06/08/2026
“The arts have a special purpose in Neohumanist education, the aims of which go beyond social adjustment and finding a worthy career, important as these are. For people raised in modern industrialized cultures, Neohumanism is an emerging paradigm, a worldview that understands all of creation as deeply interconnected, supremely alive, and intelligent. It understands the person as a multi-dimensional being with attributes, potentials, and capacities aligned with the cultivation of relational ways of being in the world. Education, for the Neohumanist, is not merely about training the intellect or equipping people with social and emotional skills. It is about laying a foundation for consciousness to develop in evolutionarily important ways, about cultivating the subtle human faculties such as aesthetics, ethics, gratitude, introspection, intuition, discernment, and spiritual discovery.”
From Becoming One With the World: A Guide to Neohumanist Education · Kathleen Kesson · 2024 · p. 176
I was drawn to Neohumanist Education over 50 years ago, and the force that called to me was P.R. Sarkar’s special emphasis on the arts: music, creative movement, theater, painting, sculpture and their many variations. There are important, evidence-based reasons for including the arts in education including the enhancement of learning across the curriculum, their role in fostering social and emotional development, their capacity to include all students with multiple learning styles and neurodiversities, and impart JOY in the classroom. In addition to these important factors, I believe the arts can bring a sacred element into education by educating the more subtle aspects of the mind and by awakening ecological consciousness, bringing about a more enchanted, luminescent, spiritually awakened world.
In what ways have the arts enlivened and enhanced your quality of life? What would the ‘artist in you’ love to learn more about?
✦ Share your answer in the comments.