Elloitt W. Eisner - Reimagining Schools

I am re-reading a number of Eisner articles from the past 20 years in this 'selected works of' volume. Eisner is an art educationalist from Stanford University, USA. A 'reimagined school' is one where imagination and creativity is encouraged, so it is a place of excitement and wonder - and not dominated by tedious drill and exercises. I remember well his description of expertise in education as connoisseurship rather than mastery. Since education is about people and both complex and subtle, he felt it better described through the metaphor of the connoisseur of fine wine than mastery of a skill. The skillful teacher/educator has to look for small signs of success and quality and get know the good from the very good, as a matter of instinct. Connoisseurship is this an art rather than a science, a key to most of his writings. Evaluation of education, in his view, is not a matter of raw scores, results, performance indicators and such sort, but a matter of relationships between students and teachers. A successful school enthuses, motivates, excites, and causes learners to thirst for more. Moreover, he argued, learning is very broad. We praise ability in literacy and maths, privilege it, but are less likely to praise ability in art or music. A page of successful maths scores more than writing a symphony, or drawing a brilliant picture. This is wrong: we should recognize "multiple literacies". (This was before Gardner made 'multiple intelligences' popular). The arts are a way into human experience and consciousness. Art (including literature and music) images feeling, which otherwise are sidelined and education becomes only a matter of remembering stuff, not experiencing and feeling.


Throughout the period of these articles the English curriculum has become increasing stuck in the rut of assessment, testing and accountability, marginalising those aspects of the curriculum which emphasise experience, appreciation, joy and celebration. There is no longer much to celebrate. A chapter on 'the celebration of thinking' hints that education could more resemble celebration than the sort of drill that improves SATs results, but discourages children from finding education interesting.