Imagination, Empathy, and the Arts in Education
The Stimulation of Imaginative Powers
Imaginative powers are important to defend an open and pluralistic society. Citizens cannot relate well to the complex world around them with only factual knowledge and logic alone. Individuals need the ability to imagine what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from themselves and to understand the emotions, wishes, and desires that someone might have. The cultivation of sympathy forms part of democratic education, in both Western and non-Western nations. Much of this cultivation must take place in the family, but schools also play an important role. Therefore, they must give a central role in the curriculum to the arts and the humanities, cultivating a participatory type of education that activates and refines the capacity to see the world through another person’s eyes.
The Development of Empathy
Seeing other persons with an inner world, as full individuals, and developing sympathy for them is not automatic. Several things are necessary to overcome the selfishness that is part of the nature of children.
- Physical maturity: As children grow, they become physically less dependent. When a person becomes independent, they see others less as instruments, as persons who exist only to take care of them.
- Awareness of weakness: Children must become aware that weakness is part of life. We all have weaknesses and therefore need to support each other. This recognition involves the ability to see the world as a place in which one is not alone, a place in which other people have their own lives and needs.
The Importance of Play
According to Nussbaum, play is crucial to develop empathy and sympathy for other persons. Simple nursery rhymes already stimulate small children to put themselves in the place of a small animal, another child, or even an inanimate object, such as a star or the moon. Nursery rhymes and stories are a crucial preparation for the ability to feel concern for others. They contribute to the development of healthy attitudes in friendship, love, and, later, in political life.
Play is crucial to develop empathy. It stimulates curiosity, wonder, and surprise instead of anxiety.
The Arts, Imagination, and Empathy
It is all too easy to see another person just as a body, which we might use for our ends, good or bad. It is an achievement to see a soul in that body, and this achievement is supported by poetry, literature, and the arts. These ask us to wonder about the inner thoughts of other people.
Through imagination, we are able to see the full humanity of people with whom our encounters in daily life are most of the time superficial, and at worst, infected by stereotypes. Stereotypes normally emerge when we construct sharp separations between groups and suspicions that make encounters difficult. So, we need instruction in the arts and humanities that brings pupils into contact with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, etc.