Imagining futures: the public school and possibility

A vision of what public education in the US might become is here prefaced by an examination of the fin de siecle social and political turbulence, with new problems and old issues surfacing to influence the possibilities for schools. Two cornerstones of a vision are then articulated: the need for community, for a coming together with something to pursue, and the importance of the imaginative voice of the artist in human conversation. These cornerstones yield a description of the kinds of reflective encounters for children along with the aesthetic necessary for the development of social imagination and the development of an articulate public.