Stanford Professor Addresses 300 at Conference on Arts Education in NewJersey
By Tom Kertes

“The arts should serve as a model for the rest of education,” said Dr. Elliott Eisner, a professor of art and the Lee Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University. “In place of the current pressures of eliminating art from education–or, if that’s not possible, the emphasis upon making art education completely conform to the rest of the curriculum–history, English, math, sciences, and all other subjects should be taught as art-forms.”

Dr. Eisner’s keynote presentation of this revolutionary theory was the highlight of the Sixth Annual Arts Basic to the Curriculum (ABC) Conference, Reaching Children Through the Arts, held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). Over 300 educators, administrators, artists, and parents from all across the state listened with rapt attention in a spacious environment that indeed seemed to breathe creativity and art.

“The current pressures on schools are to reduce ambiguity, imagination, and creativity,” Dr. Eisner averred.

“We judge students on high specificity, not much more than mere memorization of facts. This is clearly harmful to the development of thinking and long-term learning so, naturally, our goal should be just the opposite. If you look at work in the arts what you see is imaginative and creative. It exceeds literalness and engages the imagination. That is what we should be shooting for in educating our students.”

“We’re judging students purely on achievement tests and test scores – and the test scores themselves are proof positive that what our schools are doing right now is inadequate,” added Dr. Eisner.

“So, quite clearly, we should look toward art. It is no accident that, whatever activity we might be engaged in — and that includes teaching — the highest accolade one can receive is that what he’s doing is ‘really a work of art.’”

Plenary Session speaker Miriam Flaherty, director of education for the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, reinforced Dr. Eisner’s theories by emphasizing the importance of early learning through the
arts. “And we do mean early,” she said. “We’re talking about children ages 3-5. The potential impact on very young children of that age
is incalculable. Indeed, why waste such
important years?”

Flaherty sees the task as cooperative and multi-faceted. “We must work on changing early education curricula, using the arts as a way of teaching and learning,” she said. “But this also involves professional development, teaching teachers how to use the arts in the most effective manner.”

The Wolf Trap model is one of “interactive residency”, a seven-week period of a professional artist working with the teacher and the students in the classroom itself on a daily basis, “creating arts-based learning,” according to Flaherty.

“But that’s not even all: education through art, even at that early age, must be accomplished in a number of different ways. This should include the children attending performances, artists performing in schools, and the students creating their own art.”

“There‘s no longer any doubt: all studies now concur that art should be a major part of children’s earliest educational experiences,” concluded Flaherty. “The one thing I want to add is that it should be art of the highest quality. Do not give young children, just because they’re young, bad art. Do not dumb things down. Use professional artists in every art form, whether it’s theater, dance, music, literature, or painting. And make very sure that the teachers involved truly and profoundly know how to best incorporate the arts into their teaching.” #

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