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The story goes that Michelangelo was walking along the streets of Rome when he was approached by an admirer. “Michelangelo,” said the admirer, “your statue, David, is so beautiful! It is so perfect and awe-inspiring. What skill you must have! How do you imagine, how do you create, something as wonderful as David?” The artist stopped, and pondered for a moment. “It is easy,” he replied. “First you get a piece of marble, and you look at it very carefully, examining it from all sides. Then, very gently, you chip away all the parts that are not David.”
Parents and teachers have a daunting task. Like Michelangelo, we must find the work of art inside our children and carefully strive to reveal it. We must examine from all sides, trying hard to see patterns and then connect those patterns to the world so that we can understand and appreciate them. We use our skills and tools to shape, as gently as possible, the potential that is inherent in each individual. Plato described education as “drawing the soul from becoming to being.” The task of educators, including parents, is to help that inner work of art come into view.
We may not always agree about how to do this. We may differ in what we believe is important to the work of art. We may use different tools, and we may not all be equally skilled – not all of us are Michelangelo, and we need to keep practicing our craft. At The Harbour School, we find that there are four universal beliefs that seem to be true to all of us - parents, educators and artists alike.
First, we believe that there is a work of art hidden in every child. We do not believe that valuable blocks of marble (and valuable children) should be discarded simply because the outline is not immediately clear or the process of revealing the art is difficult. Some of the most beautiful and impressive pieces may be hidden or harder to make clear. Our job is not to find a completed work and dust it off – sometimes we actually have to use skill, patience and artistry to reveal the masterpiece.
Second, we believe that every great masterpiece is different. We cannot make David out of every marble block – sometimes, the marble block holds The Pieta. In trying to shape all pieces in the same way, with the same end result in mind, we not only create an inferior copy but we miss revealing the true masterpiece inside. Sometimes, when we try to shape everyone in the same way, the block of marble simply crumbles and we are left with a mess.