ABSTRACT
Archaic texts tell us that inspiration has a supernatural source, like a muse or the Holy Ghost. But even if so, material evidence suggests that imaginative practices—like poetry—are learned and are stimulated by other people. The assumption that learning and teaching are largely responsible for inspiration pervades educational institutions. Universities boast that their programs, and academics are inspired and animated, filled with enthusiasm, encouragement and passion. These positive terms have strangely spiritual origins that belong to neither educational research nor practice. They resist scrutiny, remaining metaphysical, rooted in ancient vocabularies concerning the soul and expanded into widespread secular usage only in the industrial period. They have little to do with syllabus design or technology and lie outside all contemporary reforms of learning and teaching that have unwittingly drawn education toward managerial practice. The language that we want to use—for the purposes of planning better education—and the language that we use despite these designs are at variance with one another. This introduction reveals how the inspirational metaphors that matter in teaching are connected to unconscious processes of special relevance to autonomous learning and creativity.
