Sam's Philosophy Blog

As soon as restrictions and limitations are put on creativity, a dangerous state has been reached. Whether it is the destruction of degenerate art or the burning of inappropriate books, as soon as society starts impeding on intellectual and creative liberty an environment of censorship and groupthink begins to form. Dewey, in chapter nine of his book Experience and Nature, discusses the relationship between experience, nature, and art. He broadens the notion of art to include much more than just the fine arts. He defines art as a “solvent union of the generic, recurrent, ordered, established phase of nature with its phase that is incomplete, going on, and hence still uncertain, contingent, novel, particular…a union of necessity and freedom, a harmony of the many and one, a reconciliation of sensuous and ideal” (359).

Dewey, just as he sees everything else, sees art as experience. Dewey sees experience as vital. Our life is a series of experiences with no particular type of experience being more important than the next. He sees every experience as playing a vitally important role in our lives—the many different of experiences of art being just as important.

I agree wholeheartedly with Dewey and his theories and beliefs in experience. This is why the restrictions and limitations placed on creativity and ideas, especially when placed by authorities such as governments, make me so uneasy. I see this limitation being put on students in kindergarten through grade twelve in the United States public education system. With the current educational legislation, the variety of subjects students are being exposed to in the classroom is shrinking as the emphasis on standardized testing in very narrow subjects. The liberal arts curriculum is rapidly disappearing and with it students’ interest in learning anything at all. They are taught cold and routine information without being able to become passionate about the art in those subjects whether it be math, theater, English, or a foreign language.

This is, in my opinion, a travesty. I think that Dewey would agree. To him art encompasses and equal relationship between many opposites and manifests itself in almost everything. (If not everything itself.) For the government to restrict the creativity of our youngest citizens will only lead to their inability to see art at all, never mind as a solvent union. This factor joins a very long list of reasons why the US educational system needs to be overhauled dramatically and immediately. The question remains, though: How long will it take to convince society of this? I offer this blog, along with so many other pieces into evidence on the side of an overhaul. We’ll see where it goes.