THE LOWENFELD LECTURE

2008 NAEA National Convention

New Orleans, Louisiana

Viktor Lowenfeld, 1903-1960

The Lowenfeld Award wasestablished in ¡960 by friendsand former students of ViktorLowenfeld to honor an NAEAmember who has made significantcontributions to the field of arteducation through the years. Theaward winner presents a lectureon a topic of his or her choice atthe annual NAEA convention.The 2008 awardee/presenter wasElliot Eisner, Stanford University,Palo Alto, California.

What Education Car

The discovery of scientifically-based knowledge as away to improve the practice of education has been along standing ambition. This has been particularlytrue at a time when schools are under fire and

solutions are searched for in virtually every corner or theglobe. What is the best way to teach? How can curriculum be mosteffectively organized? How can we evaluate educational consequencesthat are significant and useful for continuing the improvement ofeducation? Questions such as these have haunted those in educationand, as far as I know, are not, as yet, adequately answered. "Thislecture exatnines not what educators can learn from science but whateducators can learn from the arts. My thesis is that the improvementof education is made possible not only by understandings promotedthrough scientific methods, but also those promoted through methodsthat are deeply rooted in the arts. I identify eight ideas etnbedded inartistic practice that are relevant for the improvement of education. Inthat sense, my aim is to provide an iconoclastic vision ofthe ways inwhich schools and educational practice more generally can provide afoundational base for making educational practice more effective.

Since the turn ofthe 20th century, American schools have beenimpacted by a pedagogical and organizational paradigm built uponmethodologies ofthe physical sciences. Schools were regarded asarenas within which scientific technology could find wide application.In this model, the specification of ends and the search for ideal meansrelevant to the achievement of those ends was a dominant aspiration.Just reflect on the work of Franklin Bobbitt' in the 1920s, the growthofthe behavioral objectives movement in the 1950s,' and mostrecently, the preoccupation with standards as a way to achieve the endsthat were formulated.' The tacit aspiration of researchers and somepractitioners, particularly school administrators, was to find a set ofmethods that would efficiently and effectively help us achieve our mostimportant goals.

ART EDUCATION / March 2009

Learn from the Arts

1

This paradigm, a scientistic paradigm, was muchmore interested in certainty in methods than thesurprises that some methods would yield. It was moreconcerned with measurement than with meaning, and attimes its metaphors likened education to a business.^

In this orientation to schooling, the arts were oftenmarginalized. They are difficult to measure, and theyharhor values and practices that some believe to beintellectually weak. Al their best, tbe arts were nice tohave in schools but not necessary. Even though the artsare considered a core subject in recent legislationpertaining to No Child Left Behind, in the reality oftheschool day, they are often hard to find.

But what if we looked to the arts not merely asrecipients of policies made in light of a technologicalparadigm but rather as a source of both msight andpractice that had something special to orter thoseinterested in school improvement? Maybe it is the casethat the arts have something to teach those whoseparadigm is closer to educational engineering than it is toaesthetics. Maybe there is a story to be told that when toldwell would capture the imagination of a public eager tofind genuinely satisfying educational experiences for theirchildren.

This lecture describes what it is that education canlearn from the arts that is relevant to the improvement ofour schools. Just what do the arts have to teach education?And is what they have to teach educationally important?My hope is that what I have to say will enable those whoseek extrinsic reasons for justifying the arts in the schoolsto find a rationale for the arts that one might regard asself-justifying. Just what do the arts have to teach thoseconcerned with the improvement of schools?

Education can learn from the arts that form andcontent caimot he separated. How sotnething issaid or done shapes the content of experience.

It has long been held that form and content aredistinct phenomena and that one can modify the formof an object or event without changing its content. Iargue that content and form coexist and must, of

necessity, define each other. To change tbe form of aform is to change the quality of experience that itmakes possible. The quality of experience that a formmakes possible is what the content ofthe form is.

What does this mean for education? It means this:It serves as a reminder that how something is taught,how curricula are organized, and how schools aredesigned impacts what students will learn. These"side effects" may be the real main effects of practice.

Education can learn from the arts that everythinginteracts; there is no content without form, and noform without conte fit.

