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Alexander Bernstein’s Artful Learning Legacy
Posted October 15, 2025
Alexander Bernstein’s Artful Learning Legacy
by Eric Booth
“Teaching is probably the noblest profession in the world—the most unselfish, difficult, and honorable profession. But it is also the most unappreciated, underrated, underpaid and underpraised profession in the world.” – Leonard Bernstein.
Those in the field of education refer to “transfer” as the gold standard evidence of real learning—when you can transfer learning from one domain and apply it in another. Leonard Bernstein’s irrepressible curiosity often embodied this truth. You may have seen Bernstein’s famous quotation: “The best way to learning something is in the context of another discipline.”
When Alexander Bernstein was forming the Leonard Bernstein Center in 1989, his team was figuring out how to transfer young people’s learning in the arts to learning in all subject areas. Alexander guided his founding team at the LBC to design what arts learning could look like if it infused the whole curriculum of a school. What could a school be if Bernstein-inspired (father and son) learning were the heart and identity of a school?
Thus Artful Learning was born. Alexander oversaw the birth, the development, and the spread of Artful Learning schools, now 17 of them in the U.S. These curiosity-driven schools are built on an interdisciplinary curriculum that grows from the deep experience with a masterwork—like West Side Story, or The Rite of Spring, or the Pythagorean Theorem or the United States Constitution—which inspires big questions that the students investigate. They create their own expressions, connected to relevant questions in the masterwork, and then reflect on their learning throughout the process.
Artful Learning schools not only nurture highly engaged students and faculty; they also produce test scores way above average. Alexander was the champion of this kind of learning, tirelessly advancing it, finding support for it, and showing up to celebrate the students and the schools. There would be no Artful Learning schools, no thousands of students whose lives it has changed, without his indefatigable efforts to keep the work growing.
Alexander Bernstein and educators from Hillcrest Community School (MN) use text from "Something’s Coming" to create a collaborative dance. Photo by Peter Slansky.
As a young man, Alexander was a beloved drama teacher—I know one student who claimed “Mr. Bernstein’s class” was the only reason he went to school. Alexander instinctively taught with the Artful Learning sensibilities that he and his father lived by.
In late September, Alex’s sister Jamie designed and hosted a spectacularly fun “Bernstein Remix” event in New York. A parade of musical superstars performed Bernstein’s material in inventive, surprising, irresistible ways. The event was a celebration of Alexander as one of the kindest, most visionary yet modest, arts-learning leaders anywhere, and of his decades of success with Artful Learning schools. Jamie’s evening prompted us all to reflect on the enormity of Alexander’s contribution.
We all know the truths, both inspiring and lamentable, contained in Leonard Bernstein’s quote at the beginning of this article. But Alexander’s signal contribution, as the champion of Artful Learning, was to win new appreciation and deserved praise for arts teachers and for all teachers.
And how very much he would have loved a packed house cheering for Artful Learning. We miss him, but Artful Learning is very much alive.
Eric Booth is, among many other things, Co-Founder of ITAC/International Teaching Artist Collaborative, and a Board Member of Artful Learning, Inc.