Akademik I need help writing a paper/draft about two educational theorists. It will be three pages. APA not counting the frist...
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Eisner and Greene: Artful Coffee
Running Head: Eisner and Greene: Artful Coffee
‘Coffee’ with Elliot Eisner and Maxine Green
Michelle Pfeiffer
Bemidji State University
September 2012
Foundations of American Education
‘Coffee’ with Elliot Eisner and Maxine Green
What if we looked at education the way an artist might approach creating a painting? Elliot Eisner argues that we should do just that: using artistic thought processes means envisioning multiple possibilities, using good judgment, and looking at a challenge from multiple perspectives (Eisner, 2002). Elliot Eisner views teaching itself as an art form. He argues that artistic thought processes should be taught in school and can be used in exploring any subject matter. Another individual with unique perspectives on teaching and learning is Maxine Greene: "I was brought up in Brooklyn, New York, almost always with a desire to cross the bridge and live in the real world... beyond and free from what was thought of as the ordinary" (maxinegreene.org). Maxine Greene’s outlook and her ideas about what is possible struck me from the day I ‘met’ her on YouTube. I love her concept of ‘beyond and free from the ordinary’. Education has the potential to emerge from ‘the ordinary’. Both Elliot Eisner and Maxine Greene have broadened the educational pathway in front of me: through them, I can see that there is a colorful bridge, just over the horizon…waiting. Where will it take us?
Elliot Eisner
Elliot Eisner (1933-) has been an active participant in arts education, curriculum reform, qualitative research, educational evaluation and education reform for nearly sixty years. His history includes being trained as an artist, teaching art at the high school and college levels, and working as an instructor in both art education and education (Smith, 2005). He currently serves as Emeritus Professor at Stanford University’s School of Education. Eisner is best known for his work approaching education through the arts. Elliot Eisner began his career with a deep-rooted concern that most schools were offering too narrow an educational experience. He argues that teaching artistic ways of thinking can broaden and enrich all areas of education. Eisner has spearheaded extensive curriculum and education reform around this concept:
…while we say that the function of schooling is to prepare students for life, the problems of life tend not to have the fixed, single correct answers that characterize the problems students encounter in the academic areas of schooling. The problems of life are much more like the problems encountered in the arts. They are problems that seldom have a single correct solution: they are problems that are often subtle, occasionally ambiguous…
-Elliot Eisner
(Eisner, 1998, p. 84).
These are unique ideas about education. Eisner suggests that we should approach the art of teaching and learning the same way would approach any other art form. Eisner believes “through the arts students can learn how to discover not only the possibilities the world offers but also their own possibilities” (Eisner, 1998, p. 85). Creating art can teach children how to make judgments about qualitative relationships; that it is good to consider many perspectives; that there isn’t always one ‘correct answer’; that small differences can have large effects (Eisner, 2002).
Maxine Greene
Maxine Greene (1917-) is an educational philosopher, a social activist, an author, a teacher, and an incredible woman who, like Eisner, believes that the arts can be a powerful learning tool. “The full range of human experience is not available to most individuals, but it can be explored, according to Maxine, through literature and the arts” (maxinegreene.org). Maxine Greene talks about nurturing awareness, making meaning, and approaching each day with a “wide-awakeness”. She challenges her students to express themselves in their own voices rather than repeat her ideas. Greene is a self-labeled existentialist who is always “becoming”. She values creativity and imagination and thinks education’s goal should be to “help students see the point of going to school” (Inside the Academy: Maxine Greene). Maxine Greene talks of “emerging” vs. “achieving”, pointing out that we are never complete, rather “always in the making”. When she speaks, her passion and vigor make you want to listen: "And I can tell you, as teacher and participant, that there is something enlivening, stimulating in learning to learn in the presence of someone alive with the sense of incompleteness and possibility" (MaxineGreene.org/timeline). Greene has taught at New York University, Montclair State College and Brooklyn College. She joined the faculty at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1965 and continues to serve as William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education class there. She founded the Maxine Greene Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts and Education in 2003 (MaxineGreene.org).
Both theorists strive toward making meaning through the arts
Both Greene and Eisner believe in the power of the arts in education. This is what drew me to learn more about each of them. I am both a working artist and a teaching artist…these two individuals both ‘speak my language’. Greene’s passion and honest conversational way make me strive to be very open about the possibilities in and around education. I will absolutely bring her theory of “wide-awakeness” into the classroom each day. I love her existentialist notion that we are all still ‘becoming’…no matter where we are in life. I spent the bulk of my research time on Maxine Greene viewing video interviews because I wanted to hear her philosophies in her own words. She drew me in and created a connection that is hard to describe…I feel as though I have met her in person after hearing her speak so intimately about her educational vision. Her description of never reaching a point of being ‘complete’ really hit home. In contrast, Elliot Eisner’s work feels much more structured to me. His work in the creation of discipline-based art education (DBAE) has four concrete content areas or disciplines (art production, art history, art criticism, and aesthetic enquiry). He is clear in his view that simply giving children arts materials in the hope that their creativity will naturally pour out is too unstructured and not meaningful (Smith, 2005). I agree wholeheartedly! I like the way he gives value and structure to the arts and challenges us to take art more seriously. Several years ago I heard him talk of arts being a ‘nicety’ rather than a ‘necessity’ in our schools. That really struck me. Sixteen years later, I still think about that simple distinction and my part in changing that paradigm. I think if the arts are presented as an avenue for development and growth, and if we further use artistic processes to approach all subject areas, the arts will be taken more seriously. I would love to help make that happen.
