Educating the Imagination
by Scott-Noppe Brandon
During my
vacation this past summer I read the final report of The
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon The United
States, or as it is generally known, the 9/11 Commission
Report. I felt compelled to read it for several reasons besides
the obvious reasons of a concerned citizen. As a parent of
two young children who attend public school in NYC, I need
to believe that I am doing all I can to help keep them safe.
In that same spirit, as an educator in this day and age,
I need to better understand how the world has changed since
that tragic date, so that I might better perform my
duties in my daily partnership with teachers, students, and
their families. Another reason I read the report was because
I had heard Commission Chair, Governor Thomas H. Kean, mention
in an interview how imagination relates to the report. The
9/11 Report speaks of a failure of imagination in U.S. national
security. It states that, “Imagination is not a gift
usually associated with bureaucracies,” and that, “It
is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing,
the exercise of imagination.”
Momentous words that I will not forget. By recognizing the importance of, and the need for, imagination in the sphere of national security, the 9/11 Commission has hopefully
started an important new discussion about the role of imagination
within pre-K through grade twelve education. It may have
started the discussion unintentionally, but it is now on
the table. For how else can imagination become “routinized” than
by being first encouraged at the source? I am from the
school of thought that teaches that the curriculum and
pedagogy of schools, far from being purely academic matters, should
relate to the living questions
and issues of the everyday world we inhabit—past, present,
and future—the world of children and the world of
adults. The questions we ask, the problems we pose within
education, should be the kind of questions asked by professionals
in their particular fields, adapted to the age level of
the students.
Maxine Greene,
Lincoln Center Institute’s
Philosopher-in-Residence, speaks of an imagination that discloses
possibilities—personal and social as well as of aesthetic
imagining—through which we are enabled to look at things,
to think about things as if they could be otherwise. Is this
not what the Commission’s statement implies? That we,
as a nation and, by extension, as the human race, for our wellbeing
and prosperity, must be able to think, question, and understand
in ways different and new.
The
question is, how do we educate students about the imagination
so that it can become part of our everyday existence, become “routinized,” even “bureaucratized” in
our various forms of government, in industry, in everyday life?
In order to do so, we need to better understand the relationship
and the dynamic tension between what we think of as factual
information and knowledge and those elements of life which
ask us to engage in imaginative thinking and understanding.
All too often, one is considered useful, the other playful
at best. To make sense of this, we must teach students not
to be confused by the “space” that exists between
these different ways
of knowing and perceiving; in fact, we must acknowledge this
tension and embrace it. I do not pose this as a radical thought.
I intend only to underline the obvious. For me, and I imagine for most of us,
bridging that gap is part and parcel of the development of
all of us as thinking and feeling, informed and intuitive beings.
Schools have an important role to play toward making this discussion
a vital and necessary part of the curriculum. Whether we think
of imagination as a noun or a verb, it should be part of our
aesthetic, moral, and political discussions and part of the
everyday lives of all students.#
Scott
Noppe–Brandon
is the Executive Director of the Lincoln Center Institute.
