Books on Imagination, Creativity, Intelligence, Children

It was very good. (And thanks for the compliment. ) For 1st-6th grade I had two teachers; one teacher taught 1st through 3rd graders all together, one teacher taught 4th through 6th graders. We had desks, but not in any particular formation -- my 4-6th grade classroom had a big loft that ran around part of the room, with some desks on it, some underneath, a big reading area with pillows, etc. Curiousity and creativity were encouraged. Lots of hands-on experiments, field trips, music, goofy stuff. But also lots of hard "facts", knowledge, etc. We were consistently way ahead of the norm in standardized test scores. (Like 2 or 3 grade levels.) I'm still in touch with a lot of my classmates, and a disproportionate number seemed to turn out really well. (Excluding present company, of course. )

oh dear, oh dear! Sozobe, I had no idea I was that much older than you! One of the first schools I taught at was a "free school", in fact, the Bloomington-Normal Free School. It was a terrific program because it hired just three wonderful teachers and required a great deal of parent participation. The children I taught at age 5 and up who wanted to take up chess, did so, very seriously! Our 5 yr old student won the regional chess tourney competing at the time with over 200 elementary students of all ages. And I remember when he was just learning the rules....! He is now a fine, young (?) mathematician at a prestigious university. There are a number of highly successfull folks in their thirties now who started there. It blew me away a few years ago to attend a gathering and meet three men who I first met at age 5 or so - they towered above me and my gosh, they turned into men! Who'da thought, lol!

Oh yes, that school is still going. It became popular enough to split into two independent schools still running. One was Blooming Grove Academy and the other the Mulberry School. The later is where the wealthier academics sent their children. They both retain many elements of their ancestral school, but both, interestingly, became far more "academic" and "exclusive" over time. This contrasts with present public schools that are being built still as a "open school" concept, often seen as schools without walls. Let me tell you: three third grade classes that had no walls between them - that is a nightmare! I still don't see many great architectural plans for schools, and practicality is out the window as far as many teachers observe! Oops, off on a tangent and even a rant! So sorry!

Larry and all: this post to re-new this thread. I am hoping that this will be a regular thread and not fade away. To me, a thread that explores and shares links to creativity and imagination is vital to our mental health in the coming and present woes of the world.

Thanks cobalt, I intend to continually post books as I think of them, old and new. Hope everyone else does too.

The February 27 issue of the New York Review of Books has an article on The Blank Slate, by Stephen Pinker.

Darwinian Storytelling
FULL ARTICLE

"What do Stalin, modern architecture, radical feminism, and most parenting experts have in common? They are all products of the false belief that we are born with empty minds, a tabula rasa. Or so says Steven Pinker in his new book, The Blank Slate. If the aim of science is to explain apparently unrelated phenomena via a single elegant theory, Pinker is obviously onto something big. Any theory that can explain the origins of the Five Year Plan and Le Corbusier must be reckoned with."

Two great biographies, not directly addressing creativity and imagination, but its Emerson and Whitman after all:

Emerson: The Mind on Fire
by Robert D. Richardson Jr.

Amazon reviews:

From Booklist
"Unlike Thoreau, Emerson never built a cabin on the shores of Walden Pond. But Richardson (author of a prizewinning biography of Thoreau) shows how Emerson's volcanic genius ignited flames of kindred enthusiasm in Thoreau, Whitman, Fuller, and other gifted Americans. Careful analysis of his vast reading reveals how Emerson drew inspiration from the world's classic literature yet maintained a fierce self-reliance that still defines one of the primary themes of our national culture. As in his biography of Thoreau, Richardson focuses principally on his subject's inner life, the life of his mind and spirit. But in this subtle portrayal of Emerson the thinker, the reader also sees the clearly limned portrait of Emerson the social activist, outraged by slavery and by oppressive Indian policies. Nor is the focus so narrowly cerebral that the reader does not feel the personal tragedy in the deaths of Emerson's first wife and son. Indeed, by referring to many previously unavailable private letters and manuscripts, Richardson sheds light on both Emerson's emotions and his intellect. A masterful work, this biography will attract the attention of scholars and serious general readers for decades." Bryce Christensen

