Description
Book SynopsisNow in Paperback
This remarkable set of essays defines the role of imagination ingeneral education, arts education, aesthetics, literature, and thesocial and multicultural context.... The author argues for schoolsto be restructured as places where students reach out for meaningsand where the previously silenced or unheard may have a voice. Sheinvites readers to develop processes to enhance and cultivate theirown visions through the application of imagination and the arts.Releasing the Imagination should be required reading for alleducators, particularly those in teacher education, and for generaland academic readers.
--Choice
Maxine Greene, with her customary eloquence, makes an impassionedargument for using the arts as a tool for opening minds and forbreaking down the barriers to imagining the realities of worldsother than our own familiar cultures.... There is a strong rhythmto the thoughts, the arguments, and the entire sequence of essayspresented here.
Trade Review"This remarkable set of essays defines the role of imagination ingeneral education, arts education, aesthetics, literature, and thesocial and multicultural context.... The author argues for schoolsto be restructured as places where students reach out for meaningsand where the previously silenced or unheard may have a voice. Sheinvites readers to develop processes to enhance and cultivate theirown visions through the application of imagination and the arts.Should be required reading for all educators, particularly those inteacher education, and for general and academic readers."--Choice
"Maxine Greene, with her customary eloquence, makes here animpassioned argument for using the arts as a tool for opening mindsand for breaking down the barriers to imagining the realities ofworlds other than our own familiar cultures.... There is a strongrhythm to the thoughts, the arguments, and the entire sequence ofessays presented here." --American Journal of Education
"Releasing the Imagination gives us a vivid portrait of thepossibilities of human experience and education's role in itsrealization. It is a welcome corrective to current pressures foreducational conformity." --Elliot W. Eisner, professor of educationand art, Stanford University
"Releasing the Imagination challenges all the cant and clichelittering the field of education today. It breaks through theroutine, the frozen, the numbing, the unexamined; it shocks thereader into new awareness." --William Ayers, associate professor,College of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago
Table of ContentsIntroduction: A Quest for Meaning
Part One: Creating Possibilities
1. Seeking Contexts
2. Imagination, Breakthroughs, and the Unexpected
3. Imagination, Community, and the School
4. Consciousness and the Public Space
5. Social Vision and the Dance of Life
6. The Shapes of Childhood Recalled
Part Two: Imagination and Education
7. Blue Guitars and the Search for Curriculum
8. Writing to Learn
9. Teaching for Openings
10. Art and Imagination
11. Texts and Margins
Part Three: Community in the Making
12. The Passions of Pluralism
13. Standards, Common Learnings, and Diversity
14. Multiple Voices and Multiple Realities
