In light of the classical roots of our Saint David's curriculum, I enjoyed reading this April 2010 article in Time Magazine about the teaching of empathy. The author, Maia Szalavitz, makes the point that empathy can and needs to be taught. She cites the ancient Greeks comparing the ways of Sparta with the ways of Athens when it came to child-rearing and education--Athens obviously, being the better choice. She argues that empathy starts with teaching young children to understand their own feelings and behaviors thereby giving them the tools to understand the feelings and behaviors of others. This resonates at Saint David's where we make reference to another classical ideal--one found etched in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi--"Know Thyself." We lean toward the Athenians.
Yesterday evening, independent scholar and critic Michelle Marder Kamhi ( www.mmkamhi.com ), co-editor with husband Louis Torres of Aristos , an online review of arts; author of Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts ; and grandmother of two Saint David's boys, gave a thought provoking talk on art for our grandparent community. An advocate of objective standards in arts scholarship and criticism, Ms. Kamhi focused her talk on the ways in which art critics such as Clement Greenberg promoted the shift from representational art to abstraction. Kamhi argues that the abstract and post-modern art prevalent today, which often requires explanation by docents in order to be understood, goes against art's purpose. Taking issue with Greenberg's contention that representation is an expendable convention of painting, she quoted the late art critic John Canaday: "Art is the tangible expression of the intangible values that men live by." ...
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