When meeting with students, we explored a single concept in more depth than is often typical of classroom discourse. We took the concept of beauty and both extended and deepened our grasp of what it might mean in our lives. The more we explored, the more complex our understanding. Rather than compressing and simplifying, we entertained the possibility that some concepts such as truth, beauty, friendship, courage and honor might be worthy of prolonged inquiry. The girls considered the many facets of thinking shown in the diagram below and played with them to see how they might cast light on the concept at hand.

Provoking Deep Thought

We began with ten photographs from a Seattle folk festival.

"Which of these photographs expresses or shows the most beauty?"

They were displayed on a large screen, one at a time, and then each girl was asked to write down their choice and several reasons why they had picked the particular photograph. Their choices were spread across half a dozen pictures and the resulting discussion was quite spirited.

A Matter of Definitions and Quotations

After this discussion I asked the girls to jot down quick early definitions of what they thought beauty means. We moved on to consider what famous thinkers, authors and celebrities have said or written about beauty and the girls were again asked to make and defend a choice.

Which of these quotations at Thinkexist.com does the best job of capturing the meaning of beauty or adds the most to your understanding of the concept?

Again the choices were quite spread out across the quotations we considered and the complexity of the concept became evident to everyone.

There was no simple definition available that would be satisfying or come close to capturing the many different meanings and layers of meaning that the group had already identified.

Inner beauty.

Outer beauty.

Natural beauty.

Artistic beauty.

The list grew and the cluster diagram we started early in the discussion became increasingly complicated.

At this point, the group took a look at a definition of beauty offered by the dictionary on my laptop and critiqued it, considering its strengths and weaknesses:

More Insights from New Zealand Art and Photography

Exceptional digital archives at the National Museum and the National Library offered several more opportunities for the girls to extend their understanding of beauty.

We compared photographs from each source and again the group was quite divided when faced with a half dozen choices.

Insights from Advertising

A series of videos from Dove moved our inquiry over to focus on the "beauty industry." The series is designed to counter many of the damaging messages aimed at women, and the girls were asked to consider what new questions these videos provoked about beauty.

• Did these videos shift or deepen your understanding of beauty?
• Why do you suppose Dove is doing this? Do you trust their intentions?

To further deepen the girls' appreciation of the concepts, they viewed "Slob Evolution" - a clever parody of Dove Evolution showing a good looking young man who smokes, drinks and eats his way into an unattractive state worsened by PhotoShopping.

These videos set the stage for the questioning activities that ended the first session. Rather than tying up the activity in a neat bundle, we finished by listing questions still needing attention.

Questions for a Life?

The girls in one group came up with the following questions:

• If people have good lives and people who love them, why do they think they need to change their appearance?
• Did you inherit or earn your beauty?
• What's the point of looking good when on the inside you're feeling ugly?
• How can I change to become beautiful on the inside?
• How can your inner beauty be shown to the world without hurting other people?

We did not have time to make a list of questions to go along with "What choices must I make?" but it was clear to the girls that questions of beauty would be with them for many years.