This is me (left), my mother and older brother, Bryan, in Trafalgar square about 1944, during the second world war. My father was a bus driver all his life and we lived in Council housing in Chelmsford, Essex, when I was growing up.
Coming from a lower class family, going to Oxford was both exciting and culturally mystifying/challenging to me. I studied English literature and thought of myself as a poet. T.S. Eliot was, and still is, one of my favorite poets, though at the time he was too recent to study him formally. I have no pictures from this time period but this is my college, Brasenose. My room was in the corner straight ahead on the second floor.
After college, I did my required army service for 2 years. I was stationed in Germany, (British Army of the Rhine). I was in the Royal Artillery and have had to wear hearing aids since then.
After graduating from Oxford, I took a year’s program at the University of London to become a teacher and then taught for 4 years at Devonport High School for Boys in Plymouth, England, another culturally mystifying experience.
My wife (Ann) and two young children (Beth and David) arrived in Illinois in 1956 for us both to start doctoral programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This was our graduate student mode of transportation and Beth is riding with me.
Ann studied in the Department of English literature and wrote her dissertation on William Carlos Williams. I went to the department of what was then called the History and Philosophy of Education in the College of Education. It was still oriented to the progressive movement and pragmatism, especially of Dewey and that influence has remained in my subsequent work. However, my advisor was Harry Broudy, a powerful figure nationally, who was in reaction to progressivism. I was drawn to him because he was the only professor interested in the role of art in education. He was my dissertation advisor and my dissertation was on the thought and influence of Herbert Read. See HERE for my article on Herbert’ Read’s thought.
Broudy was also influential with the Getty’ foundation’s project, later named Disciple Based Art Education, and he drew me into that. See HERE for (several). It turns out that much of my subsequent work was strongly critical of Broudy’s work.
In 1967, on graduating we moved to Salt Lake City and the University of Utah, where we both took a position as assistant professors. Ann taught in the English Department and initiated the first classes on women’s writing. I taught in the Department of Cultural Foundations of Education, with a joint appointment in philosophy. Salt Lake was a beautiful place with the Wasatch mountains near by for cross-country skiing and southern Utah had beautiful places to hike and camp.
During our time in Salt Lake City, we spent chunks of time in Mexico on beaches and in 1980-81 I took a year’s sabbatical in Cuernavaca, living with the Mexican family, going to Spanish language/culture classes, and writing my first book.
When Marilyn and I moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1988, we bought an old Victorian house near campus and started fixing it up. Eighteen years later when we sold it to move to Illinois, it still was not quite finished.
In 2006 I moved Urbana, Illinois (close to campus of the University). Marilyn had taken a position here in 2005. For the first few years there I was associated with the Art Education department doing some teaching and work with students. I hadn’t officially retired and I hold the position of Research Professor, but I do less and less with the department. Marilyn and I are happily retired and enjoy the garden, books, house projects, and life is great.
We have family reunions with our children and their families every couple years. In 2019 we went to Breckenridge, Colorado and all but one of the children and their families were there. Here we are getting ready to go canoeing, which was great even though it was pouring rain by the time we got back to the dock.
Obituary — 1935 – 2025
Michael John Parsons passed away peacefully from natural causes on April 12, 2025, surrounded by his family. He is fondly remembered as a loving husband, brother, father and grandfather, as well as an impactful professor and intellectual. His passion for philosophy, art, and education shone throughout his life and career. He also enjoyed many interests and hobbies including poetry, gardening, carpentry, tennis, learning languages, and travelling.
Born in 1935 in Braintree, England, and raised in a working-class neighborhood of Chelmsford, just east of London, Mike lived through the bombing raids of WWII as a child. He later enjoyed swimming and soccer, catching rabbits, picking fruit, and Boy Scouts. He attended Oxford University for his BA in English literature and after teaching for a few years, he had a serendipitous conversation about education in a pub with a US professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This initiated a subsequent move to the US with his first wife, Ann, and two young children Beth and David. There he completed an MA and PhD in Education Foundations at Illinois.
After graduation he taught in the Educational Foundations and Philosophy departments at the University of Utah for 20 years, was the Associate Dean for 8 years and met his second wife of 45 years, Marilyn. While there, he wrote one of his most influential works: How we Understand Art: A Cognitive Developmental Account of Aesthetic Experience. He was Department Chair and professor in the Ohio State Art Education Department for 19 years, and then after retiring, was a part time Research Professor in the Art Education Department of University of Illinois. He had one-year or summer teaching appointments at Penn State, UBC, University of Minnesota, NE London Polytechnic, Hong Kong Institute of Education, and Chang Hua University (Taiwan). He and Marilyn moved to Colorado in 2022 to be nearer to their children. He is greatly loved and missed by Marilyn and their blended family of 4 children: Beth, David, Jana, and Chad; 6 grandchildren: Tashi, Danny, Luco, Felix, Lucas, and Gabriel; and 4 great-grandchildren: Sachi, Halo, Emma, and Oscar Michael.
Michael John Parsons' Academic Webpage 