To quote Henderson once again: "In most of our current education, instead
of cultivating so valuable a quality, we have stupidly done all that we
can to suppress it. We have not sufficiently studied the actual boy before
us to find out what he is up to, and what end he has in mind. On the
contrary, we proclaim, with curious indifference, some end of our own
devising, and with what really amounts to spiritual brutality, we try to
drive him towards it. We do this, we irresponsible parents and teachers,
because we ourselves lack imagination, and do not see that we are
blunting, instead of sharpening, our human tool. Yet we define education
in terms of imagination when we say that education is the unfolding and
perfecting of the human spirit; or, that education is a setting-up in the
heart of the child of a moral and aesthetic revelation of the universe; for
the human spirit which we are trying to establish is not a fact, but a
gracious possibility of the future."
Happy is the child whose teacher possesses imagination; who can touch the
common things of life with the magic wand of her fancy and invest them
with supreme charm; who can peer into the future with her pupils and help
them translate the bright dreams of today into triumphs in the realms of
art, music, science, philosophy, language, and philanthropy; and who
builds air-castles of her own and thus has the skill to help the children
build theirs.
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