Advocacy

Image taken from the Americans for the Arts http://www.capwiz.com/artsusa/home/

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.
  2. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
  3. 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.
  4. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
  5. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
  6. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.

U. S. House Desingnates ARTS IN EDUCATION week in September
Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.Con.Res. 275, legislation designating the second week of September as "Arts in Education Week." Authored and introduced by California Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA), this resolution is the first Congressional expression of support celebrating all the disciplines comprising arts education. This is a very positive showing of support for arts education and comes at a key time when Congress is making plans to overhaul federal education policy.
 The resolution seeks to support the attributes of arts education that are recognized as instrumental to developing a well-rounded education such as creativity, imagination, and cross-cultural understanding. H.Con.Res. 275 also highlights the critical link between those skills and preparing our children for gaining a competitive edge in the global economy. This is an important message for policy makers to acknowledge as they prepare to reauthorize federal education policy. To send a message to your member of Congress in support for arts education, click here.
As a House resolution, the bill does not require signature by the President upon its passage.  You can read the resolution here.
Student-Produced Video Supports Keeping Arts in Schools
A group of students produced a video supporting arts in their school. View this video by going to http://www.youtube.com/user/thewistube#p/u/9/uC9DbDqO974 .
Survey of CEOs Finds Creativity as the Most Important Leadership Value
A survey conducted by IBM's Institute for Business Value finds that CEOs identify "creativity" as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. To read the full article, go tohttp://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109596/what-chief-executives-really-want?mod=career-leadership
Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Hear Ken Robinson's thoughts at the TED conference.  To view the video, go to http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Arts Meeting on Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
On January 20, 2010, the United States Department of Education (ED) held a meeting for arts stakeholders to hear comments and suggestions regarding arts education and the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The meeting was hosted by Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Innovation and Improvement, Carmel Martin, Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, and other senior ED staff. Over 60 individuals representing various local, state and national arts organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, were in attendance. See a Summary of the Meeting.
What Does "Quality" look like in Arts Education?In The Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education, Harvard researchers at Project Zero explore what first-rate arts education entails and offer tools to help educators and others make smart choices about arts education in schools and communities. To read the report, go to http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TheWallaceFoundation/91a99db961/03f955ba05/bd6bb69351.
JFK Center for the Performing Arts' Any Given Child InitiativeThe Any Given Child initiative, created by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is a program designed to bring Kennedy Center staff and consultants to work with community leaders and school administrators to develop a long-range plan for arts education that is tailor-made for the school district. For more information visit http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/anygivenchild/.
Arts for Academic Achievement (AAA)AAA is a successful school reform model that creates collaborations between classroom teachers, artists and arts organizations. For more information, visit http://aaa.mpls.k12.mn.us/.
U.S. Secretary of Education Affirms Value of Arts EducationThis letter offers strong encouragement to education decision makers to find time and funds in the school day to offer a comprehensive, sequential and standards-based arts education. The full text can be accessed at http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/secletter/090826.html.



Arts Advocacy: Lobbying 101 Videos

Americans for the Arts conducts extensive research on all aspects of the arts and culture industry. Below are recent "one-pagers" on a variety of topics.

Excellent PDF from Americans for the Arts on the importance of Arts Education




Oregon Alliance for Arts Education- www.oregonarts.net

The Oregon Alliance is part of The Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network (KCAAEN) which is a coalition of statewide non-profit Alliances for Arts Education working in partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to support policies, practices, programs, and partnerships that ensure the arts are an essential part of American K-12 education.

The Role of State Alliances is as follows:
  • Build Collaborations: Develop and support innovative collaborations among schools, community partners, and cultural institutions that sustain arts education.
  • Position the Arts: Speak out on behalf of arts education to citizens, policy makers, state agencies, and others about the value and benefits of arts education.
  • Generate Resources: Develop, publish, and/or disseminate resources for arts education leaders and practitioners.
  • Provide Professional Development: Implement professional development through educational programs, training, and resources.
  • Recognize Innovation and Achievement: Provide awards and acknowledgments to individuals, organizations, and schools that demonstrate outstanding support for arts education

The 25th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy
Alec Baldwin delivered the 25th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, a leading national forum for arts policy, intended to stimulate discussion of policy and social issues affecting the arts. The lecture provides an opportunity for public discourse at the highest levels on the importance of the arts and culture to our nation's well-being.








