By Elliot Eisner

1. 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.

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

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

4. 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.

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

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

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

8. 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.

9. 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.

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

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Some Points of Interest related to Illuminated Manuscripts. 

1.   Genealogy (Family Trees). Why is it important?

2.   Types of Records to keep or research to find data about ancestors.

3.   What’s an archive?

4.   Family Histories and their importance.

Illuminated Manuscripts

 

The beauty of Spanish manuscript coats of arms—popularly and often imprecisely called "cartas ejecutorias de hidalguía"—has led to their being the most popular type of Spanish illuminated manuscript across a wide swath of the book and art collecting public. Because they are an art form, the method of execution changes little over time but the style does. Those of the16th century have elaborate Renaissance borders on the first text leaf, usually have a "heroic" scene depicting an ancestor in battle, rarely have any historiated initials, and have their texts simply accomplished in a gothic hand. Such cartas are what are usually on display in libraries, museums, and book and manuscript dealers' shops.

Spanish calligraphers, illuminators, and miniaturists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries created heraldic manuscripts at various levels of quality and at varying costs to those commissioning them, together with a genealogy and explanations of the various ancestor families' coats of arms and of their own. An unusual inclusion in some manuscripts is a large folding genealogical tree at the end—handsomely done in multiple colors in imitation of a real tree.

Mexico inherited, beginning in the 16th century, the continental love for gold on vellum, for elaborately painted and gold-burnished manuscripts.  Each conquistador sought from the King recognition of doughty deeds via land and other grants, including a patent of nobility, the latter artfully calligraphed, adorned with paintings, and eye-dazzlingly highlighted in 24k gold.  For its part, the Church benefited from the newly created wealth via substantial bequests and donations, some of which resulted in the famously beautiful choir books of the city’s cathedral. All of these seekers of handsome illuminated manuscripts had available European- and locally-trained artists and artisans: By 1557 there was actually a formal organization for painters in Mexico ( Ordenanzas de pintores y doradores), which provided for the establishment of workshops with apprentices.

 

Art Activities for teaching
Mexican Calendar Paintngs
This is a very special kind of art because these oil on canvas originals were used for printing thousands of actual calendar pages.
Suggested Teaching Questions:
1. What can you learn about Mexico through this painting?
2. What symbols can you find in the painting?
3. If you changed anything from the scene would it still be a Mexican Calendar Painting?

Suggested follow up activities:
1. Research how this paintings were printed.
2. Have children create their own calendar paintings based on their own customs
3. Research about famous calendar painting artists (how are they different? how are they similar)

What is creARTive teach?

I’ve asked myself very often what happens to a teacher when he or she enters the classroom. Why is teaching such a passion?
I am sure I love teaching because I love learning. Stimulating the minds of children and helping them learn is a challenging task that constantly requires new ideas and a fresh outlook. We teachers need to be lifelong seekers of information, inspiration, and tools to become fulfilled, effective, growing professionals for our kids.
Teachers mold the future each day in class, we must positively impact a child’s outcome, and that is a big responsibility to hold in one’s hands.
I would definitely say that “Creativity” is the key. To be creative means to see things from a different perspective, to find alternatives, possibilities, to be able to stimulate others and ourselves. It is also the uniqueness of our ideas and the way we communicate them to students. Creative teachers experience the world in novel and original ways and our task is to transmit this to our students so that they can find a way to discover new fresh perceptions, and make important discoveries of their own. We have to provide fun and constructive experiences that stimulate and encourage their natural creativity.

Art and Education

Art as a form of expression is a vehicle of communication, of outreach, indicative of the common plight of humanity to be part of community. Each story communicated by each of the arts combines to create a more complete, more complex, more fully and unconsciously honest picture.
It is never too early to get children excited about the world of art, for teaching those to have an appreciation for the arts at an early age will help them to stay in tune with their creative side throughout their entire lives. Children learn how to dig into their creative side to create something without judging the outcome before it happens. They learn coordination and motor skills, making their hands reproduce either what their eyes see or their mind envisions.
Art teaches children the important skills of analysis, which will come into play for the rest of their lives. Art teaches them history and culture. Art can bring all those skills that represent important cognitive skills for success in one’s entire life.