The point of this idea pedagogically is to acknowl-edge that when the form is changed in an object or anevent, so, too, is the quality of life it engenders. Whenthe content of a form is changed, so, too, is the formaltered. 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, forexample, a color looks like depends upon tbe colorsaround it. The same Is true in the factors that affectteaching. We call this interaction.

The concept of interaction is as fundamental ineducation as it is in all human states of affairs. Whatis large and what is small depends upon what one iscomparing it to. What is hard and what is softdepends on the hardness ofthe hard and the softnessofthe soft. Soft can be hard in some contexts, and canbe soft in others. This is because interaction is acondition of experience.

In teaching, whether a teacher moves swiftly orslowly depends not only upon the teacher's rate ofspeech but also on what thestudent brings to theoccasion. For some students,swift is slow, and for others,slow is swift. It is thecharacter of the interactionthat defines our experience.

BY E L L I O T E I S N E R

March 2009 / ART EDUCATION

3. Education can learn from the arts that nuancematters. 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. Itcan also be said that the aesthetic lives in the nuancesthat the maker can shape in the course of creation.How a word is spoken, how a gesture is made, how aline is written, and how a melody is played all affectthe character ofthe whole, and all depend upon themodulation ofthe nuances that constitute the act.

Musicians "live in their nuances." There are dozens ofways to play a pizzicato on a violin, but what anyparticular violinist does with the pizzicato dependson what he or she does with the nuances thatconstitute his rendition of the music.

Education can learn from the arts that surprise ismU to be seen as an intruder in the process ofinquiry but as a part ofthe rewards one reapswhen working artistically.

In our technically oriented control-focused society,we tend to regard surprise as an inability to predict. Itis. But surprise in the course of work is also the resultof securing a new insight—one that was hithertounexpected. No surprise, no discovery; no discovery,no progress. Educators should not resist surprise, butcreate the conditions to make it happen. It is one ofthe most powerftil sources of intrinsic satisfaction.

Education can learn from the arts that slowingdown perception is the most promising way to seewhat is actually there.

It is true that we have certain words to designate highlevels 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 wouldargue that one ofthe qualities we ought to bepromoting in our schools is a slowing down ofperception, the ability to take one's time, to smell theflowers, to really perceive in the Deweyan sense, andnot merely recognize what one looks at.

Recognition by contrast, Dewey pointed out, is aboutattaching a label to an object or event; this is anautomobile, that is a wagon, this is an elm tree, that'sa pine. The task of recognition has to do with a

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 ÍS U "work of

classification and assignment ofa label that stands forthe event. Much of early reading instruction is of thistype.

What perception entails is not so much classificationor categorization, but a savoring, a qualitativeexploration of a variety of qualities, qualities thatconstitute the qualitative wholeness ofthe object orevent being perceived. Dewey argued, and I endorsehis argument, that learning how to slow downperception is one ofthe primary ways in which onecan enrich one's experience. Por slowed downperception to become a habitual attitude will requirea cultural change in America. I do not know whetherwe are ready for such a change; I do know that muchof human experience is dissipated or weak because ofthe absence of time that needs to be taken in order tosee, to really see.''

6. Education can learn from the arts that the limitsof language are not the limits of cognition. Weknow more than we can tell.

In common parlance, literacy refers essentially to theability to read and to write. But literacy could bere-conceptualized, and I propose to do so, as thecreation and use ofa form of representation that willenable one to create meaning, meaning that will nottake the impress of language in its conventional form.In addition, literacy is associated with high levelforms of cognition. We tend to think that in order toknow you have to be able to say. I would argue thatthe limits of language in no way define the limits ofcognition. As Michael Polanyi'' reminds us, we knowmore than we can tell.

The implications ofthat idea are profound foreducation. If taken seriously, it would expand ourconception of what knowing entails, it wouldrecognize the diverse ways in which people can beliterate, or should I say mu/íi-literate. Language usedin the service ofthe poetic is quite different fromlanguage used in the service ofthe literal. One can beliterate in one form and illiterate in the other. Whatschools need to attend to are the cultivation ofliteracy in its many forms. Each form of literacyprovides another way to be in the worid, another wayto form experience, another way to recover andexpress meaning.

Education can learn from the arts that somaticexperience is one ofthe most important indicatorsthat someone has gotten it right.