"What Education Can Learn From the Arts"
Lowenfeld Lectureby
Elliot Eisner
March 27, 2008
2008 NAEA National Convention
New Orleans, Louisiana
Since the turn of the century -  the 20th century - American schools have been impacted by a pedagogical and organizational paradigm built upon methodologies of the physical sciences. Schools were regarded as arenas within which the ideas of scientific technology could find wide application. In this model, the specification of ends and the search for ideal means relevant to the achievement of those ends was a dominant aspiration, Just reflect on the work of Franklin Bobbitt in the 1920s, the growth of the behavioral objectives movement in the 1050s, and most recently, the preoccupation with standards as a way to achieve the ends that were formulated. The tacit aspiration of researchers and some practitioners, particularly school administrators, was to find a set of methods that would efficiently and effectively help us achieve our most important goals.
This paradigm, a scientistic paradigm, was much more interested in certainty in methods than the surprises that some methods would yield. It was more concerned with measurement than with meaning, and at times its metaphors likened education to a business.
In this orientation, the arts were often marginalized. They are difficult to measure, and they harbor values that some believe to be problematic. At their best, the arts were nice to have in schools but not necessary. Even though the arts are considered a core subject in recent legislation pertaining to No Child Left Behind, in the reality of the school day, they are often hard to find.
But what if we looked to the arts not merely as recipients of policies made in light of a technological paradigm but rather as a source of both insight and practice that had something special to offer those interested in school improvement. Maybe it is the case that the arts have something to teach those whose paradigm is closer to educational engineering than it is to aesthetics. Maybe there is a story to be told that when told would capture the imagination of a public eager to find genuinely satisfying educational experiences for their children.
This paper was written to describe what it is that education can learn from the arts that is relevant to the improvement of our schools. Just what do the arts have to teach education? And why is what they have to teach educationally important? My hope is that what I have to say will enable those who seek extrinsic reasons for justifying the arts in the schools? mind a rationale for the arts that one might regard as self justifying.
1. Education can learn from the arts that form and content cannot be separated. How something is said or done shapes the content of experience.
It has long been held that form and content are distinct phenomena and that one can modify the form of an object or event without changing its content. I argue that content and form coexist and must, of necessity, define each other. To change the form of a form is to change the quality of experience that it makes possible. The quality of experience that a form makes possible is what the content of the form is.
What does this mean for education? It means this. It serves as a reminder that how something is taught and how curricula are organized, how schools are designed impacts what students will learn. These "side effects" may be the real main effects of practice.

2. Education can learn from the arts that everything interacts; there is no content without form, and no form without content.

