Imagination Art a way of knowing MARY WARNOCK Imagination is a "good" word, and we all know we have to be interested in it,

in this line of business; but it has a history of not having been greatly admired. It's known to be fitful and irrational. The word has tended to be used by people like the philosopher Hume as an equivalent to the word "fan y", and fan y is notoriously frivolous and not to be relied upon. !o one needs to think where and in what onte"t one really wants imagination to flourish. Think of someone you would des ribe as an imaginative hild and you have a hild who, I think, plays happily by himself, but who also plays with other hildren, inventing things and leading them to invent things# essentially pretending things and, oming perhaps nearer to our immediate on ern, a child who is

capable of using ordinary experiences as standing for or representing something other than themsel es. $nd I think the imaginative hild in all
these different ways is not at all unlike the imaginative grown%up. So I want to raise two rather separate questions. The first is why we tend to value this quality of being imaginative, whether in hildren or in grown%ups. Why do we value imagination so highly? And then, if we can go some way towards answering that, the second question is, How do we 73 7 !, Warnoc" cultivate imagination in children? #articularly, children at srhnni &hy do we value imagination so highly at all' To try to answer this question, I shall need to go ba k in a rather abstra t way to onsider the nature of imagination (and here I borrow very e"tensively from !artre!" #t

seems to me that the crucial aspect of imagination is that it is a concentration on what is not the ease" $nd this immediately
links up with one of the obvious uses of the word in ordinary language. )or e"ample, if we talk about something not being true, we may say it is "*ust his imagination", and here we are ontrasting the presumption that what's before your very eyes an be des ribed truly, whereas if you think you are ill when you are not, or if you think there are fairies at the bottom of the garden and there are not, then this is all imagination. !o it's embedded in ordinary language that the imagination is

on erned with what is not. +ut if you take that thought a little bit further it seems very obvious that one of the ru ial human abilities is to be able to think of things in their absen e; that is to say, when they are not a tually in front of you. $nd if you think parti ularly about the phenomenon of language, it will be ome obvious that this is what language is for. ,anguage is not for beating the table and saying 'This is a table'; it is for saying '-ould you possibly take this table out into the ne"t room'' or 'In ."ford the i e is still on the road'. That is to say it is for referring, in a way whi h others will understand, to things that are not a tually in front of their eyes. Imagination /0 1ow this is all very obvious, but philosophy is always on erned with the obvious. &e know that all animals, in luding humans, remember things. &e know that, for e"ample, you an train o topuses to avoid ertain stimuli whi h they don't like. If you keep an o topus with this in mind you an train it in a fairly elaborate way to avoid ertain things and go for other things, and this is a sign that the o topus is apable of remembering. $nd quite obviously high grade animals like horses remember very learly. +ut, as far as we an see, they need to be restimulated with something that sparks off the remembered o urren e. 2ou give a horse a bad e"perien e trying to get it into a horse bo", and the ne"t time he has to go into a horse bo", there's trouble. He is reminded of what happened the time before. $ remembering horse goes down the road peering into the hedgerows and refuses to go past ertain pla es where horrible things have happened to him, like animals *umping out or something of the kind. +ut as far as we know he doesn't have these fears and re olle tions e" ept in the presen e of something that re alls the original stimulus. The differen e % though here we are moving on to very diffi ult territory %between us and the horse or the o topus is that we an voluntarily rea tivate our

!oving from memory to imagination is moving $y way of this a$ility we have for thin"ing of things that are not present to us% &e
thoughts about absent things. an ause ourselves agonies of fear, remorse, regret, e" itement, pleasure, by thinking of something without a present stimulus but merely imaginatively re onstru ting, or reorganising our thoughts in this dire tion.

/3 4. &arno k Talking about imagination in onne tion with memory of ourse onfines imagination, so far, to the past. +ut, equally important, and possibly more important, is our ability to think about the future, and think not only of how things are now, when the snow is on the ground, but how they will be ne"t spring, how they may be ne"t summer, if we de ide we have got enough money to go on holiday, and so on. &e think of possibilities as well as a tualities; and this is the role of the

imagination" #t is to thin$ of things% not as they are% but as they might concei ably% or nearly inconcei ably% be. So the relevance
of our human a$ility to envisage what is not the case is at the centre of what we mean $y imagination% It is also the entre of language; be ause if we ouldn't use general terms, we ouldn't ommuni ate to one another about that whi h is not the ase, or that whi h is not before our very eyes. $nd if I have the ability not merely to designate this as table, in the same way as I might designate any member of my audien e as Tom, 5i k or Harry, but if I an also think of it as a table, a member of the lass 'table', then immediately I am able to ask you to go and fet h the table from ne"t door, or imagine a table I would design if I ould do su h things whi h would have all the hara teristi s that I want (for e"ample, for writing % a table to write at6. !o I might say that the use of general terms is the way in whi h the imagination is every day, in a quite humdrum way, at work. In that way we an speak about not only that whi h is in front of us (e.g. a tree that I now an see out of the window6 but trees in general. !o I want to emphasise the way in whi h imagination is embedded into our normal and spon% Imagination taneous use of language. $nd any dolphins, that genuinely ommuni about that whi h is not present, in this sense to be possessed of &e annot, however, know whether // animals, let's say ate with ea h other ould, I think, be said imagination. for them, imagination is

the sour e, as it is for us, of all pleasures.

