ideas to live by
Sophie Howarth is young, smart and can name Alain de Botton as one of her greatest collaborators. In the welcoming surrounds of The School Of Life, Howarth invites us to take a look around and sample some cerebral sweetners, 21st Century style.
Wendy Cavenett reports.
At The School Of Life, you’re encouraged to ruminate about life’s great questions – Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? – as well as life’s big everyday dilemmas – Why isn’t my relationship working? Why do I hate my job? Should I make up with my dad today?
Too many questions you say? Not so according to Howarth, who often refers to the “cultural history of ideas” as the key to the learning experience. It’s all about ‘breaking down the hierarchy between art and life,’ Howarth writes in her impassioned essay on education, featured in the Autumn 2008 online version of TATE ETC (Europe’s largest art magazine).
“I don’t know what the academic situation is like in Australia,” she says, “but here a lot of academics are incredibly frustrated by the university system. There was a time when universities were places where you could go for a period of time, and you would have access to thinking people and knowledge, and it could prepare you for adult life. It seems that universities have totally lost the scale of that ambition.
“Information is much more accessible to people now but it’s knowing how and what it is you need to go and find, why it is you want to go and find it, and what you want to do with it. And in a way, I do think people grow confident here because we are quite bold about saying: Is this idea useful to you or not? Does this ancient Greek philosophy between friendship and erotic love feel like it makes any sense in terms of your own experience, or does it feel redundant in that state?”
Since its inception in September 2008, The School Of Life continues to experience phenomenal success with nearly 5,000 individuals utilising its many programmes and services. With a faculty of more than 20 educators, and appealing to a demographic of 20 to 40-somethings, The School Of Life endeavours to offer a new experience for learning, encouraging students to engage with material from diverse sources in ways that are both familiar and exciting.
Try a communal meal to encourage conversations between strangers. Attend a rousing secular sermon on such matters as empathy and seduction. Or schedule an appointment with the school’s bibliotherapist and read with relish your book list prescription. There are even holiday adventures (“we are quite interested in exploring the idea that a successful holiday is a state of mind,” Howarth says), and psychotherapy services for individuals, couples and families. But it’s the school’s evening and weekend courses based around five key life themes – namely work, play, family, politics and love – that give structure and cohesion to Howarth’s grand learning idea. Offered on-site in the store’s basement classroom, each course subject – designed by leading authors, artists, psychotherapists and academics – encourages individuals to discuss, explore and research ideas to help understand the important questions, events and relationships in their lives.
“It’s just that a lot of institutions are rather stodgy, and of course, they are not making education seem desirable,” Howarth says. “One of the very obvious things that I knew straight away was to borrow from retail – the way that retail works is that it makes people want something. Why is it that all sorts of people who can’t afford to pay their tax bill will afford to buy an iPhone or an iPod? It’s because they want it, so the idea was to make education desirable in that way, to say: Actually ideas are really useful, sexy, productive, fun, interesting; they’ll make your life a whole lot more dynamic.
“So that was part of the idea of, as it were, borrowing the façade of a retail environment. It means that people have a way to engage with The School Of Life that is very familiar to them because everybody knows how to go shopping, and you go shopping and you select things that you decide you want for your life. And if we could just package the history of ideas up in that kind of way…
“I mean, it sounds almost like a betrayal of what people strictly thought education should be, but I think we need to learn some lessons from retail. I think retail is doing something right that [educational] institutions are getting wrong.”
Howarth, a native Londoner, is an educator, writer, artist and curator. Before founding The School Of Life, she worked as Head of Education and Research at iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), and as Curator of Public Programs at Tate Modern in London. She admits it was her dream job, and relishes the seven years she spent devising several of the gallery’s opening displays and commissioning hundreds of events, courses and conferences.
“In relation to museums or libraries,” she says, “education is always seen as the rather boring bit on the side, and I really wanted people to feel like actually this is the most exciting bit; this is what makes the artworks come alive or matter, is how people engage with them.”
Howarth’s Tate programmes were enormously successful and ultimately helped establish her own beliefs about adult learning outside the university system. She wanted to create a self-sustaining business model (a “social enterprise”) that would not depend on financial support from either government or private industry. She had several ideas including a philosophical cooking school, but liked the concept of an “ideas store” – where the promotion of desire for products would be re-directed to promote a desire to buy and consume ideas and experiences. When her friends joked that what she really wanted was to create a ‘university of life’, Howarth (and a number of collaborators) began in earnest to develop an alternative curriculum that would offer a few subjects addressing big life themes.
