Canadian anti-testing educrats are in the news again, claiming that it's a crying shame that educational reform is focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic, instead of the development of imagination:
"Imagination is not high on the list of priorities in education," said Elliot Eisner, professor of education and art at Stanford University in California. "Test scores, reading levels and math take centre-stage -- they measure outcomes and meet accountability requirements. Spending time on imagination is considered frivolous, unnecessary."
Perhaps, yes, if the child in question can't read, and the school thinks it should be spending taxpayer money on fostering the child's imagination, rather than their reading skills.
Cedric Cullingford, professor of education at the University of Huddersfield in northern England, said that politicians and those running schools repress children's imaginations with the emphasis on standardized testing.
"What we're doing to children is patently wrong," Cullingford said. "The idea is if it's not measurable, it doesn't exist, and that math, language and science are the crucial studies."
Help, help, they're being repressed! These comments from learned professors of education approach parody. They're whining about the fact that schools are focused on math, and language skills, and science. They believe that this focus represses children. How has it escaped their notice that (a) schools are for educating, and (b) children tend to show a remarkable ability for developing their own imaginations, but they don't tend to absorb reading skills or long division through osmosis?
What's more, any child who does have imagination is, at some point, going to want to express it in a more advanced way, and the basic skills are extremely important for this. What's the point of the school fostering imagination in a budding writer, if the school doesn't also teach the kid how to best express creative thoughts in writing? I wonder if the aforementioned Professor Eisner, who teaches both education and art, would agree that it's more important to foster artistic imagination in children than to teach them how to hold a paintbrush?
Posted by kswygert at July 21, 2003 11:40 AM