&his

is the point at which the concept of imagination emerges as the central concept for education. 1ot only is it embedded
in our use of language, but it is also embedded in our use of any other symboli materials that we may deploy. $nd this is onne ted with pleasure % a point to whi h 7 shall return. There are two onsequen es of saying that imagination is on erned with that whi h is not the ase# The first onsequen e is that imagination is the sour e of freedom. .ur ability to imagine is a ne essary ondition of our freedom; for if we ould not think of a future that was on eivably unlike the present, or the past, we ould in no way hange the present in a deliberate fashion. +ut we an. &e are free to plan. $nd even if things frustrate our plans nevertheless we an ontinue to on eive of a world that is different from the present one and work towards bringing it into e"isten e. !uppose if I wake up in the night and think, '4y feet are old', I immediately think, '&hat an I do about it'' !o I *ump up and wrap my feet in a s arf and put my over oat on my bed. I don't have *ust to lie there thinking that my feet are old. I know that there is something to be done. 4. &arno k To be able to envisage that whi h would improve the present situation, even at this very lowly level, is a onsequen e of our being able to envisage a future different from the present. 1ow if you move from the sphere of having old feet in the night to the sphere of thinking about the present ele toral system in 8reat +ritain, for instan e, you an see that it requires this fa ulty of seeing that things might "he others%wise to set about a whole train of possibilities resulting, let us say, in proportional representation being established. That's *ust one rather omple" so ial e"ample of the use of imagination with regard to the future. #magination is our freedom" The notion that imagination is seeing things whi h are not the ase also has a se ond onsequen e. &hen you see, or hear, or e"perien e any one thing, at one time, being an imaginative reature, you are apable of seeing more in that e"perien e than meets your immediate senses. $nd the imaginative hild, to go ba k, is the hild who an see the potential of the table in the sitting room as

a hiding pla e, as a pla e from whi h to shoot his enemies, in whi h to hide from the winter storms, in whi h to go to sea. 1ow it is this ability to see more in the immediate that is, I believe, our deepest sour e of 'pleasure in the world. $nd this is one of the reasons why we need to edu ate hildren to be imaginative. )or the aim of edu ation is pleasure. Imagination /9 This is something that I don't suppose you, that is this parti ular audien e, find parti ularly hard to a ept; for I suspe t that people who are engaged in the reative arts would find the notion that edu ation should be dire ted towards pleasure quite easy to grasp. +ut if you are talking to a olle tion of people who are not parti ularly interested in the reative arts, but are interested in edu ation, it is often very diffi ult to get them to a ept the idea that there is a onne tion between the aims of edu ation and an in rease in potential pleasures. I find this diffi ult to argue, be ause to me the onne tion seems so obvious as to be hardly worth stating. If a hild, having finished his s hool edu ation, emerges from s hool with in reased sour es for potential pleasure, then it seems to me that his edu ation has been a su ess. If he doesn't, if he has no sour es of pleasure that he wouldn't have had without going to s hool at all, then his edu ation has been a failure. +ut I an add one thing by way of elu idation of this obvious truth. .ne of the ma*or pleasures we have in the world is the pleasure of power. $nd by the pleasure of power, I don't mean only power over other people (though it is perfe tly lear that many of us en*oy this kind of power6. +ut we all of us also en*oy the power that omes from organi:ing our own environment to make it intelligible, and to make it manageable. ,et us refer to this pleasure as the pleasure of ompeten e. This will embra e our ability to think of things in their absen e, whi h we have seen to be entral to the e"er ise of imagination. )or without that ability, we ould not predi t, or form general rules, or think over the past in order to de ide ;< 4. &arno k upon our future ourse of a tion. =qually we ould not indulge in the pleasures, less pra ti al it is true, of memory or anti ipation. -ompeten e may also be taken to

