“Keeping Imagination Alive”
Neil Mufson, Head of School

One of the hidden advantages of a school that serves only 4 to 8 year-olds is that within our walls, children’s imaginations are completely free and can be fully engaged. Even our oldest students can get engrossed in imaginative play. Beako and magic powder are natural extensions of our children’s imaginative worlds. Using one’s imagination is natural and fun, and allows kids to be kids for longer, especially without the presence of older children who can become more bound by “rational” thought.

In addition to emphasizing core academic subjects like math, reading, and writing, Primary Day makes sure students have ample opportunity to stretch not just emerging critical thinking skills but also imaginative and creative thinking. In Writers’ Workshop, we don’t worry too much about facts, even when we are learning about non-fiction. Our literature class in our beautiful library expands children’s horizons and imaginations, just as our Readers’ Workshop program does. STEM involves doing, problem solving, exploring, evaluating, and creating. Art and music introduce fundamental principles of these creative disciplines but let the children’s imagination and creativity make the concepts their own. Our playgrounds are blank canvases for the bountiful use of imagination.

A few years ago, I heard a speaker who said that if you ask a roomful of four year-olds to raise their hands if they are an artist, virtually every hand goes up. By the time children get to fourth grade, only about half see themselves as artists, and by seventh grade, it’s only a few. By keeping that creative confidence up and by regularly exercising imaginations, Primary Day expands children’s capacity to see themselves as creators and finders of unique solutions.

In a November opinion piece in The New York Times entitled, “The Awesome Importance of Imagination,” David Brooks pointed out that while Plato saw imagination as “an airy-fairy god,” Aristotle saw imagination as one of the foundations of all knowledge. Brooks remarked, “One tragedy of our day is that our culture hasn’t fully realized how much Aristotle is correct. Our society isn’t good at cultivating the faculty we may need the most.”

Brooks also quoted Darwin as writing imagination “unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results.” Imagination allows us to generate alternate solutions and possibilities; envision others’ experiences; assess different perspectives; dream up new things; and shape the path of our own learning. These are but a few of the reasons Primary Day believes in giving the imagination lots of exercise and space.