 "Education: Ethical and Beautiful" / January 3, 2001; Issue #1448
"Education and Friendship" / January 10, 2001; Issue #1449
"Education, Economics, & a World to Like" / January 17, 2001; Issue #1450
"Education & What Every Child Deserves" / January 24, 2001; Issue #1451
"What Education Is For" / January 31, 2001; Issue #1452
"Education, Large and Warm" / February 7, 2001; Issue #1453
"Education, Ambition, & What Millions Like" / February 14, 2001; Issue #1454
"Education, Attention, & Love" / February 21, 2001; Issue #1455
"For Education to Fulfill Its Purpose" / February 28, 2001; Issue #1456
"The Greatest Encourager of a Person's Mind" / March 7, 2001; Issue #1457
 Aesthetic Realism Is Education / June 20, 1973
"Aesthetic Realism believes that a person who doesn't like the world on an honest basis is not educated.The purpose of all education is, as Aesthetic Realism sees it, to find sense in the world; also honestly to hope to find sense in the world when that finding, as it often is, is difficult. It does seem that if all the knowledge provided by our many college curricula did not culminate in some good feeling about the world itself, this knowledge was not so useful. It is also true that if we have knowledge-even if the knowledge is painful-and we are proud of the knowledge, that much knowledge itself is likable and the world which makes for knowledge is likable.
"Anyway, the purpose of Aesthetic Realism is education in the strictest, fullest, most poetic sense of the word. The high point in education is when, through knowledge, the world has some likable meaning in it" —Eli Siegel ... more
Education, America, & Lois Mason • September 19, 2007
As a new school year begins, we publish an article on the teaching method that truly succeeds in having students learn—students of all ages and diverse backgrounds and neighborhoods; students, too, who felt they'd never learn, who felt both scornful and hopeless about education. This article on the great Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method is by Lois Mason....
Tragically, Lois Mason died this summer. She was one of America's most respected and beloved educators, and this issue of TRO is both an honoring of her and a presentation of that vibrant, practical, kind approach to education which she loved and which teachers on all levels are learning now. more
Education: The “Having-to-Do-With Other Things” /
September 8, 2004
We are proud to publish five beautiful short poems by Eli Siegel, and also an article by Barbara McClung about the great Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method. Mrs. McClung is a New York City elementary school teacher. Her article is part of a paper she presented in May at the public seminar titled “The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Makes Every Subject Truly Anti-Prejudice—& Students Learn!” ... more
The Biggest News about Education / March 24, 2004
How important is it that through the Aesthetic Realism teaching method, as students learn the subjects in the curriculum they become kinder to each other? There is nothing more important for America. This issue includes "To End the Crisis" by Avi Gvili, teacher of English, who writes: "In the over six years I have been using the Aesthetic Realism teaching method, I’ve seen students who had all but given up on school and said they hated books, come really to like reading and writing—something they never imagined could happen." ... more
Every Child’s True Intelligence / March 6, 2002
"I had thought intelligence was measured by IQ tests and report card marks. I went after high grades with avidity, and got them. But because I was using knowledge not to care for the world but to be superior, I felt I was a faker....Now, I am proud to tell, through a lesson on evolution I taught last year at Norman Thomas High School, how this magnificent teaching method brought out my students’ intelligence" —Science teacher Sally Ross .... more
Attention: An Aesthetic Matter / December 2, 1998
On the cause of Attention Deficit Disorder. "In recent years, difficulty with attention has been talked of mainly as a clinical matter. Many children are said to have "attention deficit disorder"; and they have been given, abundantly, the drug Ritalin as the supposed mighty pharmaceutical bringer of attentiveness. Ritalin is now being questioned ..." ... more
Education: For Respect or Contempt? / May 8, 2002
Aesthetic Realism asks: "Is reality to be known by us, understood, valued, cared for; or is it to be conquered, manipulated, used to glorify ourselves while lessening other things and persons? 'The large fight ...,' Mr. Siegel wrote, 'in every mind ... is the fight between respect for reality and contempt for reality' (TRO 151).
Contempt has its economic forms and also its forms in the educational field. Just as a person can see the material world, with its goods and wealth, as something he should have in a way that makes him superior to others — so we can look on knowledge and learning acquisitively, snobbishly, exploitively too....more
The Only Thing Big Enough / August 26, 1998
Science teacher Rosemary Plumstead describes a lesson on the heart — how it is a oneness of power and delicacy — and more.
