Tapping the Power of Imagination

By Cindy Reitzi
Madison substitute teacher

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
— Albert Einstein

A 13-year old boy starts an organization to end abusive international child labor practices.

A high school junior researches what she wants to do “when she grows up.”

A juror must decide if a defendant is guilty of negligent behavior.

A mother invests in her infant son’s college fund.

University of Wisconsin-Madison students protest the use of sweatshop labor to make campus clothing.

A young man, working a minimum wage job, creates a budget for himself.

Crowds gather in Washington D.C. to hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.

A scientist makes a breakthrough in her research as the result of a symbolic dream.

An older couple plans their estate and makes out a will.

A 3-year old boy from a Kansas City housing project knows he wants to play the violin, even though he’s never touched one.

These disparate experiences have one thing in common: all the people involved are using their imaginations.

Forming mental images and ideas to be used in the world, anticipating and planning for the future, deciphering motives, and conjuring up a different vision of the world and acting on it are all acts of imagination.

We all use our imaginations
Unlike the stereotypical definitions, imagination is not just the province of artists; it is the work of practical, ordinary people who raise and teach children. It is an essential form of thinking that we need to nourish in our students and our children to help prepare them for their lives now and in the future – in their work, with their families and communities, and in the expression of themselves in the world.

Imagination is, in its broadest form, thinking outside yourself – outside your timeframe, your feelings, and your body. It is projecting yourself into the future and, in turn, creating a future for yourself. It is creating mental images, circumstances, and feelings in order to learn, create, plan for the future, or cope with current circumstances.

Without imagination, it is hard to learn almost anything in school or elsewhere in a way that offers love of knowledge. Without imagination, we have no passion, no empathy, no deeper understanding; we only skim the surface of people, ideas, and things. Depth and vision require imagination.

From the visionary to the mundane
We use effective imaginative thinking in a whole range of circumstances from the visionary to the mundane.
Protest movements, for example, are part of the history of this country. They are also the active embodiment of the Bill of Rights, a visionary document that boldly set down in law the concept of individual rights, a very uncommon idea at the time it was written.

The successful, visionary movements that followed stressed social and economic justice and recognition of injustice within the status quo. They also have a vision of a better world: Civil rights movements, women’s movements, and economic justice movements envision a better world without segregation or apartheid, violence against women, and sweatshop or child labor.

Vision leads to actions
This vision leads to or follows concrete actions – bus and product boycotts, marches, protest actions to agitate for changes in institutional discrimination, economic policies, laws, and for the creation of structures like battered women’s shelters.

In contrast, we use imaginative thinking even in the mundane aspects of our lives to gain control of our living circumstances or finances. If we want to send our children to college, the “mundane” act of regularly investing money for their college education is given the larger meaning of realizing our dream for them.

Imagination allows us to engage in future thinking so we can plan accordingly. Even living within our means, making out a budget for ourselves, requires not only factual information (how much money do I make vs. how much are my bills) but also surmising (how much do I think I’ll need for groceries, clothes, etc.). The fact that many middle- to upper-income Americans are sloshing in credit card debt means that this use of imaginative and future thinking wouldn’t be a bad skill to practice.

A larger understanding
Imagination has the power to give ordinary actions extraordinary meaning. One of the paradoxes of imagination is that the more we are able to project our minds beyond our bodies, timeframes, and personal feelings, the more this ability may contribute to deeper meaning within ourselves and a larger understanding of our place in the world.

What greater discovery can we offer to young people or discover for ourselves?