It’s All About Pleasure
Submitted by Eric Smeaton, Arts Educator, TLDSB
It never ceases to amaze me how many people, including me will exchange currency for food. To experience exquisite “taste” for many, it is worth performing laborious tasks that often take time. Not only that, but for many of us that pleasure is amplified when the food is delicious. A true culinary sandbox.
Humans will pay large sums of money for a painting that reminds them of the feel of touching soil or grass with our feet and hands when we were young - even if it has three dots only, but perfectly placed, and with “triggering” colours. We never ask “If you were on a desert island, what Math would you bring?” We ask, “Which album?”
I ask you right now to smell a favourite memory. Or, “What does it sound like?” ‘The Cars’ “Just What I Needed” while falling in love for the first time, while roller skating?
The human experience is clearly measured by pleasure. This is one argument that will never be had between a money-hungry entrepreneur, a tirelessly dedicated charity, a crop farmer, or a starving musician.
But not all pleasures are healthy. I used to tell my students: “Make two fists. Now put them together, knuckles touching each other. That’s who you are.” That’s a decent approximation of the size of the human brain. And that’s who you are. Encased in a shell.
That brain has one goal, to seek pleasure, even when sleeping. It will find it if you don’t give it to it naturally: narcotics, caffeine, alcohol, nicotine - it’s going to get happy. So, this knowledge should be the basic foundation of any education - that the human brain seeks pleasure, and is most productive, to itself in the long term, as well as to those around it in short term, when it finds it naturally.
On this principle alone, the Arts must be the second most important subject in any curriculum. The Arts are a subject whose entire existence is based around pleasure seeking. Pleasing the brain aesthetically, whether through sound, sight, touch, taste (the Culinary Arts)/ Jazz, Classical, Blues, Rap, Picasso, Monet, Pollock, Wyeth etc. gives us more opportunities to evaluate, synthesise, and interpret - and our brain loves this! The opportunities available can fulfill a million lifetimes - You can never get to the bottom of the barrel of the Arts.
And that is why the Arts are so important in education. If any subject lends itself to inherently promoting harmony, balance and heightened activity related to executive functioning, combined with integrated learning with Language, Math and all other disciplines, it’s the Arts.
If you have a well-planned Phys Ed program, balanced with a strong Arts program in your Elementary School system, you have the best first line of prevention (Mental Health, Diabetes, Obesity), as well as promotion, (need for understanding the body and what the brain is telling the shell to eat, how much to sleep, how to express love and/ or friendship etc.) when it comes to so many realities facing our youth.
In short, it is obvious that the Arts are one of the most critical barriers to young people craving false pleasure-seeking in the future. Remember: all humans will seek aesthetic pleasure. Why would we not prioritize the subject that does this naturally, and without potentially damaging consequences?
We have two subjects that will effectively “Oil the synapses”, and release endorphins, serotonin and dopamine. Every class. Every time. And I can tell you for sure, their phones are giving them those “hits” on a regular basis. Why not give that phone some competition for some “feel good?”
Go use that shell to give your brain some Art. You owe it to THAT Teacher or Parent who cared.
Harrison Smeaton, music student
