Themes of the book: 3

3. The Spiral Curriculum. The liberal arts, of course, are non everything. They were non the whole of ancient educational activity either. For Plato a rounded educational activity would start out amongst "gymnastics", pregnant physical educational activity together with grooming inward diverse kinds of skills, together with "music" pregnant all kinds of mental together with artistic training. In the Laws (795e) he describes these every bit physical grooming for the torso (including trip the low-cal fantastic together with wrestling or martial arts), together with cultural grooming for the personality (including sacred music), together with so that immature people spend practically their whole lives at "play"(sacrificing, singing, dancing: 803e) inward gild to win the favour of the gods.

The make of studies that were after codified every bit the liberal arts are to live on built on this double foundation, together with they inward plough are for the sake of our increment inward truthful inner freedom, inward preparation for the highest studies – the contemplation of God, inward philosophy together with theology. In the Laws, Plato calls the liberal arts studies for "gentlemen", although he specifies that fifty-fifty the "man inward the
street" together with "tiny tots" should live on taught the rudiments. In this house he divides them into three, inward add-on to the music together with trip the low-cal fantastic discussed earlier: "(1) computation together with the report of numbers; (2) measurements of lines, surfaces together with solids; (3) the usual human relationship of the heavenly bodies every bit they revolve inward their courses" (817e).

An educational activity devised along these lines (not also slavishly, because Plato's proposed legislation tin make notice live on rather oppressive) could live on said to live on based upon a spiral curriculum, since each of the essential elements are returned to i time to a greater extent than together with again, each fourth dimension at a higher score of development, until the gaze of human being is alone on God, through the ascending path of a dialectic that leads beyond argumentation towards contemplation.

The liberal arts are non for the sake of anything else; they are non vocational inward whatever narrow sense. They incorporate their aim inside themselves. Even the report of numbers together with mightiness to mensurate is non strictly for the sake of the many practical applications to which these skills lend themselves. In themselves, taught inward the correct means together with studied inward the correct spirit, they are actually well-nigh harmony, proportion, beauty, together with so they atomic number 82 the hear to the origin of all beauty.

These notes are intended to assist readers engage amongst the text of Beauty inward the Word. 
NEXT: The Mother of the Liberal Arts.

Bagikan Artikel ini