There is a tremendous urgency about this issue of The Right Of, because it is about the teaching method America's schools are desperate for. It is about the teaching method that really works, that enables children, including those in some of the most economically ravaged neighborhoods, to learn successfully and with pride; the method that can stop the horrible racial animosity in the schools of this nation, and has done so with real students in real New York City classrooms: the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method. And this TRO is also a celebration: of how beautiful, kind, glowingly true, steadily successful Aesthetic Realism and its teaching method are! 

     We begin with three short poems by Eli Siegel. They say, musically and with charm, something large about what this world is like — the world in which every schoolchild finds himself. And we publish a paper by New York City teacher Patricia Martone, who is also one of the instructors in the most important class for educators in America: The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel As Teaching Method. Her paper was part of a public seminar titled "The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method Explains Why Students Don't Learn — & How They Can!" 

     As I have already implied, the Aesthetic Realism teaching method is not only true and effective — it is beautiful. It not only enables students to pass courses, do well on exams — it enables students to feel that a fact is warm, that a topic in the curriculum is one's friend and therefore should be welcomed into one's mind. 

     Eli Siegel is the philosopher who showed that the deepest purpose of every person is to like the world on an honest basis; but that we can go away from this purpose because of another purpose of ours: to have contempt. And he showed that ordinary contempt, the desire to have an "addition to self through the lessening of something else," is the beginning of all the cruelty that has ever been, including racism. This contempt is also what makes a person unable to learn. 

     Mr. Siegel explained that the purpose of education is "to like the world through knowing it." Part of liking the world is to criticize the injustice in it; and no person was a more courageous, passionate critic of injustice than Eli Siegel. But every item in the curriculum represents the world. And the reason the world as such can be honestly liked, including by a child of 8 who has already endured a lot, is in this Aesthetic Realism principle: "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites" (Eli Siegel, Self and World, p. 83). Mr. Siegel writes, in sentences at once scientific and tender: 

The structure of what thing cannot illuminate our own structure? Does not a sheet of paper in its wideness and narrowness bring some essential likeness to us, to ourselves? ... Education, principally, is the pleasant finding out of how things can help us know who we are as we see them. 

I am a person who knows firsthand how much the Aesthetic Realism teaching method has a child want to and able to learn. I met Aesthetic Realism very early, and it made me love education, from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond. I also saw in Eli Siegel what children long to see but feel they will never see in a person: honesty that was sheer and constant; kindness one could always count on; and a desire to know that was so uncurtailed, it made him at once the most comprehensive of scholars, and the person who understood a child to her tumultuous depths. 

     There is no educational method more respected than the Aesthetic Realism teaching method, and Aesthetic Realism is becoming known in America. Like everything big and beautiful that makes for more respect for humanity and therefore cramps the ability of narrow people to have contempt and power, Aesthetic Realism has had enemies. Persons of the press, for instance, have tried to keep Aesthetic Realism from America. 

     The resentment of Aesthetic Realism comes from the same thing in the human self that had people once oppose the right of every child to go to school and learn. Those opponents of public education felt they and their ilk should be superior to most of humanity, and others should be poor, ignorant, serve them, provide profit for them. The idea that the child of a coal miner should go to school and learn how to read — and God knows what else! You'd have to respect that child more — and he might even learn things that would have him able to oppose your exploiting him! In issue 1303 of this journal I wrote: 

Aesthetic Realism is the biggest force for respect, and biggest assault on contempt, in history .... The respect for the world and people Aesthetic Realism makes for has enraged persons who feel they should be able to look down on things as much as, and whenever, they damn please. 

To try to keep the Aesthetic Realism teaching method from people is, of course, ugly without limit: the press has forced millions of children to go on crippled, unable to learn; to go on raging (sometimes with weapons) against a world they could see as a friend. But the resentment of Aesthetic Realism is also terrifically stupid: it shows a mind disabled, viciously fearful of what is great. 

     The Aesthetic Realism teaching method is the greatest friend to education and every child. That is why it is respected and loved — and will be by all humanity forever.

— Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism

"The purpose of all education," Eli Siegel writes, "is...to find sense in the world." And he explains that not liking the world is what "makes for the negative educational phenomenon of inability to read" (TRO 12). I have seen the truth of this explanation in over two decades of teaching. And I have also seen, in some of the toughest, most deprived neighborhoods: children can and do learn eagerly when they see, through the Aesthetic Realism teaching method, that this world, with all its confusion, does make sense-it has a structure we can honestly like, the oneness of opposites. 

     Many of the children I teach in ESL (English as a second language) classes at PS 97 on the Lower East Side suffer horribly from our unjust economic system. I have seen children come to school ravenously hungry, desperate for the sandwiches and snacks the school provides. For children in this wealthy country to live in crowded, unhealthy, rodent-infested apartments is outrageous. Some of my students live in a shelter for homeless families near the school. 

     In TRO #1221, Ellen Reiss writes: 

The profit system has made millions of American children poor; has...encouraged millions of children to feel the world is an enemy. And it is hard to want to take into one's mind facts, subjects, knowledge coming from a world one sees as one's enemy. 

     Most of the 5th and 6th grade students I taught this year were in Special Education classes because they had difficulty learning to read. At the beginning of the term, all were reading far below grade level. They were also quick to be insulted, fight, or accuse each other of taking a pencil or crayon. They made fun almost constantly, calling each other "stupid," "dumb," "ugly." 

     "What words come to your mind when you think of a desert?" I asked. "Sand," said Ricardo.* Ana said, "Hot and dry." Dolores said, "Boring." "Hardly anything grows there!" said Michael. I asked whether a person also can feel dry and dull-not alive enough. Yes — and Manuel said he's sometimes very sleepy and doesn't want to get up in the morning. I read these sentences from their book In the Desert: 

Before you decide that deserts are just flat and sandy places, take another look. The true adventurer sees beautiful colors, incredible scenery, and an amazing variety of life. 

     We read about the Sonoran Desert, in Arizona, California, and Mexico, and learned it has more than 2,500 kinds of plants and many different birds and animals. Rafael and Marcos pointed to a giant cactus and asked if they could draw pictures of it later. And the class was very glad when I read to them about the kit fox and the jack rabbit, who are able to do well in the intense heat because their extra large ears radiate heat to keep them cool. 

     Seeing the opposites — that in a place so harsh, where food and water are scarce and air temperatures can soar to 130°, there is also something kind, sustaining life — encouraged these young boys and girls to see the world as friendlier: to feel, with all the harshness they met, there were more kind possibilities than they thought. And so with each new object and living being we studied, they wanted to learn the English word that described it! 

     In a class taught by Eli Siegel which I was honored to attend, he asked me, "Are you sufficiently interested in your students?" I said, "No." And he continued, "But you act as if you were? Do you think you have learned enough,...or do you think knowledge is still waiting for you?" I saw I had felt I had learned enough. He explained, "According to Aesthetic Realism, every time we learn about something, we are more ourselves." When I told my students the next day about the criticism I had heard, they cheered. And the whole direction of my life and my teaching changed! 

     My students were seeing that the world was like them, through the opposites! During this lesson they learned the meaning of the English words bloom, cycle, drought, erupt, carpet, incredible. Next day they remembered successfully what we'd read, and were eager to read and learn more. 

     We then looked at how words too, in their sounds, have slowness and speed. They saw that long vowel sounds are slower than short ones. They liked seeing that bloom, with its long oo, is a very slow word and has the sound of wonder, while rabbit, as sound, jumps, just like the animal itself — it moves fast! 

     The children told me they wanted to read better, and asked me to select passages for them to read. They eagerly got pencils, papers, and books for themselves, while earlier in the term they would tell me they couldn't find anything and wait until I brought materials to them. Now they practiced the words they didn't know — until they could read them correctly! Ana, for example, who used to put her head on her book and did not want to read, happily learns new words every day. And they are kinder. Recently, when the class went to the Bronx Zoo, Ricardo, who had gotten into fights very quickly with other children, wanted to share the food he had with them. 

     These children represent the beautiful effect of the Aesthetic Realism teaching method. Once so cynical, angry, and resigned not to learn, they have a real interest in books. They have seen that their minds can grow and thrive. They can learn!