Let’s start here. This quote is from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
“The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.”
You’ll need to read that several times.
It’s my belief that getting up and running in the fall, and sustaining school through the year, will require embracing the essence of Schopenhauer’s quote. Creating a new type of school that prepares students for an uncertain future in an uncertain time requires embracing it. Thinking and acting in new ways demands it.
It’s called imagination.
In my opinion, being imaginative is one of the most important characteristics that an educator or school can possess. Having an imaginative disposition enables a person (or organization) to act in ways that enable the ability to rethink, adjust, adapt and develop the flexibility required to negotiate challenges. Those characteristics will be required to see a school through the next year; they will be absolutely essential when it comes to making a truly defining choice about what is next for the school experience, beyond the pandemic.
So, I wonder about the imaginative capacity of schools. The comfort of the known school experience and its pathway, a relatively stable environment over the years, and an acceptance of school as is has diminished the organizational imagination of most schools. Given that, how can schools see beyond themselves, when the really need to, and have the courage to use the moment to re-craft what they do?
Realistically, most schools are just trying to figure out school for the fall which is ridiculously challenging. That’s a necessity and ensuring the safety of students, educators and the community is of the highest importance. And to be fair to schools, they’re not getting much help while having to endure completely unrealistic demands from politicians.
Blanket Fort, from fiverlocker, via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
Nonetheless, I have an important question. Does the complexity and the immediacy of the need negate the imaginative potential of the moment? Is figuring out how to offer lunch to 1200 kids over three bell periods in a cafeteria the focus or is the focus on rethinking time, schedules and new ways for kids to eat? Are you focused on merging the past practice of grading with remote learning or are you creatively exploring new ways for kids to demonstrate understanding in a virtual learning experience? Are you still focused on a time-honored experience rooted in compliance or are you seeking new ways for kids to own their own learning experience? Is your school focused on trying to force a traditional model of school into the moment or is it using the moment to re-invent its future?
From my experience, I know that in most schools, improvement is the king. Getting better at what is already occurring is the goal. That’s important - I get it. Some schools focus on innovation and approaches that seek to transform school. That’s a much harder sell and much more difficult to actualize given the inertia of schools.
Improvement and innovation are the two big kids on the block.
But neither can occur without imagination.
The reason? Imagination is a generative capacity that gives rise to the ideas that improvement and innovation are dependent upon. Without imagination, you don’t stand much of a chance of realizing improvement or innovation, at least in any meaningful way.
To that end, the goal of developing the imagination is to develop the capacity to create beyond what we already know and have experienced. To do so, one must give themselves permission (or their organization permission) to liberate the mind and its ability to think without constraints. John Seely Brown and Ann Pendleton-Julian add depth to this thought: “It is precisely because the imagination is given permission to play without pragmatic intent that it finds connections between things that are not obvious or easy.”
It’s difficult to take pause at this moment, to suspend “pragmatic intent,” to free your thinking so that the mind may become unencumbered - but that is exactly what must be done. Doing so can lead to the thinking that will present a way forward and meet a moment that none of us have really faced before.
This thing will eventually end. As Diana Laufenberg says, you can’t go back, you can only go through and to what’s next. If you believe that to be true, then there is an opportunity to start focusing on re-engaging your imagination, no matter what you face now.
My next post will focus on the pragmatic steps to do exactly that. Thank you for reading.
Banner image from Rupert Britton via Unsplash