In this powerful seminar, you will hear the urgent, convincing answer to the question that plagues students and that teachers dread: "What do we have to learn this for?" 

You will see, as New York City teachers present vivid lessons from their own classrooms, how the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method has even the most bitter, resigned students become interested, and successfully learn! This is the educational method that can end the high dropout rates, the poor learning, and the violence in our nation's schools! 

That is because Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism and America's greatest educator, explained definitively the what for? of education, its purpose: "The purpose of education," he wrote, "is to like the world through knowing it." And he identified the crucial enemy to learning: contempt, "the addition to self through the lessening of something else." 

The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method succeeds magnificently because it shows students that every subject in the curriculum says something about the world and their own, often turbulent selves. The basis is this landmark principle: "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." 

For instance, there is Richard, a 7th grader who goes from feeling painfully stuck to frantically restless in one afternoon. As he learns that atoms put opposites together-they are made of electrons that whirl at terrific speeds around the protons and neutrons, which stay securely inside the atom's nucleus-he feels excited and composed at once. The very atoms that are in him-and also in his classmates and every bit of matter in the world-are doing what he wants to do: make a beautiful one of rest and motion, freedom and security! 

As students meet any item of the curriculum through the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method-a mathematical equation, a fact of history, the grammatical structure of a sentence-they feel, "This is about the world, and it's about me!" 

They welcome learning, and they feel closer, kinder to other people! For over 25 years, the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method has enabled students, including in some of New York City's most economically ravaged neighborhoods, to learn with tremendous success. 

Persons in the media have been furious that they themselves have something enormous to learn from Aesthetic Realism, and have tried to keep this knowledge from reaching people. But in recent years, more and more educators have been learning enthusiastically about the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method through professional workshops; national conferences; and articles, written by teachers who use it, in newspapers and education journals. 

Come to this seminar and see for yourself why this great educational method is loved by students and their grateful parents and teachers! 

The speakers will be:  Lois Mason (social studies, New Utrecht High School); Helena Simon (4th grade PS 57M); Leila Rosen (English, Norman Thomas High School); Lori Lerner (kindergarten, PS 59); Rosemary Plumstead (science, LaGuardia High School); Arnold Perey (instructor, The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method).

The seminar will be held at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, a not-for-profit educational foundation, at 141 Greene Street in Manhattan.

For more information, please call (212) 777-4490 or visit the Foundation's website at www.AestheticRealism.org.