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On March 26, 2008, the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the North Carolina School of the Arts hosted an Arts Education Roundtable on the NCSA campus. Guided by Chancellor John Mauceri, the theme for the day was “Artful Learning.” Education through the arts is central to the development of the chancellor's "Vision: 20/20" and UNC Tomorrow, University of North Carolina President Erskine Bowles' initiative. Chancellor Mauceri used his vision and passion for learning through the arts to lead the discussions throughout the day. Special guests included Alexander Bernstein, son of the great conductor, composer and educator Leonard Bernstein; Dr. Kenneth Pool, executive director of the Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning; and Dr. Edward Burger, professor of mathematics at Williams College and author of "Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas." Follows is the text of Alexander Bernstein's remarks, reprinted with permission.
In everything he did throughout his life and career, my father was teaching and learning. As a conductor - as John (Mauceri) will surely tell you - he had a fierce compulsion to share his knowledge and emotional understanding of the music and its composer to his fellow musicians - as well as to their audience. But he never conducted the same piece twice in just the same way. Because he was constantly learning, listening, thinking, RE-thinking, he saw and heard the music in a new way each time he studied and performed it. Leonard Bernstein the composer was also the passionate learner and teacher. Obviously, he learned from all the composers he stole from - Stravinsky, Gershwin, Puccini, The Beatles, Brahms, Lead Belly, etc. But his genius was in making the connections between them all in order to share something, to teach something with personal meaning. He used not only the sounds he heard on the radio, in the concert hall, at the Synagogue – but the words he read in the Boston papers, the speeches of politicians, Plato, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Auden.
To a great extent, Leonard Bernstein’s creative life was informed by his curiosity about everything and everyone. His own education, chiefly at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard, was rigorous and classical. Meanwhile, he was educating himself – maybe not so classically, but rigorously enough. He devoured his studies. Politics, poetry, maybe everything in the world except, perhaps, Business was grist for inquiry and connection. Just as he loved to play music, he loved to “play” language. He wrote a great deal. He spoke – I think - six languages. He spent much of his life doing British crossword puzzles– and little on Earth gave him more delight than a good anagram. When he was literally teaching, whether it was on television in his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, the Omnibus programs or at Harvard in the Norton Lectures (not to mention the unfathomable amount of teaching young musicians at Tanglewood and all over the world), he was masterful. First of all, he knew his stuff cold. Whichever age group he was addressing, he never condescended. He was funny. He was charismatic. He was interesting. He asked great questions. Even at home (or on a chairlift, or in an airplane) - where he could go on lecturing for a VERY long time about just about anything, be it philosophy vaudeville, history or geography, we would, my sisters and I - mostly - pay rapt attention. Beyond anything, he instilled in us a lifelong love of learning. My father often said that he could never enjoy anything by himself. A beautiful sunset meant nothing to him unless he could share it with someone. This longing for connection, for making sense of the world (which is, after all, what we’re all doing from the moment we’re born) brought him to the point late in his life where he decided to devote himself entirely to Education. He saw the Arts disappearing from schools and communities. He saw the balkanized structure of curricula: each subject taught discretely, as if it had no relation to another. He said that the best way to know a thing is in the context of another discipline. He became aware of efforts in schools in Nashville Tennessee, by an off-shoot of the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts. They were starting to put works of art at the center of the curriculum. Right after he had donated half of his award from the Japanese prize: The Premium Imperiale as a research grant, he died. As it happened, I was teaching at the time at a school in Brooklyn, NY, and had just gotten my Masters in Arsty-Fartsy English Education from NYU. So I went down to Nashville to see what was up and got very excited. Thus was inaugurated what was to become The Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning. The years in Nashville were thrilling and grueling. The research and development was marvelous and frustrating. Speaking of frustrating, I won’t even discuss the fund-raising - except to say that it became a blessing in disguise to be constantly under-funded. We worked for years, sort of under the radar, able to make mistakes, try one thing and another, fail at one thing or another, and learn, learn, learn. The Grammy Foundation, in Santa Monica, CA, came to our rescue in the late 90’s, and the LBC was able to refine its work and grow, working with schools all across the country. What we developed in those years reflects directly my father’s lifetime love of learning – and his desire that everyone share it. Teachers choose a Masterwork of any genre to be experienced, inquired about, reflected upon and responded to with a new creation. This becomes a cycle that is never-ending: the Masterwork can be re-engaged - or with each new Masterwork the experience of the previous one changes yet again. I realize that I’m preaching to the choir here, but you just don’t forget what you’ve made your own. As Ken (Poole) will make clear, the Artful Learning Model gives teachers and students alike the opportunity to truly engage themselves in their work: the process of making meaning. Ultimately, learning itself becomes a creative act. When it became clear to us that the Center belonged at an academic institution, we so fortuitously found ourselves this wonderful partner: Gettysburg College. The Education department there, the Music Conservatory, the Drama Dept. Philosophy – and others, are all our partners. It’s most gratifying. At the Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning, we look at my father’s legacy and see an Artist, Teacher and Scholar. Our vision is that each student, teacher and artist may see in themselves all three as well. ###
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On March 26, 2008, the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at the North Carolina School of the Arts hosted an Arts Education Roundtable on the NCSA campus. Guided by Chancellor John Mauceri, the theme for the day was “Artful Learning.”

