A big idea that seemed to run through a few of tonight’s
readings was the notion of “conterfactuals.” This idea is defined as a “what if” question, according to Imagination First, by Eric Liu and Scott
Noppe-Brandon in Practice 21 – Rewrite History. For example, as children grow up they learn to ask themselves
questions like, “What if I push this ball over the edge of the table?” In the formal operational stage of
cognitive development a child is able to think hypothetically. As adults, we should push ourselves to
think hypothetically, or counterfactually, by asking “What would have been the
case if some antecedent had been true.
What would be the ‘then’ if you had another ‘if?’ ” These types of “fictional questions”
can actually serve as powerful tools.
This way of thinking can help us discover unrealized possibilities and
potential. To build the muscle of
thinking in counterfactuals one must simply play
more. We must learn to think
of “counterfactuals apart from goals.”
In the introduction of the book the authors state, “Until and unless we
have the emotional and intellectual capacity to conceive of what does not yet
exist, there is nothing toward which we are to direct our will and our
resources.” It is imperative as
individuals to develop and foster a sense of imagination in order for our
society to progress into the unknown, the future. For “Any conceptual break through requires imagination
first.”
In
the article Learning in the Visual Age
this idea and importance of using the imagination to think hypothetically is
discussed, specifically the ways in which art education can facilitate this
development. It states, “The arts
stimulate or release imagination by bringing into existence an alternative
‘reality,’ notes Maxine Greene. In
that way, young people can envision a world that is different from the world
they know, and thus art education opens the possibility for creating new
worlds, rather than simply accepting the world as it is. ‘We know that
imagination reaches toward a future, towards what might be, what should be,
what is not yet.’ ” In order to
contribute to the progression of the world (today and in the future) our
students need to gain skills which allow them to adapt to the unknown. Thinking creatively and imaginatively
is an invaluable skill in the 21st century. As Eisner said, “We want our children
to have basic skills. But they also will need sophisticated cognition, and they
can learn that through the visual arts… With the arts, children learn to see.”
Incorporating
this idea of counterfactuals into the art classroom could affect the amount of
imaginative thinking that goes into creative
production, responding or presenting artwork. Some ways to integrate counterfactual thinking into
artmaking, and of course meaning-making, could be:
- Have students reflect back on a time where they were faced with an important decision. They will answer the question, “What if I had chosen the other option?” Students will create an artwork representing the reality that might have taken place based on the answer to the question.
- Students will choose an influential event that took place throughout the history of the United States and think about how our nation, even our world, would be different if the events had been acted out differently. For example (as described in Imagine First), “What if Lee had lost the Battle at Gettysburg?” Churchill described in his essay published in 1930. He predicted that the Civil War would have ended sooner, “America would not have split into two weakened nations; the ensuing three-nation alliance with England would not have emerged; England, isolated, would not have been able to thwart the ambitions of the continental powers like Germany in 1914; and the result would have been a world war." Based on their event, students will then create a piece of artwork responding to the possible outcome of the alternate reality.
- All students will be assigned to research and study the same historical event. They will then hypothesize how the world could be different had that event had a different outcome. Students will create artwork representing their hypothesis. Students will have a gallery show, exhibiting their work all together as a body of possible outcomes of this one historical event.
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