Something for Everyone – a Six-Pack of Interesting Things

One of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was also one of its greatest teachers – original, articulate, funny, humane. 

It was his conviction that in order truly to understand something, you first need to be able to explain it. He required his students to write out a concept in its simplest form, urging them to go back to basics if there was a part they did not understand, before encouraging them to return and explain the idea in the clearest and simplest language.

Feynman had two children, but frustratingly he found they learned in very different ways. His son loved to be plunged into his imagination so he could explore and better understand the world around him. His daughter preferred the more direct approach of reading books.

Feynman concluded that he did not know how to teach because everyone learns differently. Any good teacher knows this is true; they also recognise that subjects must be approached in different ways in order to capture each student’s attention in turn. 

Inspired by Feynman’s idea, this week’s blog introduces six different things, including a piece of music, a piece of art, a cinematic style, a funny joke, a philosophy, and a great sporting moment, in the hope that there might be something here to engage everyone.

The items are varied, but what unites them is a sense of mystery and excitement, and perhaps more than anything, I just find each of them interesting and compelling in different ways. After all, isn’t that what a good education should provide?

Just click on each of the six images below to see a short illustrative video clip.

Music – Soy Cuba

Soy Cuba, or ‘I am Cuba’ is a 1964 film, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, and was a co-production between the Soviet Union and Cuba. It contains the obligatory anti-American propaganda and scenes showing the poetry of work. 

But in between it has experimental scenes of great beauty, including this amazing sequence set in a Havana nightclub. With its tilting camera angles and use of chiaroscuro, it catches the tail-end of film noir, and yet it is also something else.  

Film – The After Life

This short video essay by the Korean-born American filmmaker, Kogonada, examines the films of the Japanese Director, Koreeda Hirokazu. It has a special resonance at this time as it talks about how ordinary moments in our lives can turn out to be the most beautiful as well as the most meaningful.

The video essay pays particular attention to Hirokazu’s film, After Life, in which those who have just died are interviewed, and asked to choose just one memory, which will then be made into a film, the landscape of which they will inhabit forever. 

Philosophy – Wabi Sabi

Staying with Japanese culture, the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi has long interested me. Whereas Western art and culture are dominated by ideas of the polished object, the finished item, harmony and symmetry, by contrast the governing idea of Wabi Sabi emphasises impermanence and imperfection.

So, a vase with a crack in it, a cup with a touch of rust, a sketch that is unfinished all become part of this aesthetic, as well framing an attitude to design and to life. This clip narrated by Alain de Botton neatly summarises the concept.

Art – Picasso’s Metamorphoses

To the untrained eye, the works of Pablo Picasso can sometimes seem infantile and primitive, but of course the simplicity is hard-won, and based on technical brilliance. 

Nowhere is this brilliance better illustrated than in this very short film that shows Picasso starting to draw a rose, that becomes a fish, that is then transformed into a hen. The effect is mesmerising.

Sport – Greatest Moment

There are two sporting moments that stand out for me, partly because I saw them when I was very young, but also because I have seen them many times since. So, aside from being great moments, they also form an essential part of my own life and memory.

One of them is the 1974 heavyweight title fight between Mohammad Ali and George Foreman, the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ as it has been dubbed. 

The other is the try scored by rugby player Gareth Edwards for the Barbarians against the mighty New Zealand All Blacks in 1973. It is the latter that you can see here. It still gives me goose-bumps watching it.

Joke – Victor Borge

My dad loved the old Danish comedian and musician Victor Borge. Here he tells a joke from the series The Funniest Joke I Ever Heard. Because it relates to a bad haircut, again I thought it might have some relevance to our current situation.

Short and funny, it made me laugh. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO