'The Pleasure and Meaning of Making' by Ellen Dissanayake

It was really interesting to read this article and how it is centered around art as being inherent to human life. What Dissanayake calls “inherent pleasure in making” (Dissanayake, 1995, p. 40). I liked the opposition she drew between the fact that art and artfully making things was such a big part of traditional societies and how these days, we are losing sight of that. “[I]n earlier or simpler societies the arts are inextricably involved in everyday life, embodying the norms of the group, articulating its deepest values” (Dissanayake, 1995, p. 41).

I also really liked how Dissanayake (1995) distinguished the fact that for humans, it’s not enough just to make, but that we have an inherent desire or even need to make things in an artful way. “[H]umans are inherently artistic animals ... art (or ‘the arts’) is (or are) normal, natural and necessary. In other words, in our species, it has not been enough simply to make things, but to make them art-fully” (p. 42). So our nature doesn’t just include making things, but making them artfully is really what we’re drawn to.

That “inherent pleasure in making” is something I think students experience with art. It’s what I have felt in class when I complete a piece, especially when we were working with clay. It felt really gratifying to work with the materials and ultimately to create something artfully that came out just the way I wanted it to. In my teaching practice, I want to strive to be the kind of teacher that provides her students with the same kind of experiences so that they too can feel the joie de faire that Dissanayake discusses in her piece.

'The Role of Art and Play in Children's Cognitive Development' by Elliot W. Eisner

Play and art are so important to children’s development and to their exploration of themselves and their experiences — it’s a shame that in a lot of schools, those two aspects of childhood are discouraged rather than worked into the everyday curriculum in higher grade levels. “Both art and play, like imagination and fantasy, are not regarded as a part of the serious business of schooling” (Eisner, 1990, p. 43). However, art and play are integral to the serious business of schooling for most children. 

The acts of play and the creation of art are “children’s primary means of engaging the world” and provide children with ways in “which they can explore the ‘world-as-it-is’ or the world they imagine” (Eisner, 1990, p. 45). If these two aspects of childhood development are not fostered in the classroom, then we are depriving our students of crucial ways to access knowledge and experience the world around them.

Both play and visual arts “perform different functions for children at different stages of their development” (Eisner, 1990, p. 48), and it is our duty as teachers to recognize the stages of development our students are in and provide them with play- and art-based opportunities to fully grow and experience their surroundings and learnings.