Amazon Book Description
"Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord. Drawing on a vast amount of new material, including correspondence among the Emerson brothers, Richardson gives us a rewarding intellectual biography that is also a portrait of the whole man. These pages present a young suitor, a grief-stricken widower, an affectionate father, and a man with an abiding genius for friendship. The great spokesman for individualism and self-reliance turns out to have been a good neighbor, an activist citizen, a loyal brother. Here is an Emerson who knew how to laugh, who was self-doubting as well as self-reliant, and who became the greatest intellectual adventurer of his age. Richardson has, as much as possible, let Emerson speak for himself through his published works, his many journals and notebooks, his letters, his reported conversations. This is not merely a study of Emerson's writing and his influence on others; it is Emerson's life as he experienced it. We see the failed minister, the struggling writer, the political reformer, the poetic liberator. The Emerson of this book not only influenced Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, he also inspired Nietzsche, William James, Baudelaire, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Jorge Luis Borges. Emerson's timeliness is persistent and striking: his insistence that literature and science are not separate cultures, his emphasis on the worth of every individual, his respect for nature. Richardson gives careful attention to the enormous range of Emerson's readings from Persian poets to George Sandand to his many friendships and personal encountersfrom Mary Moody Emerson to the Cherokee chiefs in Bostonevoking both the man and the times in which he lived. Throughout this book, Emerson's unquenchable vitality reaches across the decades, and his hold on us endures."

Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography
by David S. Reynolds

Amazon:
"The greatest American poet is portrayed in this monumental biography as an essential American, not an isolated mystic but a man formed in large measure by his rapidly changing society. Drawing on his diligent research, and on his experience writing the monumental work Beneath the American Renaissance noted scholar David S. Reynolds conclusively demonstrates the profound impact the popular culture of his day had on Whitman's awakening as an artist. The fascinating and compelling story of Whitman's life vigorously illuminates how a schoolteacher turned journalist became the robust and exuberant man who changed literature and single-handedly created modern poetry. This copious (nearly 700 page) volume tells the story of 19th-century America as well as the story of the Whitman himself."

Ingram
"This comprehensive, original portrait of the life and work of one of America's greatest poets--set in the social, cultural, and political context of his time--considers the full range of writings by and about Whitman, including his early poems and stories, his conversations, letters, journals, newspaper writings, and day books."

like cobalt, renewing thread.

Daniel Boorstin's trilogy, The Discoverers, The Creators, The Seekers:

The Discoverers
by Daniel J. Boorstin

from Amazon.com
"Perhaps the greatest book by one of our greatest historians, The Discoverers is a volume of sweeping range and majestic interpretation. To call it a history of science is an understatement; this is the story of how humankind has come to know the world, however incompletely ("the eternal mystery of the world," Einstein once said, "is its comprehensibility"). Daniel J. Boorstin first describes the liberating concept of time--"the first grand discovery"--and continues through the age of exploration and the advent of the natural and social sciences. The approach is idiosyncratic, with Boorstin lingering over particular figures and accomplishments rather than rushing on to the next set of names and dates. It's also primarily Western, although Boorstin does ask (and answer) several interesting questions: Why didn't the Chinese "discover" Europe and America? Why didn't the Arabs circumnavigate the planet? His thesis about discovery ultimately turns on what he calls "illusions of knowledge." If we think we know something, then we face an obstacle to innovation. The great discoverers, Boorstin shows, dispel the illusions and reveal something new about the world."

