spiritual life for many people, especially adolescents, is not a meaningful part of daily
life. No easy answer is apparent. What is clear at this time in our history is our collective
longing for meaning and the seemingly frantic search for it.
William James said that all persons have a will to faith," a desire to believe in something
greater then themselves. Certainly, one of the most positive characteristics of
adolescents is their idealism and desire to seek greater meaning in life. Arts schools have
an advantage in this realm because the study of the arts naturally leads students to
questions and experiences that I would define as spiritual. The arts strive to make visible
the invisible, to allow us to see and experience what we "know" but cannot see.
The study of the arts demands that students look for and talk about concepts such as
'"truth," "meaning," and "beauty." Performance can allow both participant and viewer
the experience of transcendence rarely felt in schools or society at large. Think of the
effect of the opening notes of the Messiah or of watching Laurence Olivier as Macbeth.
These experiences go straight to the soul and express and engender feelings that cannot
be apprehended in any other way. An accomplished singer once remarked that what he
was searching for in his work was the feeling he had as a small child when, as a member
of a gospel choir, he opened his mouth and sang the first note. He called this experience
"a state of grace; being in the presence of God." That ecstasy of being fully part of
something larger and deeper then oneself, that glimpse into the transcendent, can come
through the arts.
Spiritual life is concerned with the meaning of things, of events, of ideas. It is important
to spiritual development to seek meaning and to be able to articulate that meaning to
oneself and to others. Young artists are asked all the time to search for and articulate the
deeper meaning of the work, to find the impulse that inspires creation.
In this sprawling and hard-to-define area of school life called variously moral
development, ethics, spiritual life, another of the advantages of a school for the arts is
that it is not only all right, it is necessary, to talk about love and passion. It is not cool for
a young artist to be "cool" in the sense of being truly indifferent, a stance towards life
that many adolescents cultivate rather then allow their fears or vulnerability to be seen.
We do not talk enough about love in our schools. We talk about sex, drugs, about
relationships and responsibilities, as indeed we should because these are important
aspects of living. But it is also the task of schools to teach about passion, about love,
about the growth of the spirit because it is that part of young people that moves them
toward greater dreams and wider worlds.
Finally, I have not even addressed in this paper the new research we are seeing
concerning the relationship between arts and learning. Some research indicates that the
study of music from a very early age alters the very structure of the brain. Another study
suggests that merely listening to music allows students to perform better on tests. And
the complexities of the relationship between musical and mathematical ability is only
beginning to be explored. I would suggest that, with regard to our understanding of the
developmental process in human cognition, we are, in 1996, roughly where medicine