Information about Access
Biographical/Historical Sketch
Cite As
Description of the Collection
Ownership & Copyright
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: Elliot W. Eisner papers
Identifier/Call Number: SC0878
Physical Description:
118 Linear Feet
Date (inclusive): 1965-1998
Summary: Collection pertains to
his research and teaching and includes class files, articles, papers, speeches,
correspondence, and other materials.
Physical Location: Special Collections and University
Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 48 hours in advance. For more
information on paging collections, see the department's website:
http://library.stanford.edu/spc.
Language of Material:
English .
Information about Access
This collection is open for research.
Biographical/Historical Sketch
Elliot W. Eisner earned several degrees in art
education, culminating in a Ph.D. in Education at the University of Chicago in 1962. He taught
at the University of Chicago prior to joining the Stanford University faculty in 1965,
becoming professor of education and art in 1970. Over the course of his academic career,
Eisner, the Lee Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of
Education and professor emeritus of art, championed ways that the arts could benefit student
learning, as well as educational practice. He maintained that the arts are critically
important to the development of thinking skills in children and that the arts might offer
teachers both a powerful guide and critical tool in their practice. He wrote 17 books and
dozens of papers addressing curriculum, aesthetic intelligence, teaching, learning and
qualitative measurement, in addition to his frequent and entertaining lectures throughout the
nation and abroad.
Eisner's ideas reached beyond academia into the classroom: The National Art
Education Association, of which he served as president, turned his list – "10 Lessons the Arts
Teach" – into a poster, which can still be found today hanging on school walls nationwide.
Among the lessons: The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects; the
arts celebrate multiple perspectives; and the arts teach children that in complex forms of
problem solving, purposes are seldom fixed but change with circumstance and opportunity. "To
neglect the contribution of the arts in education, either through inadequate time, resources
or poorly trained teachers, is to deny children access to one of the most stunning aspects of
their culture and one of the most potent means for developing their minds," Eisner wrote.
Eisner eschewed the more popular argument for the arts – that some research showed that
instruction in music, dance and painting actually boosted test scores in math and science.
Eisner, rather, talked about art for art's sake. "He figured out that there was something
missing from mainstream educational theory and method," said his friend and Stanford colleague
Professor Raymond McDermott. "He wanted to address matters of the heart, whereas most of the
discipline was pushing a more mechanical view of the child and the act of teaching or
researching." Eisner reached into areas that sat on the margins of educational discourse: arts
education, most literally; the art of education, by extension; and the art of researching
education, most controversially, McDermott said. "He moved these concerns to the front and
center," McDermott said. Eisner's unrelenting advocacy of the arts continued during periods in
which arts programs were cut in schools, and a chorus of administrators and policymakers,
faced with budget constraints, focused on test scores and worried that spending time painting
or drawing was not academic enough. "One of the casualties of our preoccupation with test
scores is the presence – or should I say the absence – of arts in our schools," he wrote in
the Los Angeles Times in 2005. "When they do appear they are usually treated as ornamental
rather than substantive aspects of our children's school experience. The arts are considered
nice but not necessary."
Eisner advocated a strict, more sophisticated and rigorous arts
curriculum that would put arts instruction on par with lessons in reading, science and math.
Eisner was born in Chicago on March 10, 1933. From an early age, he was set on pursuing a
career as an artist. He graduated in 1954 from Roosevelt University in Chicago with a BA in
art and education and the following year received an MS in art education from the Illinois
Institute of Technology. He then spent two years as a high school art teacher and discovered
that he was more interested in the students than the actual art they were making. Returning to
graduate school in the late 1950s, he received a master's degree and doctorate in education
from the University of Chicago. Eisner served as an assistant professor there before joining
the Stanford faculty in 1965. Along with his lectures, writings and teaching, his involvement
in such curriculum initiatives as the Kettering Project at Stanford in the late 1960s and the
Getty Center for Education in the Arts in the 1980s brought him wide recognition, helping him
become an influential voice for teachers, scholars and other educators. Eisner proposed that
the forms of thinking needed to create artistic work were relevant to all aspects of
education. Incorporating methods from the arts into teaching of all subjects would cultivate a
richer educational experience, he said. "The arts are fundamental resources through which the
world is viewed, meaning is created and the mind developed," he wrote. His work with the Getty
Center advanced what is called Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE). The curriculum structure
advocated in DBAE stresses four aspects of the arts: making it, appreciating it, understanding
it and making judgments about it. This type of arts education, Eisner argued, would result in
children better understanding the relationships between culture and art and becoming more
artistically literate. He also believed children's conceptions of what knowledge is would be
more sophisticated after this type of inquiry. "His voice for evaluating teaching and student
learning through many means, not just standardized testing, continued to be heard during the
past three decades of standards-based school reform, testing and accountability," said Larry
Cuban, professor emeritus of education at Stanford. "Eisner's eloquence in writing and speech
gave heart to and bolstered many educators who felt that the humanities, qualitative
approaches to evaluation and artistic criticism had been hijacked by those who wanted only
numbers as a sign of effectiveness."
For his achievements, Eisner was honored with the Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award from the American Educational Research
Association, a John Simon
Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Jose Vasconcelos Award from the World
Cultural Council, the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education from the McGraw-Hill Research
Foundation, the Brock International Prize in Education, the University of Louisville
Grawemeyer Award for Education and five honorary degrees. He served as president of the
International Society for Education Through Art, the American Educational Research Association
and the John Dewey Society. He was a member of the Royal Society of Arts in the United
Kingdom, the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters and, in the United States, the
National Academy of Education. In addition to his son and daughter, Eisner is survived by his
wife of 57 years, Ellie; son-in-law, Eric Eislund; and grandsons Seth and Drew Eislund and Ari
Eisner.
Cite As
Elliot W. Eisner papers (SC0878). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives,
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Description of the Collection
Collection pertains to his research and teaching and includes class files, articles,
papers, speeches, correspondence, and other materials.
Ownership & Copyright
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must
be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford
University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent is given on behalf of Special
Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright
owner, heir(s) or assigns. See:
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of
digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Art -- Study and teaching.