DO YOU consider yourself fully educated? If so, think again. Becoming educated is a continual process, one we can never quite finish. No one is ever fully educated, and most of us still have a long way to go. But we can, however, move toward that goal if we know what a full education includes. So, over the next few weeks, I'll be talking about different aspects of that broad issue - a multi-part series of columns, if you will. I'll be asking various forms of, and suggesting some initial answers to, the question, "What does it mean to be educated?" I challenge you to think with me about where the gaps in our education lie so that we might begin to fill them. I don't pretend to have all the answers; I've got as much left to learn as anyone. So disagree with me - loudly and constructively.
The first part of education to talk about isn't traditional academics, although they're certainly crucial, and I'll get to them later. The most basic aspect of becoming educated is learning how to appreciate art. Art (broadly defined) appeals to our most fundamental faculties. Without it, our lives are incomplete - we have a void, an emptiness. One cannot be educated without art. One might be able to be well trained or skilled or even capable, but not educated. To be educated, in the full sense of the word, you have to be human. And you can't be fully human without the arts.
Now, when I say art, I don't mean only old paintings and symphony orchestras. Art is a bigger category than that. Think of art more broadly - as a product of the human imagination that has the ability to say or suggest or imply more than what it, on first glance, appears to be - it stands for something more than it literally is.
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But let's not get hung up on defining art. Instead of focusing on what art is, we should focus on what art does, and why that's essential to being educated.
The key isn't the art itself, but our reaction to it. Art is valuable because of its power to affect us, its ability to reach deep into our chests and make us feel.
The affectation I'm talking about is not pure shock value. Shocking content isn't what makes art needed. Extreme images and language saturate our society. We surround ourselves with hyperbolic portrayals of violence, gratuitous and objectifying sex, and the crudest, most damaging language we can find. The problem isn't that we don't have material to shock us; we have more than enough. Rather, the problem is that we don't know what to do with that material - we don't know how to react anymore. We've lost the ability to be shocked, the capacity to feel.
Art helps restore that basic human capacity to think emotionally and critically at the same time, to appreciate that the seemingly small things in our daily lives are more important than we recognize. Art teaches us to connect with lives and worlds outside of our own narrowly defined existence. In doing this, art enriches life, allowing us to understand more deeply what it means to be human, to feel.
Third-year College student Kate Porter, director of the recent dramatic production of "Agnes of God," puts it quite nicely: "Our own experiences often do not coincide exactly with the words and images that we confront in art. Because of this, we extend beyond ourselves to imagine other ways of conceiving the world around us. Art teaches us more about ourselves and the world in demanding that we be our own teachers."
In this respect, art is more important and more fundamental to being educated than anything. It reminds us that we are emotional, imaginative beings and forces us to live our lives accordingly.
It doesn't matter what kind of art you like - although variety surely can't hurt. Seek out whatever art moves you - music, visual arts, drama, poetry, fiction, dance or even unconventional art forms. The point isn't what kind of art or which particular piece turns you on. The key is that you get turned on.
Find art, and let it affect you. That's something everyone can and should do. It's an integral part of becoming educated. And it's easy. Art is everywhere; talented artists surround us. The challenge isn't finding it - it's opening our eyes, ears and hearts to it and letting it move us. So why not begin the list of the components of a full education with the arts.
(Bryan Maxwell's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bmaxwell@cavalierdaily.com.)
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