Customer Reviews

Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change (Jossey-Bass Education)

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This was a required text for a literacy studies graduate class. The context was pedagogically provoking along the threads of progressive modern education standards that are taught to budding teachers. Some repetition was present as it is a lengthy text with a primary focus and one author. My classmates and I were a bit disappointed with the lack of example and proposals for the curriculum/pedagogy changes being presented. This is a text to be read for establishing perspective not for quick tips or golden ticket ideas.

Maxine Greene is an articulate advocate both for the Arts in Education and for Social Justice. She describes how encouters with literature, art, dance, and music can inspire young people to inagine a better future for themselves as individuals, and for all of us. To accomplish real social change we need enough empathy to enter conversations with those who hold many diverse points of view and to use our common ground as a place to re-create our shared reality.

Maxine Greene defends the role of the arts as social medicine and advancement. She brilliantly argues for maintaining art in curriculum. Art often requires of us to imagine things which do not exist in reality. This excercise is vital in creating social change. In order to create a new and better world, we must first imagine it. We must encourage our children (and adults for that matter) to imagine. That's the first step and I feel society becoming less imaginative and more homogenized. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK!!! AND BUY A COPY FOR A TEACHER.