Why We Need Beautiful Learning Experiences

At THINKABLE we aim to create beautiful learning experiences for computer science, you may ask why do we think we have to do it?

In a world filled with information and distractions, the pursuit of beauty might seem like a slippery and frivolous endeavor, especially in education. However, creating beautiful learning experiences is far from trivial — it's essential. Beauty in education can inspire, engage, and transform the learning process, ultimately leading to deeper understanding and lasting impact.

"Beauty is an option for art… But it is not an option for life. It is a necessary condition for life as we would want to live it." — Danto, 2003, p.160

I believe that experiencing beauty is a signal from authentic ourselves to be aware and make a notice. However, we often learned to ignore this deep signal. But we should not, because it is our instinctive personal compass. It is our life guide… It is a signal of a deeply formative experience we are just encountering and we should give our attention to. Experiences of this kind stand out in our memories as something holistic, emotional, complete in themselves, highly significant and intrinsically worthwhile. Such powerful, intimate experiences referred to as moments of 'epiphany' are common in the autobiographies of personalities who have found a particular vocational calling or how romantics would say 'met their destiny' or some people would call it "being in the zone".

These intense and formative experiences are those when we are able to recognise beauty in something that is relevant for ourselves and nobody else. Our specific response to an object rather than in the object itself is the signal that we should search for, look for its origin and its power. Because, noticing when our disinterested observation changes and opens to such experience of beauty will help us to know ourselves and navigate us to a happiness which is instantly recognisable as our own.

To find our calling, to understand ourselves we need to be able to notice this deep signal, our own understanding of beauty. However, education is understood as pure acquisition of knowledge and skills to be able to fulfill the tasks and activities in the classroom and hopefully even later in life. This vision somehow assumes that skill, technology or method could be applied free from its purpose or intention. This brings disconnection between the learner and the learned… completely opposite to the experience of beauty which is felt in deep connection between the learner and what is learned.

Remember the awe you felt the first time you gazed through a microscope or saw the night sky through a telescope? Beautiful experiences in education can spark that same sense of wonder and curiosity. When students encounter beauty — whether it's in a stunning scientific phenomenon, a well-crafted story, or an elegant mathematical solution — they become naturally curious. This curiosity is the driving force behind meaningful learning and exploration.

Beauty plays a crucial role in a young person's education. The types of learning experiences that a mind is exposed to and the kinds of things a person is taught to consider lovely and worthy of preservation profoundly form her mind and soul. What the young mind finds attractive and desirable directly affects her ability to know the good and to choose well. And since freedom is the ability to choose the good, the beauty makes us free. A beautiful education will form not only the intellect, but also the will and the heart.

What Makes a Beautiful Lesson?

A beautiful learning experience is one that stimulates — and then satisfies — a desire for new knowledge or skill. Objectives, technologies, teaching strategies and assessment criteria might all have their place, but why not also consider the lesson as an opportunity to experience?

Because of the disconnect between its purpose and the technology, the computer science field experienced a lack of beauty… It seems natural to think beauty and technology are mutually exclusive. Not because technology is intrinsically ugly but because people often see technology, engineering and science as more "rational" than aesthetic. But there is beauty in computer science… it lies in its ability to solve problems in its interdisciplinary applications.

We at THINKABLE think that solving problems is one of the most intellectually satisfying of all human activities, and computer science is full of it… Computer science is an artisan art of communication of your own fine ideas in a form of tidy code. In physics you are supposed to figure out how the world is made up; in computer science you create the world. In mathematics you are supposed to model the world; in computer science you are discovering hidden numbers, beautiful equations, and proportions in nature that can be unraveled by anyone who is curious enough.

Beauty in education nurtures creativity. When students are exposed to beautiful experiences, they are inspired to think creatively and approach problems with a fresh perspective. Incorporating beauty into education is not just about making learning more enjoyable; it's about transforming the educational experience into something profound and lasting.

"The annihilation of beauty would leave us with an unbearable world, as the annihilation of good would leave us with a world in which a fully human life would be unliveable." — Danto, 2003, p.60

Written by Lucia, 2025