Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

By Elliot Eisner

The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative
relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and
rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

The arts teach children that problems can have more than
one solution and that questions can have more than one
answer.

The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that
there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem
solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with
circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires
the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated
possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form
nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not
define the limits of our cognition.

The arts teach students that small differences can have
large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art
forms employ some means through which images become real.

The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps
them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the
words that will do the job.

The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other
source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of
what we are capable of feeling.

The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to
the young what adults believe is important.