The imagination is a concept in educational thought that has proven time-tested
like few other educational ideas. What attracts so many educators to the
imagination continues to be its associations with individuality, creativity,
empathy, and social transformation. These associations are the direct legacy of
the Romantic revolution in aesthetics, philosophy, and religion. It is difficult, if
not impossible, to separate this Romantic legacy from current use of the
imagination in educational thought. There is, however, a deep tension in the
use of the imagination in education discourse — the imagination, for Romantic
poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Blake was strongly
positioned against pre-Romantic understandings of mind, morality, and poetry.
Thinkers seeking to bring the Romantic imagination into theories of
schooling have wrestled with these Romantic associations with varying degrees
of success. While many educators still believe that imagination is generally a
good thing and ought to be a focus of educational effort, the purpose of such
effort is no longer as clear as it was for the Romantics. Why should we educate
for imagination? How should children "use" their imaginations and for what
ends? These are questions that are often addressed in passing in educational
discourse or assumed to need no answer at all. What needs to be
reconstructed, I believe, is a sense of what is at stake in the education of what
we have called the "imagination".
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6773 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Frein, Mark |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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