Art and Imagination: Reclaiming the Sense of Possibility.

摘要: Classroom encounters with the arts can move young to imagine, extend, and renew, Ms. Greene reminds us. If significance of for growth, inventiveness, problem solving is recognized at last, a desperate stasis may be overcome. THE EXISTENTIAL contexts education reach far beyond what conceived in Goals 2000. They have do human condition these often desolate days, some ways they make notions world-class achievement, benchmarks, rest seem superficial limited, if not absurd. extend appalling actualities family breakdown, homelessness, violence, "savage inequalities" described by Jonathan Kozol, although social injustice has an existential dimension. Like their elders, children persons inhabit world fearful moral uncertainty -- which it appears that almost nothing done reduce suffering, contain massacres, protect rights. The faces refugee search mothers, teenage girls repeatedly raped soldiers, rootless people staring charred remains churches libraries strike us as little more than "virtual reality." Those who persist looking feel numbed and, reminded over helplessness, are persuaded look away. It been said Pablo Picasso's paintings "weeping women" become icons our time.(1) replaced statues men on horseback battle; overshadow emblems once seemed worth fighting for, perhaps dying for. When even confront images loss death, most bound today, "it important everything we love summed up into something unforgettably beautiful."(2) This suggests one roles arts. To see sketch after women holding dead babies, Picasso forced do, aware tragic deficiency fabric life. know enough those objects experience, encounter them against background lives, likely strain toward conceptions better order things, there will no wars weep like that, bombs murder innocent children. We likely, rebelling such horror, summon smiling mothers lovely children, metaphors ought be. Clearly, this only role arts, frequently want restore kind order, repair, heal. Participatory involvement many forms art does enable us, very least, hear normally unheard frequencies, conscious daily routines, habits, conventions obscured. might think Pecola Breed-love Bluest Eye made realize about meta-narrative implicit Dick Jane basal readers or cultural artifact called Shirley Temple, so invisible yearn desperately blue eyes.(3) recall revelations discovered through Schindler's List. try retrieve physical consciousness unutterable grief aroused Martha Graham's dance "Lamentation," feet hands visible outside draped agony expressed stress lines cloth. more, more. By experiences lurched out familiar taken-for-granted, but also discover new avenues action. experience sudden sense possibilities thus beginnings. prevailing cynicism regard values feelings resignation breeds cannot help create atmosphere schools odds unpredictability associated art. neglect identified goals 2000 was consistent focus manageable, predictable, measurable. …