ABSTRACT
Given the concept of imagination that our very short history has led us towards, let us now turn to education and see why the development of this kind of imagination should be considered important. While everyone seems to be generally in favour of imagination, it is worth trying to spell out in some detail reasons why its development is educationally important. First, spelling out such reasons can help us design practices and environments that will more likely stimulate students’ imaginations. Second, spelling them out can uncover perhaps unexpected educational implications of our concept of imagination. Third, prevailing conceptions of imagination are very varied and, on the whole, vague, and they are also biased towards suggesting that imagination and reason are somehow discrete intellectual activities, so spelling out reasons why the concept articulated in the previous chapter is important to education may counter the influence of more restricted conceptions. Fourth, the prevailing rather diffuse support for developing imagination in education is largely restricted to the arts, with an anaemic support for novelty in some other curriculum areas, so spelling out reasons why the above concept is important to education should help to extend the sense of imagination's proper role in all areas of the curriculum. And, fifth, it must be said that the typical structures and practices of current schooling, as detailed in a wealth of reports, are designed according to principles and priorities which clearly do not consider any sense of imagination very important to education—at least, the word very rarely appears in such reports; spelling out reasons why the above concept is important to education might encourage even those with the most utilitarian view of the role of schools to take imagination more seriously.