The Creators - A History of Heroes of the Imagination
by Daniel J. Boorstin

from Amazon.com
"Historian Daniel J. Boorstin brings his customary depth and range to this compelling book on Western art, taking on everything from European megaliths (Stonehenge, for example) to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography ("the first American addition to world literature"). Boorstin does not aim at being comprehensive--he much prefers to linger over certain "heroes of the imagination" as he surveys human accomplishment in the fields of architecture, music, painting, sculpting, and writing--yet The Creators certainly feels comprehensive, as Boorstin carefully places everything he describes within a grand tradition of aesthetic achievement.
Boorstin knows that good history demands good writing, and his prose makes this big book easy to absorb. "This is a story," he writes, "of how creators in all the arts have enlarged, embellished, fantasized, and filigreed our experience"--an apt description of the role art plays in our life and an equally apt description of the way Boorstin interprets it for readers."

The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World
by Daniel J. Boorstin

Amazon Book Description
"Throughout history, from the time of Socrates to our own modern age, the human race has sought the answers to fundamental questions of life: Who are we? Why are we here?
In his previous national bestsellers, The Discoverers and The Creators, Daniel J. Boorstin first told brilliantly how we discovered the reality of our world, and then he celebrated man's achievements in the arts. He now turns to the great figures in history who sought meaning and purpose in our existence.
Boorstin says our Western culture has seen three grand epics of Seeking. First there was the heroic way of prophets and philosophers--men like Moses or Job or Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as those in the communities of the early church universities and the Protestant Reformation--seeking salvation or truth from the god above or the reason within each of us.
Then came an age of communal seeking, with people like Thucydides and Thomas More and Machiavelli and Voltaire pursuing civilization and the liberal spirit.
Finally, there was an age of the social sciences, when man seemed ruled by the forces of history. Here are the absorbing stories of exceptional men such as Marx, Spengler, and Toynbee, Carlyle and Emerson, and Malraux, Bergson, and Einstein.
These great thinkers still have the power to speak to us, not always so much for their answers as for their way of asking the questions that never cease either to intrigue or to obsess us.
In this impressive climax to a monumental trilogy, Daniel J. Boorstin once again shows that his ability to present challenging ideas, coupled with sharp portraits of great writers and thinkers, remains unparalleled."

I'm renewing this thread, and once I get home, I'll look through my shelves to see what I have to add to the list. Great thread, Larry BS.

Thanks dream, feel free to add your own ideas. I'm about to add a few more books myself.

The Millennial Child by Eugene Schwartz, about how the methodology of the Waldorf schools, the stages of development and how the 3 stages of thinking, feeling and willing can be fostered to help children become independent and creative individuals throughout life.

Endangered Minds: Why Children Don't Think and What We Can Do About It, by Jane M. Healy This books goes through the influences of today's society and schools that cause children to not experience normal development in childhood, grow up too fast, and become deficient in things such as:

declining attention span
decreased ability to put facts and ideas into coherent speaking and writing
decreased vocabulary above the 4th grade level
trouble understanding longer sentences and more difficult reading material

Thanks dream.

Here are some more, which though I haven't read from cover to cover, are considrered worthwhile:

A series of books published under the auspices the Gesell Institute of Human Development, Start with Your One-Year-Old Child, and there is a book for each year up to Your Ten to Fourteen Year Old, by Louise Bates Ames & Carol Chase Haber.

We have the one about 9 year olds, and though I find some of what she says to be over generalized, they make some good points.



The collected wisdom of Fathers by Will Glennon ,has a lot of anecdotes about how it is to become a father and create 'loving bonds that last a lifetime'. This book is definately a step in the right direction for men who were raised by absent fathers, and don't want to be that way with their own children.

bookmark

My son goes to a Montessori school and I always thought for him it was a better chuice but whar you said concerned me. COuld you please talk a little bit more about what you have seen in the field re; montessori schools.

I am reading Absorbent Mind by MAria montessori. I am amazed by that women's devotion to children her travels to India and sustaining hardships for her cause. I think she is my favourite personality.

Just about to begin The Myth of the First Three Years

bookmark