Eisner was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 10, 1933, to a family of
Russian Jewish immigrants. His father, Louis Eisner (originally Leibl Iznuk), was born in the
shtetl of
Pavoloch in the
Russian Empire (now
Ukraine), and immigrated to America in 1909. He was an Oxen harness maker and a leatherworker, as well as a member of the
International Fur & Leather Workers Union. His union experiences, and later work at Chicago's Platt Luggage Factory, instilled in him
Socialist leanings. Louis Eisner's union activity provided him an opportunity to meet
Eugene Debs at a Socialist convention for his campaign for the
Election of 1920. His mother, Eva Perzov (originally Chava Perzovsky), was a
stenographer from the town of
Chechersk (in present-day
Belarus). Elliot Eisner received his M.A (1958) and
Ph.D. (1962) in education from the
University of Chicago, where he studied with Joseph Schwab,
Bruno Bettelheim, Benjamin Bloom and Phillip Jackson. He was appointed Associate Professor of Education and Art at Stanford University in 1965. His work has supported
Discipline-Based Art Education, and he developed the importance of forms of representation in education. Eisner started making his case for the arts in scholarly publications during the 1960s. He recognized that the lack of the arts and the prominence of standards and standardized tests had resulted in a lack of appreciation for creative thinking in the classroom. Rote memory, and the single way to a final answer, ruled. Eisner’s vision of the public school was one where standards might exist, but instead of dominating the curriculum they worked side by side with artistic approaches to developing curriculum and assessing students’ performance. In an article titled “Curriculum Ideas in a Time of Crisis,” Eisner (1965) makes a call to action concerning the arts: "Perhaps we can now identify the crisis in art education. I believe it is a crisis of making the most of a period of opportunity. I believe this to be a period of unlimited promise for the field of art education. Our crisis is now, the students are ready, the parents are ready, the country is ready-will we be ready?." Art education at this time in history, he argued, was in crisis not only because of a lack of art in schools, but because the way the arts were taught was focused primarily on expansiveness of student’s work with media rather than understanding a given media in depth. Eisner not only proceeded to make a call for a greater presence of the arts in schools, he also made the case for developing a deeper understanding of art. He wrote, “I would like to propose that the art education curriculum be built along three major lines of focus. These three foci are the productive aspects of art, the critical aspects, and the historical aspects”. This is an important factor in Eisner’s thinking because while he endeavored to bring Art Education to the front lines of the discussion he also made the argument that responsibility for the education of art and creativity belongs to all. There is an art in all subject matter from math to English to science, and teachers should not leave it up to the art teachers only to engage students in creative modes of expression. Eisner (1965) furthered his argument in another piece from the same time frame. He wrote: “Once considered an elusive, almost mystical gift to a special few, creativity is now being seen as a capacity common to all - one that should be effectively developed by the school”. ==References==