Role of Imagination and Creativity in Education - Essay Example

Several philosophers, thinkers, and theorists have come up with literary devices such as stories and allegories that depict the importance of education in the society as well as in the education system. This paper seeks to discuss the role of imagination and creativity in education with particular reference to the works of Malcolm X, Plato, and Carver. The most important aspect of life is education. Through education, the society gets to learn about the world as well as how things relate to each other.

Therefore, education becomes an important process through which man can understand the world and how to utilize all the available opportunities and resources for the wellbeing of the whole society. However, these accomplishments cannot be achieved without the important aspect of creativity and imaginativeness. This is because the largest potential of resources and opportunities are not yet discovered and they will remain so until someone imagines new ways of utilizing the profound resources. The best illustration of the world and education system was well explained by Plato in his idea of allegory cave.

According to Plato, uneducated people are just like the slaves who thought that the shadows were real people. Such people would take appearance for reality and would stay in such a state until someone decides to explore creatively beyond the realms of appearance. According to Plato, “the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort and when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual” (Plato web).

Truly, knowledge cannot be achieved without much effort. This is where imaginativeness comes in. Creativity calls for concerted effort to question the present knowledge with the aim of making further discoveries. Of course, education would be a similar phenomenon with the slaves in the allegory cave until creativity and imaginativeness in inducted into the system. There is a great difference between looking and vision as depicted in the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver. More importantly, understanding the level of knowledge is an essential element for survival of the society.

It has been argued that the current education system was structured under pillars of conspiracy. It is argued that the education system was primarily aimed at producing workers for various industries. This could perhaps explain the evident lack of creativity in the education system. Education without creativity amounts to looking without vision. There is no deeper understanding of the underlying knowledge and therefore such an education system cannot be used to propel the society towards greater heights of accomplishment.

This is evident from the Cathedral story. The narrator had physical eyes but in reality could not envision things at a greater depth. He had little understanding of realities of life. For instance, he did not even understand his own wife the way the blind man did. He could not see anything beyond the surface value. He could not see beyond the poems “I didn’t think much of the poem. Of course, I did not tell her that. Maybe I just do not understand poetry” (Carver web). It was ironical that the blind man had a deep sense of understanding and vision than he did.

The blind man used his imaginativeness and creativity to guide him to draw the cathedral According