Eisner Article Response

This article touches on this idea of “reward junkies”. I found this idea interesting as schools often use rewards such as grades, bonus marks, extra playtime during lunch and recess to motivate students into doing school work. Although this may work, there is the possibility that without rewards students wouldn’t have the desire to finish their tasks. Also over time, the rewards may lose their powers as they may not provide enough motivation. I think that the use of extrinsic motivation in the classroom isn’t the best way to engage students in learning. I would prefer to have students learn with the use of intrinsic motivations. This is when students want to learn about the subject or content because they are truly interested and curious about it. This can be difficult to foster in a class as students won’t be interested in everything a teacher has to teach. One way to accomplish this is to foster students' curiosity, provide them time for questions, and allowing them to follow through on those inquiries. Another point the article makes is the biases schools form towards Art subjects. It’s remarkable how schools have made the subject, Art, seem like a break from doing “actual work”. I think it’s crucial to have Arts in the curriculum as it allows the expression of individuality, creativity, and innovation. Arts education shouldn’t be pushed aside but rather used to build on skills that can’t be gained in courses such as Math, English, Science and Social Studies. This stigma can translate into students beyond high school. For example, students may feel as if they can’t pursue an Arts degree as it won’t provide job prospects and they may settle for something they’re not interested in. I think it’s important to have students realize that they should pursue and focus on their interests. 

A curriculum is a tool and outline used by teachers to teach students content. It involves two processes which are described as intellectual processes and content in this article. The intellectual process involves the development of cognitive development such as working on behaviors, attitudes, and emotions. Whereas, the content is the explicit knowledge that is taught to students and the information they are expected to know. Eisner also discusses the importance of what schools don’t teach. There are some aspects where students learn things just due to the organization and structure of schools. For example, the use of having required versus elective courses and the hidden messages this portrays. It can represent this ideology that taking a Math course is more important or superior than taking an Arts course. The B.C. curriculum has a few big ideas for each subject. It is then broken down into two streams which are the curricular competencies and the content. This is similar to Eisner’s thoughts about the curriculum. Eisner emphasized the need for schools to provide students the opportunity to imagine, invent and innovate. Through the B.C. curriculum, this is possible because the core competencies focus on inquiry where skills such as reasoning, analyzing, interpreting, communicating, and collaborating are given importance.