Statement by Avi Gvili, BS, MS—English Teacher and Writer

I am writing in response to ridiculous lies made about the education Aesthetic Realism on two websites, by Adam Mali and Michael Bluejay. These two are slinging mud at an education that has made my personal family relationships kind and my professional career a success. I resent what they're doing and I want people to know the truth.

I have been studying Aesthetic Realism from the age of six. Today I am thirty-one years old, happily married with a six-month-old son. Ordinarily I would not waste my time by responding to what is said by the aforementioned persons. I could imagine so many other much more pleasant things to do. However, the sheer magnitude of their lies compels me to write.

Lie: Students of Aesthetic Realism live in walking distance of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation.

What the truth really is: You gotta be kidding me. We live in Staten Island—quite a walk if you ask me.

Lie: Students are discouraged from pursuing a college degree and studying anything other than Aesthetic Realism.

What the truth really is: Oh boy! What a whopper!  

There are many reasons I am grateful to the Aesthetic Realism education I have received all these years: my marriage, deep relationship with my parents, and my feeling that the future looks better and brighter to me as the years go on. Chief among these, however, is the large, constant encouragement I received in Aesthetic Realism consultations beginning at the age of seven, to care for all knowledge—reading, music, science, arithmetic, and more. In so many ways the world opened up for me. And as my mind was nourished and strengthened year after year, I came to love reading, and books became my dear friends.  

I pursued my education at SUNY Oneonta College where I majored in English, became the president of my fraternity, Sigma Nu, went on spring break to Florida, and spent a semester in England as an exchange student. Never, and I mean never, did I feel I was discouraged from going to places like England or pursuing my degree.  

Throughout college I had Aesthetic Realism consultations, where I learned how the literature of the world—the poetry of William Wordsworth, the novels of Henry James, Victor Hugo, and Charles Dickens, the essays of William Hazlitt—could teach me how to be a kinder, stronger man—something I wanted very much. In one consultation, at a time when there was a lot of anger between my father and myself, I was asked questions which made me love even more the literature I was studying in college: “Do you want to see your father the way a great novelist would? Do you think Charles Dickens could write a novel about your father?” These questions and others made me a better son and today my father and I have a deep friendship.  

I graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in English, and as I thought about what I wanted to do with my life I came to feel a passion for organized formal education. It is this love, particularly of reading and writing, nurtured and strengthened by my Aesthetic Realism consultations, which made me want to become an English teacher. Today, I have a Masters degree in English and have a passionate belief in education for all people.  

For most of my life I have had the opportunity to see the wide, rich, delightful education that is Aesthetic Realism. It understands the art, literature and sciences of the world in ways that have added tremendously to the education I received growing up in public school and later, university. As a teacher of nine years' experience using the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method with much success in an urban New York city school, it is my professional opinion that it adds new, vitally important knowledge to the understanding of education and what will have it truly succeed.