Besides drawing and music, another kind of art, one that bears closely on these questions of culture and valuation, has got to find its way into the new school. It’s the martial arts, specifically the ancient Chinese forms which are commingled with Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian thought, but which have been popularized in the west by Hollywood, new-agey mystification and scientific skepticism.
I took karate for a couple seasons but ended up quitting because I liked soccer better. I remember a lot of stretching and a little sparring, a way too heavy punching bag that I have conflated with the piñata at Billy Ensor’s birthday party, and a talk by the Master, who only came on the occasion of changing belt colors, about the power of habits, good and bad. That isn’t really the kind of martial arts I mean, some strip mall storefront converted into a section of a gym. The kind I mean does not appeal to kung-fu movie aficionados and little boys who want to break boards, but to the same kind of bodily delight as in music and dance, and to the mind which knows health is its prerequisite. Martial arts would be excellent for schools, though, precisely because they clothe the exercise and concentration-building within that attractive mask of pugilism. As students got older they would have the basics in their muscle memory and hopefully have developed the patience to begin studying breathing and meditation.
These things greatly interest me, and I know very little about them. I would have much preferred to have done martial arts in school than to play made-up games involving bean-bags. We played actual sports surprisingly little, but they will be done on a rotation or preference basis in the new school: basketball, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, hockey where applicable, rowing ditto. We’ll do jogging to warm up and sprints and mile runs every so often, calisthenics, and gymnastics if a qualified instructor can be found. But hopefully whoever is at the school teaching philosophy will have experience with martial arts and sports both—I feel like they all go together, and the differences in the two may be traced in the philosophies of the east and the west.
Concentration and self-discipline seem inseparable, besides the benefits of concentration for intellectual work of any stripe—discipline is an area I haven’t discussed yet, but as you may guess, the whole purpose of it will be to teach self-discipline, to draw on the kids’ natural tractability by persuading them that what they are being asked to do is worthwhile. Here I perceive emerging a question as to whether I have not perhaps completely misunderstood the temperament and capability of the child who will be a student at the school. Isn’t it asking too much to suppose he can read the classics, learn a second language by immersion, think philosophically about life, and keep himself in line by reason of doing all this willingly? I honestly don’t know, but I feel like the possible benefits for him are such that it is worth trying, and I give him the benefit of the doubt.
As I’ve said before, his experience is an idealization of my own, which, put another way, means I am only treating my students as equals, having faith that we will all of us live up to the high demands of the school. I myself was far from a self-disciplined little scholar—I fully expect the younger kids to be very energetic and unfocused, or else I would be no better than the Ritalin-perscriptors. The tacit design of the new school, especially at the elementary levels, is to slowly direct those energies into an interest in something, anything, beyond the students’ own momentary pleasure or their more destructive impulses. For me this was books, but if it is art, or dance, or animals, or comedy, anything that can be pursued, rather than the opposite avenue, constantly distracting oneself from all worthwhile pursuits, then the elementary levels have succeeded, assuming the child can read, write, figure, and speak coherently, of course.
I wouldn't try to impose focus on them before they are capable of it, and certainly not at all times. I wouldn’t lecture for more than a couple minutes at a stretch without asking questions or expecting to have to coax back the stragglers, but I certainly will expect that they be able to sit still for half an hour at a stretch, working individually or listening to me explain a complicated idea. So though I see the natural waywardness of attention, I also see the interest in learning new things that will slowly bring it around, not killing it, as so much school discipline does, but capturing it for awhile.
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