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Reflection on the role that forms of representation play in the creation of mind has been all but neglected in framing curricular policy, Mr. Eisner notes. We need to remedy that.
In some ways it's an old idea. I'm talking about the idea that the forms we use to represent what we think literal language, visual images, number, poetry have an impact on how we think and what we can think about. If different forms of representation performed identical cognitive functions, then there would be no need to dance, cornpute, or draw. Why would we want to write poetry, history, fiction, drama, or factual accounts of what we have experienced? Yet this apparently obvious idea has not been a prominent consideration in setting curricular agendas in America's schools or in shaping education policy. The articles in this special section of the Kappan are intended to illustrate the ways in which forms of representation, or what are sometimes called "symbol systems," function in our mental lives and to explore their contributions to the development of mind.
Among the various aims we consider important in education, two are especially so. We would like our children to be well informed - that is, to understand ideas that are important, useful, beautiful, and powerful. And we also want them to have the appetite and ability to think analytically and critically, to be able to speculate and imagine, to see connections among ideas, and to be able to use what they know to enhance their own lives and to contribute to their culture.
ELLIOT W. EISNER is a professor of education and art at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
Neither of these two goals is likely to be achieved if schools are inattentive to the variety of ways that humans have represented what they have thought, felt, and imagined. Nor will these goals be achieved if we fail to appreciate culture's role in making these processes of representation possible. After all, human products owe their existence not only to the achievements of individual minds, but to the forms of representation available in the culture - forms that enable us to make our ideas and feelings public. Put another way, we can't have a musical idea without thinking and representing what we...