Why we need a new kind of education: Imagination Studies | Aeon Essays

a more active social imagination also depends on being playful and indirect, opening up our minds in order to think in novel ways, and tuning down our linear, logical skills: escaping, in other words, from the captivity of daily life.

But imaginative learning can co-exist with more classical learning.39 Where it takes us is to exercises or games that are more open, speculative and ambiguous. This is where we learn through questions as much as answers, and where the pleasure and satisfaction come from creating something new and uncertain, rather than alighting on the proven corre

Mathematics is the science of imagination. Between those who allow themselves to imagine, observe, and manipulate mathematical objects and those who don’t, there’s an enormous divide. Over the years, this divide becomes monstrous, obscene, almost as monstrous and obscene as the divide between children with a room full of toys and games, and those w

crystallizing imagination is essential if we are to share the practical uses of our knowledge with others.

For them, imagination is a conservative and conserving force. But in any modern society, this collective unconscious, or imagination, is more fluid and open, with a stock of codes and symbols that can challenge orthodoxies. Beneath the surface of news, commentaries and political discussions lie these deeper shared ideas, ideals and pictures—some es