XIV. Aesthetic Education

I ask you again not to misunderstand my intentions. I chose this example, near and dear to me, to show how we have reached a stage in human development where, instead of experiencing the realities of life, we tend to skim over them, and language offers a particularly striking example of this. Our civilization has gradually made us rather sloppy. Now we must make an effort to go into language again and to live with the words. Until we do this, we will not be able to meet the request I made earlier—that children, after being introduced to grammar and then to the rhetoric and beauty of language, should eventually be brought to an appreciation of the artistic element of language. We must open the eyes and hearts of students to the artistic element that lives in language. This is also important in nurturing a stronger feeling of community with other nations. And it is equally important to look, in very new and different ways, at what is usually called the social question.