Rigorous standards for all aspects of the school’s programmes and services were developed over many months. Writes Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times: “The ambition is to offer a road map to a fuller life - secular and interior, not religious - toward which end a sense of humor helps.” British and international press coverage has been both positive and continual since the school’s inception with many journalists reporting back once they have sampled some of the school’s offerings.
The Love course, for example, asks questions such as: Why are relationships so complicated? How important is sex? How can love be made to last? Popular columnist for the UK’s The Evening Standard, Liz Hoggard, writes: “The scale of reference on the course is wide – everything from Woody Allen and Tolstoy to philosophers such as Spinoza and Schopenhauer. I came to realize that love is not found, it is made.”
It’s difficult not to be impressed by Howarth’s intellect and general enthusiasms. She’s cool, sensible and rational, and speaks in a warm, educated voice. She has a soft spot for the practical philosophies of the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (especially his no-nonsense approach to transcending self-pity), and she seems genuinely happy, her conversation a refreshing mix of wit, insight and scholarly observation. It’s little wonder that some of today’s most interesting talents – including philosopher, Alain de Botton; author, Toby Litt; and comedienne, Ruby Wax – want to work with her.
Possibly the most influential is 39-year-old, Zürich-born writer, de Botton, who, according to his website, set up The School Of Life with some colleagues in 2008. For the man who has reached millions with his books and docos on work, happiness, travel and philosophy for the everyday, The School Of Life seems to be one of the most exciting projects he’s currently involved with.
Writes de Botton of the school: “The idea is to challenge traditional universities and re-organise knowledge, directing it towards life, and away from knowledge for its own sake. In a modest way, it’s an institution that is trying to give people what universities should I think always give them: a sense of direction and wisdom for their lives with the help of culture.” For Howarth, the association has proven to be both enriching and important, with de Botton co-creating the school’s work and love courses, running one of the earliest holidays (to Heathrow Airport, where he was recently holed up for his latest literary venture), and conducting a lively sermon On Pessimism (as a homage to Seneca) in March, 2008.
“Alain is one of the school’s ambassadors,” Howarth says. “He was one of the first people to believe in the idea and played a significant role in helping get it all established.” He regularly shares his ideas with the school, his “vibrant, witty and honest way of thinking about everyday life” very inspiring.
Not surprisingly, Howarth has received many requests from around the world to franchise The School Of Life. Countries including America, Australia and New Zealand have expressed a flattering amount of interest in a school that is barely one year old. Individuals and organisations from Melbourne and Sydney have suggested numerous ways a franchise could operate here, but Howarth believes it’s too soon. She admits that they don’t lose money on any of their courses, but their overheads are proving to be expensive and are continually in the red.
“Our aim is not to make any money but our aim is not to lose money either,” she says. “We haven’t paid back what it cost to create our courses yet so I’m looking at different ways in which within three years we can be financially self-sufficient, and then I’d be really excited to choose franchisees who I felt I trusted with the brand. But at the moment, they would need to be able to lose quite a lot of money!”
With the stresses of business survival so vividly outlined, I ask Howarth if she’s happier since founding The School Of Life. “Definitely,” she says. “I think having a sense of purpose and having an interest and engagement with other people are pretty good ingredients for it. But it’s interesting because we never really describe the school as being about making people happy. We always describe it as being about wisdom – although unfortunately that word has been slightly co-opted by the spiritualists of the world.
“I guess by wisdom I mean happiness that is also realistic that doesn’t involve illusions. You know, we’re very much founded on rational thinking here and we want people to think deeply and pleasurably about how they want to live the rest of their lives, but we don’t want to promote a kind of happiness that’s based on a fantasy or illusion. I mean, often you get that either in religion or in life-coaching. You get things built on nebulous foundations, so I guess we would rather think that the real reward of what we would call wisdom is a much more thought through thing than simple happiness; more robust and kind of more lasting as well.”
In her TATE ETC article, Howarth refers to Anthony T. Kronman’s 2007 book, Education’s End: Why our colleges and universities have given up the meaning of life. Kronman, a highly respected Sterling Professor at Yale Law School, wrote his polemic about the failing education system, especially in regard to the meaning of life. “Why did the question of what living is for disappear?” he asks. “Our lives are the most precious resources we possess and the question of how to spend them is the most important question we face.”
It's difficult not to agree.
* * *
The School Of Life
Sophie Howarth's TATE ETC article
Sophie Howarth is young, smart and can name Alain de Botton as one of her greatest collaborators. In the welcoming surrounds of The School Of Life, Howarth invites us to take a look around and sample some cerebral sweetners, 21st Century style.
Wendy Cavenett reports.
