New in Print

ARTS EDUCATION

A case for the importance of arts education, written by a Stanford University scholar who is both a professor of education and a professor of art. He argues that the arts are "critically important for developing complex aspects of the mind," and disagrees with the notion that courses in the arts are "intellectually undemanding" or purely emotional endeavors. The book describes how both arts appreciation and the creative process itself develop ways of thinking. Many approaches to arts education are explored, as is assessment of performance in the arts. Mr. Eisner, a former president of the American Educational Research Association, also examines ideas of meaning, qualitative forms of intelligence, diversity, and representation.

An abstract painter relates the methods he created to teach art to students with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and spina bifida at New Jersey's Matheney School and Hospital. His quest, he says, was to teach students to use art "to transcend the limitations and betrayals of their bodies." And while his students' first paintings were accomplished by moving wheelchairs over paint and canvas covered with plastic, he developed new techniques, including lasers fitted to the student painters' foreheads, that transformed their endeavors. The art community's reaction to these student artists' works is also discussed. Despite early skepticism from professionals who saw them only as "disabled artists," the students managed to attain an artist's fondest dream: having their work displayed in a Manhattan...