Education through the arts is central to the development of the chancellor's "Vision: 20/20" and UNC Tomorrow, University of North Carolina President Erskine Bowles' initiative.

Chancellor Mauceri used his vision and passion for learning through the arts to lead the discussions throughout the day. Special guests included Alexander Bernstein, son of the great conductor, composer and educator Leonard Bernstein; Dr. Kenneth Pool, executive director of the Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning; and Dr. Edward Burger, professor of mathematics at Williams College and author of "Coincidences, Chaos and All That Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas."

Follows is the text of Alexander Bernstein's remarks, reprinted with permission.

In everything he did throughout his life and career, my father was teaching and learning. As a conductor - as John (Mauceri) will surely tell you - he had a fierce compulsion to share his knowledge and emotional understanding of the music and its composer to his fellow musicians - as well as to their audience. But he never conducted the same piece twice in just the same way. Because he was constantly learning, listening, thinking, RE-thinking, he saw and heard the music in a new way each time he studied and performed it.

Leonard Bernstein the composer was also the passionate learner and teacher. Obviously, he learned from all the composers he stole from - Stravinsky, Gershwin, Puccini, The Beatles, Brahms, Lead Belly, etc. But his genius was in making the connections between them all in order to share something, to teach something with personal meaning. He used not only the sounds he heard on the radio, in the concert hall, at the Synagogue – but the words he read in the Boston papers, the speeches of politicians, Plato, Voltaire, Shakespeare, Auden.

To a great extent, Leonard Bernstein’s creative life was informed by his curiosity about everything and everyone. His own education, chiefly at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard, was rigorous and classical. Meanwhile, he was educating himself – maybe not so classically, but rigorously enough.

He devoured his studies. Politics, poetry, maybe everything in the world except, perhaps, Business was grist for inquiry and connection. Just as he loved to play music, he loved to “play” language. He wrote a great deal. He spoke – I think - six languages. He spent much of his life doing British crossword puzzles– and little on Earth gave him more delight than a good anagram.

When he was literally teaching, whether it was on television in his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, the Omnibus programs or at Harvard in the Norton Lectures (not to mention the unfathomable amount of teaching young musicians at Tanglewood and all over the world), he was masterful. First of all, he knew his stuff cold. Whichever age group he was addressing, he never condescended. He was funny. He was charismatic. He was interesting. He asked great questions. Even at home (or on a chairlift, or in an airplane) - where he could go on lecturing for a VERY long time about just about anything, be it philosophy vaudeville, history or geography, we would, my sisters and I - mostly - pay rapt attention. Beyond anything, he instilled in us a lifelong love of learning.

My father often said that he could never enjoy anything by himself. A beautiful sunset meant nothing to him unless he could share it with someone. This longing for connection, for making sense of the world (which is, after all, what we’re all doing from the moment we’re born) brought him to the point late in his life where he decided to devote himself entirely to Education. He saw the Arts disappearing from schools and communities. He saw the balkanized structure of curricula: each subject taught discretely, as if it had no relation to another. He said that the best way to know a thing is in the context of another discipline.

He became aware of efforts in schools in Nashville Tennessee, by an off-shoot of the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts. They were starting to put works of art at the center of the curriculum. Right after he had donated half of his award from the Japanese prize: The Premium Imperiale as a research grant, he died. As it happened, I was teaching at the time at a school in Brooklyn, NY, and had just gotten my Masters in Arsty-Fartsy English Education from NYU. So I went down to Nashville to see what was up and got very excited. Thus was inaugurated what was to become The Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning.

The years in Nashville were thrilling and grueling. The research and development was marvelous and frustrating. Speaking of frustrating, I won’t even discuss the fund-raising - except to say that it became a blessing in disguise to be constantly under-funded. We worked for years, sort of under the radar, able to make mistakes, try one thing and another, fail at one thing or another, and learn, learn, learn.

The Grammy Foundation, in Santa Monica, CA, came to our rescue in the late 90’s, and the LBC was able to refine its work and grow, working with schools all across the country. What we developed in those years reflects directly my father’s lifetime love of learning – and his desire that everyone share it. Teachers choose a Masterwork of any genre to be experienced, inquired about, reflected upon and responded to with a new creation. This becomes a cycle that is never-ending: the Masterwork can be re-engaged - or with each new Masterwork the experience of the previous one changes yet again. I realize that I’m preaching to the choir here, but you just don’t forget what you’ve made your own. As Ken (Poole) will make clear, the Artful Learning Model gives teachers and students alike the opportunity to truly engage themselves in their work: the process of making meaning. Ultimately, learning itself becomes a creative act.

When it became clear to us that the Center belonged at an academic institution, we so fortuitously found ourselves this wonderful partner: Gettysburg College. The Education department there, the Music Conservatory, the Drama Dept. Philosophy – and others, are all our partners. It’s most gratifying.

At the Leonard Bernstein Center for Learning, we look at my father’s legacy and see an Artist, Teacher and Scholar. Our vision is that each student, teacher and artist may see in themselves all three as well.

###

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