Releasing the Imagination by Maxine Greene

In July the Reading Network discussion was opened by our long-standing member Eddie Playfair. Eddie suggested the following questions for consideration:

1.         If imagination is a gateway through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into our consciousness, how can we teach for imagination, including social imagination?

2.         Maxine Greene makes the case for starting from personal experience and moving from the particular to the general, rather than relying on abstractions. How should we teach about broad values such as equality, democracy and social justice?

3.         Maxine Greene doesn’t support a static cultural canon to be taught to everyone but does draw on ‘great writers / artists / thinkers’ who have influenced her. How should we set about designing an arts curriculum which promotes ‘informed engagement’.

Eddie also shared the following quote: 

Bill Ayers recalls: "Like an intimate conversation with an old friend that is picked up, carried on and then interrupted to be continued in the future, Maxine Greene's lecture was filled with spontaneity, intimacy, incompleteness and forward motion.. because she harvested her teaching from her own lived experience, it always had an improvisational feel to it... fresh and vital and inventive, yes, but also firmly rooted in the coherent ground of core beliefs and large purposes."