| Education is failing in this country. By saying this, I know | | | | Since it is so vast, let me try to sketch out an example |
| that I join the ranks of the self-appointed Cassandra's | | | | from a very small, prosaic beginning point: the number |
| who hurl our hands up to our foreheads and sing the | | | | 32. I have a painful memory of standing in a classroom |
| doom of a nation. But it's true. | | | | with flashing cards and spots before my eyes, trying |
| And most of the wailers miss the point. Underlying the | | | | to spit out multiplication tables. But in spite of that |
| political agendas, funding battles, culture wars, and the | | | | (mostly because I count on my fingers), I know that |
| simultaneous disrespect for and outrageous | | | | eight times four is thirty-two. |
| expectations of teachers, there is a much deeper | | | | In an imaginal learning context, the flash cards are |
| failure. | | | | gone. The walls of the classroom are gone, replaced |
| Think of a moment in your life when you were | | | | by a hillside on a quiet night where the stars seem |
| completely caught up in learning something. In that | | | | made for counting, and infinity has a tangible and richly |
| moment, learning wasn't about facts, tests or grades, | | | | mythic presence. So I lie on my back, and imagine a life |
| succeeding or failing. Instead, it was an all-consuming, | | | | for the number 32. A combination of eight (a sideways |
| joyful burst of energy and pleasure at finally | | | | symbol of infinity) and four (of the four elements) |
| discovering something. Of understanding something. To | | | | make up the sinuous and stable combination of |
| borrow from Shakespeare, it was an instance of | | | | thirty-two. I imagine its colors, its own suggestion of |
| god-like apprehension, comprehension of our place as | | | | infinity when turned sideways - like three mountains |
| partners in a creative universe. | | | | and the beginnings of a fourth. |
| How often have you had a moment like that in your | | | | And then I begin to count. Eight constellations, each of |
| educational process? If you're like most people, pretty | | | | four stars. Sixteen pairings of two. I remember the |
| rarely. Somewhere along the line, education became a | | | | stories of the constellations. I make up poems with four |
| consumerist contest of amassing skills and factoids | | | | stanzas of eight lines each, and drum out rhythms in 4 |
| and spewing them back to the world like game show | | | | 4 and 2/4 time. And then I explore 32 as a leaping |
| geeks. But when we become glorified databases, we | | | | point into other thoughts, other disciplines, awareness |
| lose the analytical abilities that keep us from being | | | | of myself and those around me. For example, in the |
| engulfed by systems (be they political, religious, societal, | | | | Buddhist tradition, there are 32 body parts. How many |
| or media) without bothering to ask if they should exist | | | | can I count? And what lies underneath a philosophy |
| at all. We have all of the pieces out of the puzzle box | | | | that identifies the body this way? Or, I look to language. |
| and arrayed on the table, but we don't have a picture | | | | Balagtás Tagalog, one of the indigenous |
| to follow. | | | | languages of the Philippines that is being replaced by a |
| And that's what we're missing: the picture. The image. | | | | state sanctioned combination of Filipino and English, has |
| The imagining. Our failure is a failure of imagination, both | | | | 32 letters. What letters would I add to the English |
| in what we teach and how we teach it, but also, far | | | | alphabet? And can I understand the despair of losing |
| more importantly, a failure to understand that education | | | | my language and the identity that goes with it? |
| is ultimately about imagination itself. | | | | As philosopher and mathematician Gaston Bachelard |
| When we become imaginal learners, we move | | | | writes, imagination is "a voyage into the infinite." |
| beyond passive collectors of information into creators. | | | | Education is the most powerful when its goal isn't |
| We find the enchantment, the poetics of learning, and | | | | overtly focused on what it will achieve for us, but |
| we can imagine entire universes into being. Learning | | | | instead when it is an open process that seduces us |
| becomes a spiraling generative process that invites us | | | | into searching for what we've not been able yet to |
| to continue to learn and to shape ourselves and our | | | | see. It helps us not only to fit the puzzle pieces |
| worlds. | | | | together, but to turn the pieces into the image that we |
| So what would an imaginal education look like? Part of | | | | have created. |
| its beauty, and admittedly, its complexity, is that there | | | | In that voyage, we become infinite ourselves. And |
| isn't one answer. It is an invitation for each learner to | | | | education stops being a metaphorical key to a brand |
| understand herself and the world around her as a | | | | new refrigerator and dining set that you vie for |
| classroom. It is about inviting wonder to be your | | | | because you want to be a good consumer, but |
| partner, and continually asking "why" and "how" and | | | | instead truly becomes something that is good for the |
| "what if" about everything and everyone that crosses | | | | entirety of the soul. |
| your path. | | | | |