Reflections on the European Graduate School

In the 49 years since its closing, the story of Black Mountain College has been written many times from a multiplicity of differing perspectives, by those who were there and by those who studied it. To reflect upon the story of the European Graduate School is to reflect upon a work still very much in process. EGS is still being created in the ideas and the lives of all who participate in this unique educational experiment. If communities are held together by shared values and a common purpose, where do we see the values that are shaping our community? Certainly they are expressed, both directly and indirectly in the writings of members of the community. They are also expressed in how we live our lives together day to day in classes, in community meetings and lectures, in community art making, on hikes, and at the dinner table. Many of the things we say and do echo the themes of Black Mountain. What follows are some of the shared values I have observed. They are filtered through the lens of my own perceptions.

Living/Learning Community

Paolo Knill says that EGS is first of all, dedicated to learning for both teachers and students. We exist for the purpose of learning that is transformative. EGS holds a philosophy of partnership between students and faculty in learning, emphasizing cooperation, mutual recognition, and respect. Faculty are a learning community, mirroring the students. Both faculty and students meet some difficulties of understanding each other, relationship difficulties. Knill emphasizes that we must take care of the group process so that we can learn from each other. “When you live together, eat together, you are forced to attend to the group process. You can’t avoid it. You have to talk, to share. How well that’s done, that’s another question. You are forcefully exposed to each other.” (Knill, personal communication, 2004)

The Centrality of the Arts.

What holds us together is the common work, like an orchestra or choir, says Knill, and that common work is based upon the centrality of the arts in learning and in life. “Art is an existential of humankind. You cannot think human being without art.” (Knill, personal communication, 2004), Many others testify to the fundamental importance of this idea for the EGS community. Stephen Levine (1997), Dean of the Doctoral Program in Expressive Arts, sees poiesis, the creative act, as soul making, the act by which we affirm our humanity. Majken Jacoby (1999 Core Faculty Member of EGS, emphasizes the importance of caring for the individual, the group, and the art. She speaks of the necessity of giving form to our experience of the world. She sees art-making as a way of responding to the ethical demand we are given to take care of the life that is given to us. Poet and Dean of the Masters Program in Expressive Arts, Margo Fuchs-Knill (2004), speaks of the capacity of the arts to transcend self in her poetic lines,

Poetry connects the
never-ending selfish story of daily life
to a pearl row
moving the horizon to a further place

to learn the alphabet from another view.” (p. 16)

Importance of Imagination

Art is the discipline of imagination and play, the place where things happen, says Knill (personal communication, 2004). Stephen Levine (2000), in his editor’s introduction to the second volume of Poiesis: A Journal of the Arts and Communication, the journal of the European Graduate School, speaks of continued commitment to “the practices of the imagination.” He proposes that the power of imagination lies in artistic practice, the life of the soul. He argues for an artistic conception of knowing, as knowing and making were once united in the Greek concept of poiesis. He suggests the possibility of poiesis as a living experience today.

In the same issue of that journal, Paolo Knill (2000) says that it is imagination that enables us to experience the world beyond the bonds of literal reality. Also in that same issue, Ellen Levine (2000) Dean of Independent Studies in Expressive Arts at EGS, says that imagination requires eros, the motivating force that drive humans to go beyond ourselves, to create new worlds.

Research and Experimentation

“True wisdom happens by constant research, by constant questioning of any canonized thing.” (Knill, personal communication, 2004) Research, says the historian, Page Smith(1990), is the pursuit of truth in the company of friends. At EGS this kind of research is ongoing at all levels. Knill sees the class as the laboratory for research that feeds the progress in the field. Curricula and syllabi must not be rigid. Most universities make a syllabus that canonizes the field, then it cannot progress. At EGS, Knill says, we have a vision of education that is beyond any canon, imagining and embracing art and philosophy as a base, the discipline of thinking, and a stubborn phenomenology. Knill is passionate in his belief that we should always be pushing the boundaries of knowledge, experimenting with both ideas and methods.

Knill believes that in this climate of experimentation there is something like a chemistry that people are drawn to each other. Perhaps, he says, it is the chance to experiment with how higher education can function, to experiment with the vision faculty and students hold about higher education. That and a passion for the work create a bond, something beyond friendship. (Knill, personal communication, 2004) Perhaps this idea is akin to Duberman’s (1973) reference to faculty seeking a resonance between their ideas and their living.

Transdisciplinarity, Transculturalism, and Creative Conflict

The community of EGS embraces transdisciplinary and transcultural learning. In this way the school crosses many boundaries and serves as a bridge between worlds. Differences that exist among community members at EGS are vast and include differences in language, culture, history, politics, and academic discipline. EGS is a meeting ground, even for some whose countries, historically or currently, are at war with each other. At EGS such differences offer both richness and challenges. These challenges often become the subject of action and reflection, as they did, for instance, in a community lecture/discussion in the summer of 2004 on the topic of “Meeting the Strange,” in which philosophers, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and members of the community reflected upon questions of difference and otherness and how they are encountered and responded to. Margo Fuchs-Knill (2004) responded with a poem that expresses much of the philosophy of EGS in encountering diversity:

What Do We Do With Strange Things

We circle around them
with speech and
we go on a long way

a way that lasts?
a way that never ends?
a way that survives us?

We do not go main stream

we go
we go

on side ways
on rocky roads
on sandy trails
on hidden paths
on adventurous routes

we go
we go

offering ourselves to the quest/ion (p.49)

The multiplicity of EGS, when held in the ritual container of community art making, offers the possibility of the experience of communitas.

Attitudes of Care and Curiosity

In an article on using the expressive arts in coaching, Herbert Eberhart (2002) articulates an important attitude that can facilitate our capacity to confront difference in the living/learning community of EGS. Eberhart finds that an attitude of appreciative curiosity toward another person (client, student, colleague), especially when this attitude is coupled with an irreverence toward his suppositions and beliefs, is helpful in promoting learning. An encounter marked by openness and appreciation affords the security to thrust forward into new and unknown places. This is an atmosphere of playfulness, an opening of space that creates the possibility for change to occur.