Educators, heed Professor Eisner's advice:
We have had a tendency, especially in the United States, to embrace a form of technical rationality designed to assuage our anxiety about the quality of our schools. The tack that we have taken is to specify in no uncertain terms our expectations, to prescribe content and procedures related to them –- “alignment” it is called –- and then to monitor and to measure the consequences. The tacit view is to create an efficient system, a system that will help us achieve, without surprise or eventfulness, the aims that we seek.
The arts, in contrast, have little room on their agenda for efficiency, at least as a high-level value. Efficiency is largely a virtue for the tasks we don’t like to do; few of us like to eat a great meal efficiently or to participate in a wonderful conversation efficiently, or indeed to make love efficiently. What we enjoy the most we linger over. A school system designed with an overriding commitment to efficiency may produce outcomes that have little enduring quality.
(Quoted from page xiii of The Arts and the Creation of Mind, by Elliot W. Eisner. Yale University Press, 2002.)
For a brief biography of Elliot W. Eisner, click here. For images of or relating to Elliot W. Eisner, click here.
We have had a tendency, especially in the United States, to embrace a form of technical rationality designed to assuage our anxiety about the quality of our schools. The tack that we have taken is to specify in no uncertain terms our expectations, to prescribe content and procedures related to them –- “alignment” it is called –- and then to monitor and to measure the consequences. The tacit view is to create an efficient system, a system that will help us achieve, without surprise or eventfulness, the aims that we seek.
The arts, in contrast, have little room on their agenda for efficiency, at least as a high-level value. Efficiency is largely a virtue for the tasks we don’t like to do; few of us like to eat a great meal efficiently or to participate in a wonderful conversation efficiently, or indeed to make love efficiently. What we enjoy the most we linger over. A school system designed with an overriding commitment to efficiency may produce outcomes that have little enduring quality.
(Quoted from page xiii of The Arts and the Creation of Mind, by Elliot W. Eisner. Yale University Press, 2002.)
For a brief biography of Elliot W. Eisner, click here. For images of or relating to Elliot W. Eisner, click here.
Comments