Homework Reading:

The Educational Imagination

The first stop when I read this chapter was when Eisner talks about how school course planning exerts an implicit impact on the students’ perception on the importance of each subject.  He points out the fact that arts “are generally taught in the afternoon rather than in the morning and often on Friday afternoon” which “reinforces the belief that the arts do not require rigorous and demanding thought and that they are really unimportant aspects of the school program” (Eisner, 1980,p.92).  It reminds me that when we look into the BC Curriculum, many artistic subjects such as visual arts, dance, music, drama are treated as “electives”, that is, they are usually not required for university entrance.  This implicit indication has a detrimental effect.  Although oftentimes students love taking these electives, but they don’t treat them seriously because they realize doing well on artistic subjects cannot lead them to a reputable university.  In addition, many parents also place bias towards artistic electives as they perceive art as an “unemployable” subject.

The second stop was when Eisner explains that the implicit curriculum can teach a host of intellectual and social virtues: punctuality, a willingness to work hard…, and the ability to defer immediate gratification in order to work for distant goals” (Eisner, 1980, p. 95).  Indeed, school is an intersection of society where students not only learn knowledge but also obtain social conventions.  These positive attitudes are not a formal part of the curriculum, yet student do learn and adapt them through education in schools.  What makes Ivy League Universities differ from the rest, in my opinion, is not the quality of education as almost all universities teach the same content for the same course in North America, it is the kind of students who possess broader visions and revolutionary minds which will exert significant impact on future societal change.

The third stop was when Eisner talks about the how curriculum should be designed in a way to cultivate imagination and develop productive thought.  In Eisner’s example, the poet e. e. cummings chooses joy over knowledge, and he would rather learn to sing than to learn from Einstein, Marx or Darwin (Eisner, 1980, p.101).  This reminds me of my experience in China when being taught one of the Four Great Classical Novels, Dream of the Red Chamber.  To this day, I was reluctant to take up the historical, social and political implications imparted by my teacher.  The curriculum requirement has forced the educators to explain the novel in such a way that every character was behaved with some political indication which really destroy the beauty of the novel.  

To connect Eisner’s perspective on the three curricula all school teach, I think we as future teachers really need to ponder on what we are teaching each day to our students. We need to constantly exam our teaching ideology and make sure we truly cultivating independent and critical thinkers rather than limiting their imaginations.

 

Reference

Eisner, E.W. (1980). The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs Elliot W. Eisner New York: Macmillan, 1979. 293 pp, $15.95. Journal of Teacher Education, 31, 34 - 35.