This morning I was letting my mind wander while I prepared my Latin 1 lesson. (Since this is a class I could teach, and probably taught better, in my second year of grad school, I need to be distracted in order to take 'preparing' at all seriously). A line from Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown ran through my head:
"She had courage enough but little imagination, or she would not have forgotten joy, whatever the weight on her, and heavy enough it truly was." (p. 136)
For a long time I've wanted to post about how the humanities enriches a person's imagination, but I haven't been able to articulate why I think anyone should care. The McKinley quote points towards a reason we should care. Studying literature and art so that we don't 'forget joy' is not money-driven or utilitarian, but it is also not elitist.
An imagination capable of lifting us up from our frequently crappy circumstances is hard to attain without the experience of immersing ourselves in the Other: another culture, or another person's artistic expression. This is the essence of good humanities education.
Pin It
No comments:
Post a Comment