Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

By Elliot Eisner


1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.


SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Documenting a Day

So, I challenged my digital photography photo students to document a day in their life.

This challenge is meant to do several things: compel them to carry a camera at all times, compel them to use the camera, compel them to make many, many shots of ordinary things while looking at composition, compel them to not worry about making art until they feel comfortable with their machine.

Here's the teacher's version. I documented last Friday ... long day ;-)

School's IN for Summer

I love to learn. I love to teach and, as I see it, teaching is often learning. It's a sharing experience from which I always come away feeling fulfilled, feeling like I have both given and gained knowledge.

So, last evening, I attended the new teacher orientation at the Art Association of Harrisburg, where this summer I will teach "Digital Photography for Artists." In the fall, I will also have a course designed for students who want to learn more about their digital cameras and how to use them to make good photographs.

Go ahead and sign up for the summer course. If you need more details, visit the Art Association website. I promise you will find the staff more than helpful.

I will probably enroll in at least one summer class as well because, as usual, there is a full slate of courses from which to choose. A short while after joining the association in 2007, I enrolled in Linda Benton-McCloskey's "Experimental Mixed Media" course. I had THE best time and I learned so much from Linda and fellow classmates.

Last fall, I took a drawing class with Maaike Heitkonig Hickok. She can draw! Fellow classmates ranged in age from teens to senior citizen, male and female, and we had fun doing poses and flash poses for one another. What's more, I accomplished my goal of overcoming being so slow with a drawing. I wanted to do better at observing and getting it on paper.

Classmates are the added benefit of the experience of learning. I met interesting and diverse people, many of whom did not aspire to make art for a living but wanted to stretch beyond their comfort zone and learn something new.

Go ahead. Check it out. Sign up for my course or several. Another good one that is offered this spring (beginning Monday) is Elaine Brady-Smith's "Collage" course.