Reading Reflection #2

     Eisner’s Chapters 3 and 4 discussed teaching the visual arts and what the visual arts teach.  First, he spoke about the way that a “teacher designs environments made up of situations that teachers and students co-construct.” (p. 47)  These situations help enhance what students know, so they can build on their previous knowledge.    I like the term “situations” as it applies to lessons, unit plans, making art and  the whole classroom environment.  It’s exciting to think about what kind of classroom I will construct, and what kind of situations my students and I will find our selves in.  Eisner talked about surprise in the classroom and the need for improvisational skills.  Later, he talked about surprise and improvisation in artwork as well.  Life is full of surprises and everyone needs to be able to accommodate and improvise.    Eisner talked in a few different places about how students learn more and less than we as teachers plan, (p. 51 and70).  I liked when he talked about education as seeds and future experiences as the water to activate the seeds.  As an adult, it has always been thrilling to learn new things about things I have already learned about.  I guess I like watering the seeds.  Somewhere, he talked about an education as the “start of something”, not the end product of anything.  I think learning to look at the world with an aesthetic frame of reference can help people water their seeds.  It helps make things more interesting and keeps people curious about the world around them.  I love when I notice some small or grand detail in world around me.  Sometimes, the walk from my car to my front door takes a long time because I’ll stop and look up.  Wow, you can see a lot of stars, and it sounds different depending on the time of year, and sometimes it even smells a particular way.  I don’t notice this every night, but I love it when I do and I like to make sure my children notice too.  Sometimes, they are the ones that point things out to me. 

     On page 58, Eisner talked about how teachers not only teach the curriculum, but they also teach themselves and the “hidden curriculum”.  I have read about the Hidden Curriculum before, but never really understood just how personal and hidden it really is.  It’s basically the teacher’s personality, beliefs and frame of reference toward the world, including the students.  Hmm.    It’s probably even hidden from the teacher his/herself.   On pages 84-85, Eisner talked about frames of reference and the way that “curriculum provides frames for reading the world” and how, ”educational programs that are effective both provide a variety of frames and develop the student’s ability to shift frames.”  Shifting frames sounds kind of like improvisation, and flexible purposing, Dewey’s term for improvising in the arts, (p.77)  Eisner compared art making to a conversation and talked again about surprise, saying it is “one of the rewards of work in the arts.” (p. 78)  Another reward he discussed was the literary idea of “willingness to surrender to the work.” (p. 88)  That is, having an emotional response to something one sees, then transforming that response into words (in the literary case) or art work.  What a cool thing to do.  Also, I had to look up another word: Epistemic, of or relating to cognition.  Good to know.

    Freedman was even tougher this time.  Chapter 2 discussed Aesthetics:  historically, formalistically, contemporarily and pragmatically.  At first, when discussing the historical foundations for aestheticism, it seemed that everyone was dismissing and rejecting what had come before.  Kant rejected earlier beliefs and institutions in favor of disinterest, I think.  This part went right over my head.  Let’s move on to something I understood better.  (Maybe Kant will come up in class.)   With industrialization came modernism and new ways to look at and think about the world.  Formalism was developed around 1900 “at a time when science was gaining currency as applied to all areas of life.” (p. 27)  Science and scientific thinking were a rejection of the symbolism and religiousness of the past.  The section on rejection of symbolism was interesting because the symbolists were themselves rejecting naturalists, who were no doubt rejecting the ists that were popular before them.  Why do people always want to rebel against and reject what came before?  Have they always rebelled, or is this a modern phenomenon?  I think it’s just human nature.