Education and the Arts: The Windows of Imagination by Maxine Greene.

This post is the summary after reading the article,  ​Education and the Arts: The Windows of
Imagination by Maxine Greene, Columbia University. 

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  Imagination allows for empathy, for a tuning in to another's feelings, for new beginnings in transactions with the world.

  Crafting a poem, Dickinson (1924) wrote, “Imagination lights the slow fuse Of possibility.” The philosopher Ricoeur (1973) saw it as “a passion for possibility.” In a way, imagination makes visible what is just out of sight. The painter Cezanne (1994) said that. 

Although we can see the front of a painting with our eyes, imagination curves to the other side.We know that imagination makes metaphors, effecting often unexpected connections in experience.

  To think of art and education is, as I view things, to render palpable an atmosphere that offers diverse works of art for participation by students of a range of ages. 

 Dewey (1934), “touch the deeper levels of life” (p. 46). Again, they transform.

  If a painter presents us with a field or a vase of flowers, his paintings are windows which are open to the whole world. 

  The poet, Mary Oliver, wrote a brief essay in her book, Blue Iris, which certainly does not deal directly with art and education. Indirect as it may be, metaphorical as it may be, offering no final answers to our questions, I choose to end my foray into new landscapes with some of Oliver’s words.: 

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but children do. Show them
daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and winter-
green. The lives of the blue quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones--
rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermints to put in their pockets when
they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of
the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head
them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its
sticks and leaves and then the silent beautiful blossoms.... Attention is the
beginning of devotion. (pp. 55–56)

  About Author: 

​Sarah Maxine Greene (née Meyer; December 23, 1917 – May 29, 2014) was an American educational philosopher, author, social activist, and teacher. Described upon her death as "perhaps the most iconic and influential living figure associated with Teachers College, Columbia University",[1] she was a pioneer for women in the field of philosophy of education, often being the sole woman presenter at educational philosophy conferences as well as being the first woman president of the Philosophy of Education Society in 1967. Additionally, she was the first woman to preside over the American Educational Research Association in 1981. (by Wikipedia)