Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Imagination and Children

Lately, i have been watching a lot of kiddie television. Have you ever noticed how fertile with imagination that world is? Elmo is furry, and Teletubbies are... well, teletubbies, and In the Night Garden and Waybuloo and Little Robots... to a child, it is all REAL.
Somewhere along the line, we are taught what is "there" and what is not "there". What we are doing , in effect, is placing boundaries on our thought. We suddenly start to exclude so many possibilities from our mind, just because they are not "real".

Now comes the best part - after closing our minds to dreaming, and fantasy and that which can be (in corporatespeak: potential), we go out and create "brainstorming" sessions, where we are supposed to "think freely" think "out of the box" think "imaginatively" ... Arent we the best ever? We started out by thinking imaginatively, and then were taught to be "real" and then were asked to "imagine" to "excel"
I love the world!

And i love The Little Prince.. nothing captures the angst like that book does..

15 comments:

The Phosgene Kid said...

Cartoons aren't real? I was hoping to meet SpPonge Bob Squarepants in person some day, darn.

starry eyed said...

Love the Little Prince myself...

I think imagination is underrated. How do you understand another person without being able to imagine yourself in their place?

Anonymous said...

the cartoon world is unbelievably wonderful... thank god for no limit imaginations... I seriously think animation is a wonderful way to let your imagination flow... I am always in awe of people who make lovely cartoons... !!! Its an awesome way of expressing..

How do we know said...

Hi Phos: Well.. if he hasnt bumped into you yet, he surely will make it this year.. Cartoons ARE real.

Hi Starry: so true!

Hi hitchwriter: Yep. i love it too. Amar Chitra Katha is my all time favorite.

Mai said...

My Dad who was a great man, put together a trilingual edition of Le Petit Prince in French, English and Punjabi done by hand in his precise and beautiful Gurmukhi sacript (his translation.

That was my primer that he taught me to learn to read from. None of this, "See Dick run. Run, Dick run" for us.

Many of the concepts, of course, were over my head - I was 4 or 5 - but learning to read was a complete delight. Needless to say, that is still one of my favourite books.

And I taught my young son to read out of it, too.

But that was a long time ago and the world has changed.

Mai said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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allen said...

Imagination and children...... like the title. Great post.

alice809 said...

I myself love cartoons a lot. When i was a kid, i myself thought that cartoons are real and loved their world. I even wish if there would have been some place that would have existed.

jenny4389 said...

I liked your post. Thanks for the information shared over here. cartoons are really great. I love watching them.

Dilip Muralidaran said...

wow, you just cant say it better. That knocked me out. Thats everything i wanted to say for a long time now...

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mary said...

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