John Adams, our second president, placed creativity at the forefront of human achievement. He wrote to his wife that “he should study politics and war, so that his sons could study mathematics and philosophy, so that their children could study painting, poetry and music”. Art, of course, has been with us forever, and people as diverse as Plato, Confucius, Napoleon, and Einstein considered music to be the soul of the universe.
Sylvia Cauter, director of the North Kitsap High School Choir, wrestled with this soul of the universe for 28 years. With the magic of music, she has enriched the lives of thousands of students and Kitsap communities. Some students I had in my classes reluctantly accepted the school solely because of its arts, pottery, and music programs.
When I was hired in 1997 as a history teacher, Sylvia was already a legend. Students lined up to join his program. I still remember the enthusiastic reception of Ferguson and Cauter’s “Sound of Music” and “West Side Story” productions by NKHS students. And I remember the great background decorations for musicals created by the students of the school’s art department. What a place to teach! It will not be the same without Mrs. Cauter, who is retiring.
I was a brand new, untested history teacher in 1997. No one lined up to take my classes. How could I compete with teachers whose weapons of education were music and art? It just wasn’t fair. However, my mentor teacher advised me to incorporate art and music into my history lessons. Good advice, after all, my high school teachers a century ago did just that, they piqued my interest in art-related subjects.
Einstein, a violinist and pianist in his spare time, believed that creative minds move history and asserted that “imagination is more important than specialized knowledge, because knowledge is limited and imagination goes around the world. world”. And Steve Jobs recognized the practicality of creativity. He wrote that “producing technology requires intuition and creativity”.
Imagination, creativity and bold ideas have always marked history. Inventions from hieroglyphs to the steam engine to the computer have changed the world. Writings from St. Augustine to Luther to Marx gave birth to ideas that challenged traditional beliefs.
Ideas, literature, arts and architecture have become a big part of my discussions of history. Maybe too big, because every time I meet a former student, we remember everything except the story. Waterloo simply couldn’t compete with the Sistine Chapel.
A few years ago, I met two former students at Reykjavik airport in Iceland. They had just returned from a trip to Europe and were still amazed by the different cathedrals and museums they visited.
During a stay at Harrison Medical Center, one of my nurses told me that her husband was one of my students, and what he remembered best were our trips to the Seattle Opera. Five times a year we enjoyed the magic of Verdi and Puccini and Mozart.
In Narrative Magazine, a former student vividly described our visits to the opera and her response to Verdi’s Nabucco: “The ‘Hebrew Slave Chorus’ brought me to tears.” After graduating from college, she wrote four librettos of children’s operas which were set to music and performed by opera companies in Houston and Seattle.
Did I fail as a history teacher? The students never asked for more history lessons, but they convinced me to offer, for three years, an AP art history course after school.
Since “art is one of the greatest sources of pleasure”, according to David Rockefeller, and since “the future belongs to young people who have an education and an imagination to create” (President Barack Obama), I was probably on the right track by mixing history and art. After all, in the field of education, taking a path less traveled can make all the difference.
Ideally, education should be a “great source of pleasure”, as teaching was for me. Education should offer an assortment of educational delights, to attract students, to help students discover their potential and prepare them for their own road to Damascus. However, if he gets hit on this road, Albert Schweitzer reminds us that “there are always two ways to protect yourself from the misery of life: music and cats”. I would add paint.
Thank you Sylvia Cauter for the music. The cat, of course, is the masterpiece of creation and no longer needs to be worshipped.
James U. Behrend retired from teaching history at North Kitsap High School. He lives on Bainbridge Island.