It’s just before midday in central London, and Sophie Howarth unlocks the front door of the London headquarters of The School Of Life. It’s business as usual for the 33-year-old, who marks each day with a level of enjoyment and job satisfaction few people achieve but many desire. Inside, cool grey walls compliment aged wooden floorboards, the older style shop front beautifully transformed into a rather comfortable space featuring all sorts of curiosities – from a cluster of cedar tree trunks and tastefully stuffed black birds, to unusual knickknacks and shelves of books classified by concern rather than subject matter (How To Survive Insomnia, How To Make A Difference, even How To Enjoy Your Own Company).
At The School Of Life, you’re encouraged to ruminate about life’s great questions – Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? – as well as life’s big everyday dilemmas – Why isn’t my relationship working? Why do I hate my job? Should I make up with my dad today?
Too many questions you say? Not so according to Howarth, who often refers to the “cultural history of ideas” as the key to the learning experience. It’s all about ‘breaking down the hierarchy between art and life,’ Howarth writes in her impassioned essay on education, featured in the Autumn 2008 online version of TATE ETC (Europe’s largest art magazine).
“I don’t know what the academic situation is like in Australia,” she says, “but here a lot of academics are incredibly frustrated by the university system. There was a time when universities were places where you could go for a period of time, and you would have access to thinking people and knowledge, and it could prepare you for adult life. It seems that universities have totally lost the scale of that ambition.
“Information is much more accessible to people now but it’s knowing how and what it is you need to go and find, why it is you want to go and find it, and what you want to do with it. And in a way, I do think people grow confident here because we are quite bold about saying: Is this idea useful to you or not? Does this ancient Greek philosophy between friendship and erotic love feel like it makes any sense in terms of your own experience, or does it feel redundant in that state?”
Since its inception in September 2008, The School Of Life continues to experience phenomenal success with nearly 5,000 individuals utilising its many programmes and services. With a faculty of more than 20 educators, and appealing to a demographic of 20 to 40-somethings, The School Of Life endeavours to offer a new experience for learning, encouraging students to engage with material from diverse sources in ways that are both familiar and exciting.
Try a communal meal to encourage conversations between strangers. Attend a rousing secular sermon on such matters as empathy and seduction. Or schedule an appointment with the school’s bibliotherapist and read with relish your book list prescription. There are even holiday adventures (“we are quite interested in exploring the idea that a successful holiday is a state of mind,” Howarth says), and psychotherapy services for individuals, couples and families. But it’s the school’s evening and weekend courses based around five key life themes – namely work, play, family, politics and love – that give structure and cohesion to Howarth’s grand learning idea. Offered on-site in the store’s basement classroom, each course subject – designed by leading authors, artists, psychotherapists and academics – encourages individuals to discuss, explore and research ideas to help understand the important questions, events and relationships in their lives.
“It’s just that a lot of institutions are rather stodgy, and of course, they are not making education seem desirable,” Howarth says. “One of the very obvious things that I knew straight away was to borrow from retail – the way that retail works is that it makes people want something. Why is it that all sorts of people who can’t afford to pay their tax bill will afford to buy an iPhone or an iPod? It’s because they want it, so the idea was to make education desirable in that way, to say: Actually ideas are really useful, sexy, productive, fun, interesting; they’ll make your life a whole lot more dynamic.
“So that was part of the idea of, as it were, borrowing the façade of a retail environment. It means that people have a way to engage with The School Of Life that is very familiar to them because everybody knows how to go shopping, and you go shopping and you select things that you decide you want for your life. And if we could just package the history of ideas up in that kind of way…
“I mean, it sounds almost like a betrayal of what people strictly thought education should be, but I think we need to learn some lessons from retail. I think retail is doing something right that [educational] institutions are getting wrong.”
Howarth, a native Londoner, is an educator, writer, artist and curator. Before founding The School Of Life, she worked as Head of Education and Research at iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), and as Curator of Public Programs at Tate Modern in London. She admits it was her dream job, and relishes the seven years she spent devising several of the gallery’s opening displays and commissioning hundreds of events, courses and conferences.
“In relation to museums or libraries,” she says, “education is always seen as the rather boring bit on the side, and I really wanted people to feel like actually this is the most exciting bit; this is what makes the artworks come alive or matter, is how people engage with them.”
Howarth’s Tate programmes were enormously successful and ultimately helped establish her own beliefs about adult learning outside the university system. She wanted to create a self-sustaining business model (a “social enterprise”) that would not depend on financial support from either government or private industry. She had several ideas including a philosophical cooking school, but liked the concept of an “ideas store” – where the promotion of desire for products would be re-directed to promote a desire to buy and consume ideas and experiences. When her friends joked that what she really wanted was to create a ‘university of life’, Howarth (and a number of collaborators) began in earnest to develop an alternative curriculum that would offer a few subjects addressing big life themes.
