that might seem an impossible call to arms, but in other texts Steiner speaks of the duty of the teacher to “surround the children with beauty”. For me this is somewhat problematic because if I think about what beauty is, it is a judgement. And what I surround the children with and deem to be beautiful, might not be what you think is beautiful. It would be entirely possible to have 26 families in any single class who have 26 different perceptions about what beauty is, and so “surround(ing) the child with beauty” becomes more of a complicated task then it might first appear.
And so, in defining beauty, I cast aside Kant, Plato and Aristotle, and my literary heroes. Instead, I consulted my own tiny philosophers and poets on what beauty is, asking one student from each of the year levels to assist me in this seemingly impossible task:
Kindergarten: “Beauty is a really pretty flower. And if you have a whole garden of flowers then you have more beauty.”
Year 1: “Beauty is lots of colours. Like if something is really colourful, then that has beauty.”
Year 2: “I know what beauty is but it’s really hard to explain. Maybe like a flower or a person and when you look at them it makes you smile? Or a boat?”
Year 3: “My Mum is beautiful! Also, this bug is very beautiful.”
Year 4: “It’s when someone is very kind. Then they have beauty on the inside. It can also be in non-living things. You can look at something and think it has great beauty.”
Year 5: “Beauty can be a thing, like a flower or a sunset or a piece of music. But in a person, it is when someone feels really confident.”
Year 6: “Beauty is different for different people. What you think is important will affect what you think beauty is. So for me, I think that tree is a thing of great beauty, because I value fresh air and shade and greenery. But for a person who builds shopping centres, they might think a bunch of cement buildings and carparks is a thing of great beauty because they care more about money.”
What I love about these responses is that they show what a fantastic job our teachers are doing in raising gorgeous humans, but also the fact that everything our most revered philosophers, poets and writers have mentioned is right there in their comments – a reflection on nature, an appreciation of inner beauty and physical beauty in people, and an acknowledgement of how beauty might make us feel. There’s also a clear evolution in thinking as we progress up through the year levels, which is a joy to behold. And I especially love that my Year 6 representative and I are more alike than I would perhaps care to admit – we both feel that beauty is a judgement.
And we prefer trees to carparks.
Charmaine Rye – Head of Primary School / Deputy Principal.