in lude the use of one ob*e t to stand for another, the su essful use,' that is, of signs. $nd from signs we may move to symbols, in the use of whi h we may take enormous pleasure. In all these ways our power of organi:ation is shown. I suggest that this organi:ational power is one of the great pleasures whi h ount as the pleasures of imagination. &hat we have, then, is a pi ture of the imagination in virtue of whi h we an see more in what is before our eyes than meets the imned>at? eye. &e an pretend. &e an think ahead. &e an envisage. &e an daydream. &e an build astle, real or preten e. &e an treat one thing as symboli of another and use the symbol to illuminate and in rease as well as to e"press our insight. In all these ways, we an in rease our power over the environment, our sense of being able to ontrol it, to use it, to do what we want, to understand our position in it and e"plain that understanding to others. This is one of the deepest pleasures towards whi h edu ation is dire ted. =du ation should give us freedom, whi h is the same as this power, and derives from the same, imaginative, sour e. I shall *ust quote one well known pie e from a 5onne sermon# ".ur reatures are our thoughts. -reatures that are born giants, that rea h from east to west, from earth to heaven, that do not only pres ribe the sea and land but span the sun and firmament all at on e. 4y thoughts rea h all, omprehend all ine"pli able mysteries. I, their Imagination ;7 reator, am in a lose prison, a si k bed, anywhere, and any one of my reatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun, in one ase, one step, everywhere". .ne of the reasons 5onne wants to ultivate this overrunning imagination in hildren is that they are then free, whatever their situation may be, free to plan to hange it. +ut free also even if they an't hange it. =ven on their si k bed rippled by their disabilities they have what pleasure is available to them. This is why I find it depressing when people talking about edu ation spend too mu h time talking about how to hange s hool, how to make things ni er for hildren in s hool. In a way it is our responsibility to edu ate hildren even if s hool is ill. I don't suppose s hool ever ould be hanged into a pla e whi h all hildren are going to love all the time.

'ut at least give them in school that which they are entitled to, which is to $e taught to use their imagination%
That now brings us to the se ond of our questions. The first was why we value imagination. +ut se ondly,

how do we cultivate imagination in children, so as to in rease their pleasures' $nd

here is where I most of all need help from you in dis% ussion. I'd like to on entrate on something I've *ust been suggesting, that is the organi:ing fun tion of the imagination. It is obvious that if one is trying to tea h hildren in a way that in reases rather than de reases their imaginative powers, one must avoid limiting them; % one mustn't issue too many dire tives. This I am sure would be generally agreed. .ne mustn't organi:e hildren's a tivities in su h a way that they are left merely to obey ommands.

;@ 4. &arno k +ut at the other end of the spe trum, if one wants to

free children&s imagination as far as possible% one must not allow them to be inhibited by their' own incompetence" $nd I think this is something
whi h, in the rush of enthusiasm for the freedom at one end of the spe trum, tends perhaps to be forgotten. $ hild annot e"er ise the full freedom of his imagination unless his vo abulary, literally his verbal vo abulary, is wide enough to enable him to on eive and say and ommuni ate the thoughts that he has. The onne tion between language and thought is so deep that, with a limited vo abulary, a hild is frustrated. 4oreover, he needs not only to have the , but to be free to use it without being utterly hemmed in by sto k phrases, li hes and other onstri ting inhibitions, in luding the inhibition of not being able to string senten es together in a way that ould be understood. To tea h hildren to ommuni ate linguisti ally is of immense importan e, whatever the area of reative arts one is dealing with. This is one of the things whi h must not be negle ted. A Bust as there is a grammar and synta" of the linguisti arts, there is also a grammar and synta" of the other reative arts, and I believe that parti ularly in the

ocabulary

ase of musi to edu ate a hild musi ally without edu ating him through his ears, and then through his eyes and fingers, in the grammar of musi , is genuinely to deprive him. This is where, obviously, a balan e has to be sought between too mu h on entration on the grammar and too little, whi h in the end will limit and inhibit the understanding, organi:ing, ontrol, power, that a hild needs if his imagination is to have full rein. I believe that this kind of balan e is something on whi h the tea her must Imagination ;C on entrate, and where the most deli ate and sensitive *udgments of what a hild an and an't take have to be made. -hildren vary enormously in this respe t. If you have a hild who is a talented and natural musi ian, then the grammar will be so easy for him that he will want to do it; he will want to pra tise; he knows he will be inhibited if he doesn't pra tise his omposition or playing. He will understand that instin tively. .bviously for another hild this grammar will be mu h more boring and inhibiting in itself, but you know, I know, that in a ertain sense it is not an inhibition, it is a way of in reasing the power the hild will have over his medium. !o the organi:ing fun tion of the imagination is paramount if its own pe uliar pleasures are to result, and the edu ation of the imagination is a matter of trying to find a balan e between imaginative freedom, and the insisten e that things be done as they have always been done. This an, of ourse, be inhibiting, and, sadly, it used to be the way whi h many of the arts were taught. +ut if one throws the grammar out altogether then there an be no freedom. )or freedom and organi:ation in fa t go hand in hand; they are together the power whi h the imagination bestows. To teaoh a hild to organi:e may well entail tea hing him te hniques. $rmed with these, he will e"perien e the pleasures of his own ompeten e.