Rigorous standards for all aspects of the school’s programmes and services were developed over many months. Writes Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times: “The ambition is to offer a road map to a fuller life - secular and interior, not religious - toward which end a sense of humor helps.” British and international press coverage has been both positive and continual since the school’s inception with many journalists reporting back once they have sampled some of the school’s offerings.
The Love course, for example, asks questions such as: Why are relationships so complicated? How important is sex? How can love be made to last? Popular columnist for the UK’s The Evening Standard, Liz Hoggard, writes: “The scale of reference on the course is wide – everything from Woody Allen and Tolstoy to philosophers such as Spinoza and Schopenhauer. I came to realize that love is not found, it is made.”
It’s difficult not to be impressed by Howarth’s intellect and general enthusiasms. She’s cool, sensible and rational, and speaks in a warm, educated voice. She has a soft spot for the practical philosophies of the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (especially his no-nonsense approach to transcending self-pity), and she seems genuinely happy, her conversation a refreshing mix of wit, insight and scholarly observation. It’s little wonder that some of today’s most interesting talents – including philosopher, Alain de Botton; author, Toby Litt; and comedienne, Ruby Wax – want to work with her.
Possibly the most influential is 39-year-old, Zürich-born writer, de Botton, who, according to his website, set up The School Of Life with some colleagues in 2008. For the man who has reached millions with his books and docos on work, happiness, travel and philosophy for the everyday, The School Of Life seems to be one of the most exciting projects he’s currently involved with.
Writes de Botton of the school: “The idea is to challenge traditional universities and re-organise knowledge, directing it towards life, and away from knowledge for its own sake. In a modest way, it’s an institution that is trying to give people what universities should I think always give them: a sense of direction and wisdom for their lives with the help of culture.” For Howarth, the association has proven to be both enriching and important, with de Botton co-creating the school’s work and love courses, running one of the earliest holidays (to Heathrow Airport, where he was recently holed up for his latest literary venture), and conducting a lively sermon On Pessimism (as a homage to Seneca) in March, 2008.
“Alain is one of the school’s ambassadors,” Howarth says. “He was one of the first people to believe in the idea and played a significant role in helping get it all established.” He regularly shares his ideas with the school, his “vibrant, witty and honest way of thinking about everyday life” very inspiring.
Not surprisingly, Howarth has received many requests from around the world to franchise The School Of Life. Countries including America, Australia and New Zealand have expressed a flattering amount of interest in a school that is barely one year old. Individuals and organisations from Melbourne and Sydney have suggested numerous ways a franchise could operate here, but Howarth believes it’s too soon. She admits that they don’t lose money on any of their courses, but their overheads are proving to be expensive and are continually in the red.
“Our aim is not to make any money but our aim is not to lose money either,” she says. “We haven’t paid back what it cost to create our courses yet so I’m looking at different ways in which within three years we can be financially self-sufficient, and then I’d be really excited to choose franchisees who I felt I trusted with the brand. But at the moment, they would need to be able to lose quite a lot of money!”
With the stresses of business survival so vividly outlined, I ask Howarth if she’s happier since founding The School Of Life. “Definitely,” she says. “I think having a sense of purpose and having an interest and engagement with other people are pretty good ingredients for it. But it’s interesting because we never really describe the school as being about making people happy. We always describe it as being about wisdom – although unfortunately that word has been slightly co-opted by the spiritualists of the world.
“I guess by wisdom I mean happiness that is also realistic that doesn’t involve illusions. You know, we’re very much founded on rational thinking here and we want people to think deeply and pleasurably about how they want to live the rest of their lives, but we don’t want to promote a kind of happiness that’s based on a fantasy or illusion. I mean, often you get that either in religion or in life-coaching. You get things built on nebulous foundations, so I guess we would rather think that the real reward of what we would call wisdom is a much more thought through thing than simple happiness; more robust and kind of more lasting as well.”
In her TATE ETC article, Howarth refers to Anthony T. Kronman’s 2007 book, Education’s End: Why our colleges and universities have given up the meaning of life. Kronman, a highly respected Sterling Professor at Yale Law School, wrote his polemic about the failing education system, especially in regard to the meaning of life. “Why did the question of what living is for disappear?” he asks. “Our lives are the most precious resources we possess and the question of how to spend them is the most important question we face.”
It's difficult not to agree.
* * *
The School Of Life
Sophie Howarth's TATE ETC article
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