As I write this (Ed Note: August 2015), the New Horizons spacecraft has just finished its ‘fly-by’ of Pluto, capping a 9.5 year journey that has delighted the NASA scientists, and also captured the imaginations and the hearts of most of the rest of us!

Another incredible achievement of science & space exploration!  That such a feat could be accomplished, when it takes 9 hours to even exchange information with the spacecraft, is amazing!  So here’s to the scientists, and here’s another commercial for the importance of math and science in our educational curriculum!

But perhaps you expected that from this corner.  What else would I say, right?  Perhaps you won’t expect what follows.

The day before the fly-by, columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke to this topic in his column.  I don’t always agree with Krauthammer politically, but this column was most interesting.   He spoke to why we would undertake this project, and gave two reasons:
“First, for the science, the coming avalanche of new knowledge.”   As we know, Pluto is the remaining mystery of the original nine planets (it was still a planet when the probe was launched).  We will be gathering information and knowledge from this probe for months – even years.

“Then there’s the romance.”  I didn’t see this one coming – from this columnist.  He continues on, eloquently speaking of the pull of such explorations, and essentially, the mystery of the Universe in which we live.

Space exploration has always seemed to be the one area where the science of the universe seems to blend with the mystery of the universe for all of us.  So, let’s make an educational connection, as well.  We have heard it so much:  “The goal of education is not just to prepare us to make a living, but to enable us to make a LIFE.”  We usually say this referring to a healthy balance of economic and quality-of-life issues.

But I’d like to recast the statement in another light.  I think it is also about the values of science and ‘the arts’.  Unfortunately, we continue to live in an era in which the former is highly valued, and the latter is under-valued and often cut from school curricula, due to budgetary considerations.  This imbalance is not healthy.

No matter how much science tells us about how the Universe works, there will always be more that we don’t understand – and at which we continue to marvel.    Regardless of our religious beliefs – or even, for that matter, our lack of them – there always remains a grand, unfathomable Mystery to the Universe in which we live.  We should cherish that awe.  How we are affected by, react to, and interact with that Marvelous Mystery affects the quality of our life.  It has always been a function of the poet, the artist, the musician to remind us of that Mystery and to put us in touch with it.

Without the scientists, we would lose much of our ability to explain the universe in which we live.  But, without the artists we cut off a significant portion of our preparation for actually living in that universe.  We must, it seems, continue to nurture both the sciences and the arts in our schools, for they both prepare us – in equally important ways – to function in our everyday live

So, here’s a toast to the scientists, yes.  But let’s also toast the artists, as well.  And let’s continue to develop both the sciences and the arts in education.  To ignore either is to invite peril.