Related to the multiple ways in which we representthe world, through our multiple forms of literacy, is away in which we come to know the world throughthe entailments of our body in the world itself.Sometimes one knows a process or an event throughones skin. As Susanne Langer once commented, "ihcsenses are our first avenues to consciousness."" Thereis nothing in the head that was not first in the hand."

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Somatic experience is body knowledge: a sense ofTightness of fit, an ability to discriminate withoutbeing able to articulate the conditions that made itpossible. The body knows and forms the basis forintuition. To require the logical description or thelogical argument for a claim about a state of atfairs isto expel the poetic from what can be ktiown. Theevidence for what we know almost always supersedesand expands to more than what we can say abotit it.

8. Education can learn from the arts that open-ended tasks permit the exercise of imagination,and the exercise of imagination is one ofthe mostimportant of human aptitudes. It is imagination,not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

Imagination is the source of new possibilities. In thearts, imagination is a primary virtue. vSo it should bein the teaching of mathematics, in all ofthe sciences,in history, and indeed, in virtiÈalIy all that humanscreate. This achievement wouid require for itsrealization a culture of schooling in which theimaginative aspects ofthe human condition weremade possible. We ought to be helping our studentsdiscover new seas upon which to sail rather than oldports at which to dock.

We need schools whose tasks are sufficientlyopen-ended to allow students to place their thumb-print upon their work without a sense of redundancy.It's an ambitious aim I am after, but one that I tliink iscritical in thelongrunforthe well-being of theplanet.

My aim in these brief comments is to open up andexplore the implications the arts have for the aims andconduct of education. Clearly the list ot features I haveidentified do not exhaust the dimensions of schooling andeducational practice that can be identified. It is an effort

to provide a set of leads that could be pursued andexplored. In a sense, this effort represents the beginningof a kind of paradigm supplement rather than a paradigmshift. By that I mean I am not interested in substitutingone paradigmatic model for another, but rather in addingto the pantry ot possibilities of new methods and viewsthat may have important pedagogical consequences. Tothe extent to which our practices reflect our beliefs,changes in beliefs ought to manifest themselves at least insome degree to changes in practice. That is my hope.

The arts are not typically seen as a valued resource forre-conceptualizing educational work. Tradition hasassigned the arts a marginal position in the armamen-tarium we use to negotiate the educational world, lliisneed not be the case. My hope is that the options I haveidentified are sufficiently attractive to draw art educatorstogether to explore their practical implications in real lifesituations. When the going gets tough we shouldremember that there are few higher compliments that onecan assign to an individual for his or her work than to sayofthat work it is a "work of art." Indeed, a work of art mayrepresent one ofthe highest forms of human achieve-ment, again, whether in the fine arts themselves or in thesciences.

To help students treat their work as a work of art is nosmall achievement. In the process, people become artists.Given this conception we can ask how much time shouldbe devoted to the arts in school? The answer is clear: allof it."

Elliot Eisner is Lee jacks Professor Emeritus of Educationand Professor Emeritus of Art at Stanford University,Stanford, California. E-mail: Eisner@stanford.edu

ENDNOTES1 For a discussion of early efforts to scientize educational practice, see Franklin Bobbitt's book, How to Make a Curriculum(1924), Boston: Houghton Mifllin.

2 Deep interest in behavioral objectives was intluenced significantly by the work uf Ralph W. Tyier who was A neo-progressiveeducator who believed that it was extremely important to have behaviorally defined expectations for the outcomes of practice.

•3 Recent expressions of the behavioral objectives movement are found in efforts to improve test scores by defining specific levelsof performance tor each of the subjects in the curriculum. These expectations take the form of standards.

^ One of tbe side effects of hyper-rationalization of school programs is ihe drift toward measurement as the point oftheeducational exercise whereas, I believe, it should be the creation of meaning thai should take priority.

5 The best source that I know ofthat distinguishes between recognition and perception is found in John Dewey's major work.Art as Experience, (1934), New York; Perigee Books.

6 See Michael Polanyi, The lacit Dimension, (1964), Peter Smith Publishers, Inc.

'' Susanne Langer, Problems of Art, (1976), New York: Charles Scribners Sons.

S Those familiar with the work of Sir Herbert Read will know that the fundamental idea in this paper [lecture] was initiallyshaped by him. My indebtedness to Sir Herbert Read is great.

March 2009 / ART EDUCATION