Now back to that colorful bridge over the horizon…
I am afraid of the black and white movement toward standardized everything in education. I am fearful that we are not developing mindful awareness. One might even argue that we are promoting the opposite – numbing dullness. What we know about classrooms and the students that sit in them all day long is this: they are as diverse as ever. Kids are coming to us from all different backgrounds with varying levels of understanding and a multitude of life experiences. Instead of hearing where they are coming from (there’s not much time for that) we are telling them to sit down, asking them to be quiet, and we are telling them what we think it is important for them to know. We are telling them that they have to know these items in order to pass a test. Yikes. That’s a lot of ‘telling’. I think school, for a lot of kids, is a place where they travel from room to room, sit in a desk that is in a row, wait quietly, and are asked to take in a bunch of information that may or may not have any context in their lives. This is fruitless. It is terrifying to me. It is gray and dull and missing an important opportunity…thus, the ‘bridge’. It is calling me and…
I am formulating a vision of possibilities in and around the experience of education. I see improved attendance, the construction of a context / framework for information, a personalized approach to teaching and learning, promotion of individual growth in and around the subject matter, adding color and light to our world, creating a healthier society…big things. Huge. How can we get there? I think we can start with a few questions…What if school was a place that all kids liked to go? What if going to school meant becoming…__________________ (fill in the blank)? What if the classroom became a safe place for expression? I have seen art rooms that transform into a safe place for self-expression. What if this could bleed into the hallways / other classrooms / maybe even outside the school door? I don’t have the ‘answers’ to these questions. Maybe all of my questions will never be answered. Maxine would say this is okay. I plan to continue to ask the questions, and work on uncovering answers that work for me, in my classroom, with my community of learners. I hope to employ artful reasoning: considering multiple perspectives, coming up with many solutions that work for different students in different situations. I realize that we will never ‘complete’ this quest for more meaningful education because there will always be challenges and opportunity for further growth. Embracing the process of ‘becoming’ means that my students and I will continue to emerge in our teaching and learning. The “excitement of imagination and possibilities” as Maxine Greene describes it will never get old. The process itself is a miracle with possibility. I simply promise to practice a ‘wide awake’ approach that is evolving, changing, growing, and emerging.
In conclusion: a cup of coffee
In studying these educational theorists, I kept secretly imagining sitting at a table with them both at the same time…having coffee. What a conversation that would be! I have tried to uncover whether the two of them have crossed paths professionally but have not found anything. I have a feeling they would have much to say to one another and I would love to hear them collaborating. My virtual coffee party with these two has sharpened my views on the possibilities of education. I used to view my ‘teaching artist’ experiences as separate from this new journey toward classroom teacher licensure. After listening to Elliot Eisner’s theories, I now know that they will be forever intertwined. I am excited to bring what I always knew was possible through the arts into my classroom learning community. The idea of approaching subject matter with the same creative vision one might bring to a painting or a sculpture is freeing and big and so full of potential. I believe in Maxine Greene’s notion that we are always “becoming”…that we should celebrate incompletion…that the goal is to be forever “emerging” vs. getting somewhere / completing something. In my mind, if we are ‘done’ that means we stop growing, adapting, changing, emerging, becoming. Are we done yet? No, we most certainly are not.
References
Eisner, E.W. (1998). The Kind of Schools We Need. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Eisner, E.W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and
How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press.
Inside the Academy: Maxine Greene - YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8hp8GD8-p4)
(Published on Apr 16, 2012 by insidetheacademyasu )
Maxinegreene.org
Maxine Greene - YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J2N6ZzsFU4)
(Uploaded by WhiteLotusProdt on Apr 21, 2011)
Maxine Greene on the Muse - YouTube Maxine Greene conversation w/ Sebastian Ruth, Oct. 2011.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wy9sp8m_4I)
(Uploaded by communitymusicworks on Dec 2, 2011)
Maxine Greene Sunday Salon, October 2, 2005 ...
video.google.com
Professor Maxine Greene « idea cultures blog
ideaculture.wordpress.com
Smith, M. K. (2005) 'Elliot W. Eisner, connoisseurship, criticism and the art of education', the
encyclopedia of informal education, www.infed.org/thinkers/eisner.htm.
Greene, Maxine. (2011). Maxine Greene Society “Ahead of Time” Film Screening 5116513.
Teachers College, Columbia University.