For more, see the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method page 
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The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known online |
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Current Issues: The most recent issues in which Aesthetic Realism explains the news, happenings in people's lives, events in history, and some of the most moving works in literature. |
National Ethics: What honest criteria can we use to be good critics of ethics on the national and international levels? Aesthetic Realism looks at ethics as to loyalty, international affairs, & more. |
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Literature / Poetry: Discussing many great works of poetry and prose. Criticism, wrote Eli Siegel compactly, is showing "a good thing as good, a bad thing as bad, and a middling thing as middling." |
Love: How Aesthetic Realism describes the purpose of love—"to like the world honestly through another person." Discussion of what interferes with having real love—today and in history. |
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Racism—the Cause & Solution: The Aesthetic Realism understanding of contempt as the cause of racism, and the place of aesthetics in respecting, pleasurably, people different from oneself. |
The Economy: Why our economic system has failed to meet the needs of the American people, and the Aesthetic Realism understanding of good will as the basis for successful and fair economics |
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Education: The success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in having students learn to read and write—learn science, social studies, art, every subject—and be kinder, less angry, less prejudiced. |
Eli Siegel Day in Baltimore: Talks given on August 16, 2002, Eli Siegel's Centenary, placing Mr. Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, his work, in terms of world culture and history. |
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Art: "Aesthetic Realism sees the purpose of art as, from the beginning, the liking of the world more..." |
Archives: The rich education provided by Aesthetic Realism in issues of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known which are online. |
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| Aesthetic Realism Foundation online |
Selected Resources online |
The most comprehensive source of information about Aesthetic Realism is the website of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation—and the sites connected to it, including this one. You can start, for instance, at the Foundation's home page. Then, go on to biographical information about Eli Siegel, who founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941. You will see how the education he began teaching in those years continues now in Aesthetic Realism consultations and in public dramatic presentations and seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation—as well as in the Foundation's Outreach Programs for seniors, young people, libraries, teachers. Meanwhile in the schools of New York, the dramatically effective Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method has enabled students to learn, to love learning, and to pass standardized examinations for three decades. And artists since 1955 have exhibited at the Terrain Gallery
for which many have written commentaries (including on their own works), based on the philosophic principles of Aesthetic Realism.
You can read about Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism online, as well as about every person on the faculty of the Foundation. As editor of TRO her commentaries are in every issue (see, e.g., "Nature, Romanticism, & Harry Potter"; "Clothing and Emotion"; and "Jobs, Discontent, and Beauty"). In the Aesthetic Realism Online Library, you'll find the largest single repositary of reviews, articles in the press, lectures, poetry; and The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.
In 2002, Eli Siegel' s centenary, the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore, the city where he grew up, wrote on the meaning to America of Aesthetic Realism and its founder. So did the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, in the U.S. Congressional Record.
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People in America's diverse professions—the humanities, the arts, education, the social sciences, medicine, labor—have written on the value of Aesthetic Realism. They describe the way Aesthetic Realism teaches people how to understand themselves more accurately; how the ability to be just to other people is enhanced; how one's professional attainments are augmented. Language arts teacher Leila Rosen, for example, writes on the Aesthetic Realism teaching method. Anthropologist Arnold Perey writes on the way Aesthetic Realism opposes prejudice and improves international understanding. And there are many others.
Historically, new knowledge has often been met unjustly. This was true about the new, innovative thought of Louis Pasteur and John Keats, Beethoven and William Lloyd Garrison, Jonas Salk and Isaac Newton. And it has been true about Aesthetic Realism. Documenting and opposing this, the website "Friends of Aesthetic Realism — Countering the Lies," written by more than 60 individuals, refutes the falsehoods of the few persons who have attacked Aesthetic Realism and lets the facts speak for themselves.
People who want to express their opinion of Aesthetic Realism, and have the knowledge to back it up, have created blogs and websites and have written numerous articles. See, for example, composer and educator Edward Green; essayist Lynette Abel; photographer Len Bernstein; teachers Anne Richards, Christopher Balchin, and Alan Shapiro. Others are listed in "What People Are Saying."
The education of Aesthetic Realism enables a person to understand oneself more exactly than has been possible before, and to like the world honestly, authentically.
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A not for profit educational foundation
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AESTHETIC REALISM FOUNDATION
Education: The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method