A Case For "The Education Of The Imagination"
Check out this post from Dogberry, an English teacher: "Poetry, The Education Of The Imagination, And The American South".
He shares with us an essay by Billy Collins which he requires his students to read before he starts his poetry course, and he makes a strong argument for literature and why we take it up in school. In fact, it's a strong case to continue our reading even after school is done. An excerpt:
To study literature is to learn to imagine the life of the other....When we read a story written by someone different from us — someone from another time, place, or culture — we learn to accommodate that person's humanity in our own. We broaden our hearts to allow that person, no matter how different in outlook of perspective, a place in them. This, I think, is what Collins refers to as "intellectual openness" and "conceptual sympathy," and fostering these values and habits of mind and heart in students is an essential part of a liberal education. We're not in the business merely of preparing kids for jobs.
Dogberry relates this to the election data of the recently concluded U.S. Presidential elections. I heard a CNN reporter say on TV that taking the U.S. as a whole, race was not the major issue that some thought it would be (it was the economy). But in studying how demographics reflected voting trends in the American South, and disregarding the rest of the country, race was a stronger factor. Dogberry goes on:
These places are on the whole "less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas." We might say that, in the words of Billy Collins, the people in these places are lacking in "intellectual openness" and "intellectual sympathy." In simpler terms, these folks had a hard time accepting the idea that a black man would make a good president.
No surprise that racism goes hand in hand with religious bigotry, the arrogance that comes with the certainty that one is on God's side. It is the illusion of a startling clarity spawned by moral blindness.
Such blindness is what an education of the imagination seeks to combat. The report above reminds us how important the struggle is, and what hangs in the balance.
Click here to read his entire post.
He shares with us an essay by Billy Collins which he requires his students to read before he starts his poetry course, and he makes a strong argument for literature and why we take it up in school. In fact, it's a strong case to continue our reading even after school is done. An excerpt:
To study literature is to learn to imagine the life of the other....When we read a story written by someone different from us — someone from another time, place, or culture — we learn to accommodate that person's humanity in our own. We broaden our hearts to allow that person, no matter how different in outlook of perspective, a place in them. This, I think, is what Collins refers to as "intellectual openness" and "conceptual sympathy," and fostering these values and habits of mind and heart in students is an essential part of a liberal education. We're not in the business merely of preparing kids for jobs.
Dogberry relates this to the election data of the recently concluded U.S. Presidential elections. I heard a CNN reporter say on TV that taking the U.S. as a whole, race was not the major issue that some thought it would be (it was the economy). But in studying how demographics reflected voting trends in the American South, and disregarding the rest of the country, race was a stronger factor. Dogberry goes on:
These places are on the whole "less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas." We might say that, in the words of Billy Collins, the people in these places are lacking in "intellectual openness" and "intellectual sympathy." In simpler terms, these folks had a hard time accepting the idea that a black man would make a good president.
No surprise that racism goes hand in hand with religious bigotry, the arrogance that comes with the certainty that one is on God's side. It is the illusion of a startling clarity spawned by moral blindness.
Such blindness is what an education of the imagination seeks to combat. The report above reminds us how important the struggle is, and what hangs in the balance.
Click here to read his entire post.
posted by pgenrestories at 5:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home