Although some educators view the arts as closer to the rim of education than to its core, Elliot Eisner argues that the arts are critically important means for developing complex and subtle aspects of the mind. He outlines "ten lessons" that illustrate how various forms of thinking are evoked, developed, and refined through the arts:

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships;

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer;

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives;

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed;

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know;

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects;

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material;

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said;

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source; and

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.