IMAGINATION
MONTH SEVEN
OBJECTIVE: TO DISCOVER WAYS TO STIR THE IMAGINATION OF CHILDREN
"Material facts are good enough for him. Until it comes to religion. And then, suddenly, the child who has been forbidden to believe in Jack the Giant Killer must believe in Goliath and David. There are no fairies, but you must believe that there are angels. The magic sword and the magic buckler are nonsense, but the child must not have any doubts about the breastplate of righteousness and the sword of the Spirit. What spiritual reaction do you expect when, after denying all the symbolic stories and legends, you suddenly confront your poor little Materialist with the Most Wonderful story in the world?"
--Edith Nesbit
WATCH
"We are warned . . . that it is time to avoid mechanical methods in schools. Otherwise the great result of education will be sacrificed. Already the finger of the wise is pointed to the place where modern popular elementary education seems to break down. It breaks down in the cultivation of the faculty which childhood is often said to possess in excess--Imagination.
"We cannot give Imagination to another, but we may arrest its development; and where it is ignored or suppressed, all intellectual life must quickly decline and perish. Now, as of old, wherever for one reason or another, there is no vision, the people perish."
(Taken from this month's Mother's Learning Library book.)
"It is impossible to reproduce history except through the imagination."
"Mothers who love your children, do not let them too soon to the study of history; let them dream while they are young."
--Edouard Laboulaye
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
--Neil Gaiman, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton
"The child who is made familiar with the old mythology by means of stories and verse, holds the key of understanding to the countless allusions of the world's best literature."
READ
Research/Articles:
C.S. Lewis on Fairy Tales by Joe Rigney
The Neuroscience Behind Stress and Learning by Judy Willis
Edward St. John
"There is a peculiar charm about the classic myths that gives them special teaching power."
A French Story-Teller
"We must lay up a stock of enthusiasm in our youth, or else we shall reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose a great many of them along the way."
Albert Einstein
"If you wish your child to be intelligent, read him fairy tales. If you wish him to be more intelligent, read him more fairy tales."
Sir Kenneth Robinson
"We have this extraordinary human power...the power of imagination. We take it totally for granted."