It is by Janice Cline, and in it she tell about her experience teaching a course in cultural diversity at York College in the City University of New York, where she's taught for 29 years. Ms. Cline is greatly respected because of the success she has had through her use of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method. As I think you can imagine, courses in cultural diversity are not easy to teach. The issues being dealt with are so large and affect students' lives so immediately and deeply that emotions run high.
Discussions can easily turn into heated, unfriendly arguments.
Ms. Cline told me that from day one of each semester, she speaks with the students in her cultural diversity classes about what she has learned from Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel, about the fight in every person between respect and contempt. In her article she describes how, through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method, students learn to see their own cultures, and the cultures of other people, with respect. And they learn to be critics of their contempt for difference. This makes it possible for students to become kinder, and discuss important but difficult topics, without getting angry and going at each other. Ms. Cline said to me, too, that because Aesthetic Realism provides a solid criterion for studying the difference between respect and contempt in any cultural situation, the discussions in class get past the idea that because something is cultural, it must be good.