The point of this idea pedagogically is to acknowledge that when the form is changed in an object or an event, so, too, is the quality of life it engenders. When the content of a form is changed, so, too, is the form altered. Form and content are like two sides of a coin. One cannot have one without the other.
There are no separate parts in a whole. What, for example, a color looks like depends upon the colors around it. The same is true in teaching. We call this interaction.
The concept of interaction is as fundamental in education as it is in all human states of affairs. What is large and what is small depends upon what one is comparing it to. What is hard and what is soft depends on the hardness of the hard and the softness of the soft. Soft can be hard in some contexts, and can be soft in others. This is because interaction is a condition of experience.
In teaching, whether a teacher is considered to move swiftly or slowly depends not only upon the teacher's rate of speech but also on what the student brings to the occasion. For some students, swift is slow, and for others, slow is swift. It is the character of the interaction that defines our experience.
3. Education can learn from the arts that nuance matters. To the extent to which teaching is an art, attention to nuance is critical.
It has been said that the devil lives in the details. It can also be said that the aesthetic lives in the nuances that the maker can shape in the course of creation. How a word is spoken, how a gesture is made, how a line is written, and how a melody is played all affect the character of the whole, and all depend upon the modulation of the nuances that constitute the act.
Musicians "live in their nuances". There are dozens of ways to play a pizzicato on a violin, but what any particular violinist does with the pizzicato depends on what he or she does with the nuances that constitute his rendition of the music.
4. Education can learn from the arts that surprise is not to be seen as an intruder in the process of inquiry but as a part of the rewards one reaps when working artistically.
In our technically oriented control-focused society, we tend to regard surprise as an inability to predict. It is. But surprise in the course of work is also the result of securing a new insight one that was hitherto unexpected. No surprise, no discovery, no discovery, no progress. Educators should not resist surprise, but create the conditions to make it happen. It is one of the most powerful sources of intrinsic satisfaction.
5. Education can learn from the arts that slowing down perception is the most promising way to see what is actually there.
It is true that we have certain words to designate high levels of intelligence; we describe somebody as swift, or bright, or sharp, or fast on the pickup. Speed in its swift state is a descriptor for those we call smart. Such folks are a quick read. Yet, I would argue that one of the qualities we ought to be promoting in our schools is a slowing down of perception, the ability to take one's time, to smell the flowers, to really perceive in the Deweyan sense, and not merely recognize what one looks at. Recognition by contrast, Dewey pointed out, is about attaching a label to an object or event; this is an automobile, that is a wagon, this is an elm tree, that's a pine. The task of recognition has to do with a classification and assignment of a label that stands for the event. Much of early reading instruction is of this type.
What perception entails is not so much classification or categorization, but a savoring, a qualitative exploration of a variety of qualities, qualities that constitute the qualitative wholeness of the object or event being perceived. Dewey argued, and I endorse his argument, that learning how to slow down perception is one of the primary ways in which one can enrich one's experience. For slowed down perception to become a habitual attitude will require a cultural change in America. I do not know whether we are ready for such a change, I do know that much of human experience is dissipated or weakly experienced because of the absence of time that needs to be taken in order to see, to really see.
6. Education can learn from the arts that the limits of language are not the limits of cognition. We know more than we can tell.
In common parlance, literacy refers essentially to the ability to read and to write. But literacy could be re-conceptualized, and I propose to do so, as the creation and use of a form of representation that will enable one to create meaning, meaning that will not take the impress of language in its conventional form. In addition, literacy is associated with high level forms of cognition. We tend to think that in order to know you have to be able to say. I would argue that the limits of language in no way define the limits of cognition. As Michael Polany reminds us, we know more than we can tell. The implications of that idea are profound for education. If taken seriously, it would expand our conception of what knowing entails, it would recognize the diverse ways in which people can be literate ? or should I say multi-literate. Language used in the service of the poetic is quite different than language used in the service of the literal. One can be literate in one form and illiterate in the other. What schools need to attend to are the cultivation of literacy in its many forms. Each form of literacy provides another way to be in the world, another way to form experience, another way to recover and express meaning.
7. Education can learn from the arts that somatic experience is one of the most important indicators that someone has gotten it right.
Related to the multiple ways in which we represent the world, through our multiple forms of literacy, is a way in which we come to know the world through the entailments of our body in the world itself. Sometimes one knows a process or an event through one?s skin. As Susanne Langer once commented, "the senses are our first avenues to consciousness." There is nothing in the head that was not first in the hand. Somatic experience is body knowledge; a sense of rightness of fit, an ability to discriminate without being able to articulate the conditions that made it possible. The body knows and forms the basis for intuition. To require the logical description or the logical argument for a claim about a state of affairs is to expel the poetic from what can be known. The evidence, for what we know almost always supersedes and expands to more than what one can say about it.
8. Education can learn from the arts that open-ended tasks permit the exercise of imagination, and the exercise of imagination is one of the most important of human aptitudes. It is imagination, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.
Imagination is the source of new possibilities. In the arts, imagination is a primary virtue. So it should be in the teaching of mathematics, in all of the sciences, in history, and indeed, in virtually all that humans create. This achievement would require for its realization a culture of schooling in which the imaginative aspects of the human condition were made possible. We ought to be helping our students discover new seas upon which to sail rather than old ports at which to dock. We need schools whose tasks are sufficiently open-ended to allow students to place their thumbprint upon their work without a sense of redundancy. It's an ambitious aim I am after, but one that I think is critical in the long run for the well-being of the planet.
My aim in these brief comments is to open up and explore the implications the arts have for the aims and conduct of education. Clearly the list of features I have identified do not exhaust the dimensions of schooling and educational practice that can be identified. It is an effort to provide a set of leads that could be pursued and explored. In a sense, this effort represents the beginning of a kind of paradigm supplement rather than a paradigm shift. By that I mean I am not interested in substituting one paradigmatic model for another, but rather in adding to the pantry of possibilities of new methods and views that may have important pedagogical consequences. To the extent to which our practices reflect our beliefs, changes in beliefs ought to manifest themselves at least in some degree to changes in practice. That is my hope.
The arts are not typically seen as a valued resource for re-conceptualizing educational work. Tradition has assigned the arts a marginal position in the armamentarium we use to negotiate the educational world. This need not be the case. My hope is that the options I have identified are sufficiently attractive to draw scholars together to explore their practical implications in real life situations. The practical utility of these "lessons" from the arts remain to be tested. When the going gets tough we should remember that there are few higher compliments that one can assign to an individual for his or her work than to say of that work it is a "work of art". Indeed, a work of art may represent the highest form of human achievement, again, whether in the fine arts themselves or in the sciences.
To help students treat their work as a work of art is no small achievement. In the process people become artists. Given this conception we can ask how much time should be devoted to the arts in school? The answer is clear: all of it.
Elliot Eisner is emeritus professor of Art and Education at Stanford University.

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