What is Beautiful Work?

My study group read Ron Berger’s Ethic of Excellence, as I have noted in an earlier post, and now I’m watching the Jets-Dolphins game and licking my wounds from a particularly brutal meeting with the teachers at my school.

The question is, I suppose, can “beautiful work” be done in an IB course—that is, work as Berger defines it, which is inquiry-based, hands-on, developed over several drafts, and is an object of pride to be displayed as a sign of student growth and accomplishment.  Or is writing a really good essay or lab report “beautiful,” and thus, the goal of the course?

I think that many teachers, especially those in core subjects, haven’t yet bought into the ideas of excellence and beautiful work as being craft-related (as having a physical product that derives form the students’ own process of inquiry and development?)  Is there something about having a physical product in the arts, or in carpentry, that makes some teachers able to see a physical classroom product as beautiful work?

Whereas, does someone who teaches History or English see a good essay as beautiful work, especially when it is regurgitating information to the teacher? Perhaps instead of going right to excellence, there needs to be a conversation about whether an essay, or a lab, or a worked out math problem is beautiful work and a sign of excellence, or just a summative artifact that by itself is not particularly useful or interesting…  Is the idea of a beautiful product ghettoized by subject?

How do you convince people who consider themselves master teachers because the bulk of their students learn the history or english or science that is taught to them and can follow the steps to show that correctly, that that is not really “beautiful work?”

Or, maybe the IB or AP boards can start redesigning their assessments to be more formative and portfolio based, and we can all have more fun…