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Eisner (Elliot W.) Papers
SC0878
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
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
Abstract: 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.
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.
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.
Obituary from Stanford News
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/january/elliot-eisner-obit-011714.html
Elliot W. Eisner Papers (SC0878). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives,
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Collection pertains to his research and teaching and includes class files, articles,
papers, speeches, correspondence, and other materials.
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.
Stanford University. Graduate School of Education.
Faculty
Eisner, Elliot W.