The Loss of Imagination

The Loss of Imagination:

I asked a student yesterday, "Why don't kids have much imagination these days?"

I found his answer perceptive. (In fact, I was floored.)

"We have everything we need," he said.

Truly, kids (I refer to middle class, poor kids have different problems) have everything they need. They don't need to imagine a stick is a gun when mom and dad can buy a plastic one that looks like the real thing. They don't need to go outside and play cops and robbers, when they can play a simulation on the latest gaming console or their computer. They don't need to imagine faraway places, when they can find pictures of such on the internet. Even space is less of a mystery than it was twenty years ago.

Imagination derives from not having. A stick is not a gun, anymore than my fingers are, but they serve. I may not be able to shoot bullets from my stick, but I know when I shot you and so do you. We were imagining.

Kids aren't entirely without imagination, but I fear it is becoming a lost art. As kids have things presented to them, rather than having to create out of their minds, ingenuity is destroyed. The great writings, works of art, and inventions came from imaginitive minds. And these great minds often came from backgrounds where to have also meant to create.

Foster the imagination, read to yourself, your children, and other's children.

Keep imagination alive.

source: http://otter.covblogs.com/archives/004701.html

interesting little piece, imagination would vary depending on your upbringing and where you were brought up.. like things you were exposed to as a child, how hard you had to work for it to imagine something.