QUESTIONS

1.  How is the process of imagination like memory?

2.  What is the relation of imagination to thinking?

3.  What kind of images do you seek to have children use in their work in the subjects which you teach?

4.  Can you classify the members of your class as visualizers, audiles, and the like?

5.  If one learns most readily by reading rather than hearing, does it follow that his images will be largely visual?  Why?

6.  Give examples from your own experience of memory images; of creative images.

7.  To what degree does creative imagination depend upon past experiences?

8.  What type of imagery is most important for the work of the inventor?  The farmer?  The social reformer?

9.  Of what significance in the life of an adult is fanciful imagery?

10.  What, if any, is the danger involved in reveling in idealistic productive imagery?

11.  What advantages do verbal images possess as over against object images?

12.  Why would you ask children to try to image in teaching literature, geography, history, or any other subject for which you are responsible?

13.  How would you handle a boy who is hi the habit of confusing memory images with images of imagination?

14.  In what sense is it true that all progress, is dependent upon productive imagination?

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VII.  HOW THINKING MAY BE STIMULATED

The term “thinking” has been used almost as loosely as the term “imagination,” and used to mean almost as many different things.  Even now there is no consensus of opinion as to just what thinking is.  Dewey says, “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought."[5] Miller says, “Thinking is not so much a distinct conscious process as it is an organisation of all the conscious processes which are relevant in a problematic situation for the performance of the function of consciously adjusting means to end."[6] Thinking always presupposes some lack in adjustment, some doubt or uncertainty, some hesitation in response.  So long as the situation, because of its simplicity or familiarity, receives immediately a response which satisfies, there is no need for thinking.  Only when the response is inadequate or when no satisfactory response is forthcoming is thinking aroused.  By far the majority of the daily adjustments made by people, both mental and physical, require no thinking because instinct, habit, and memory suffice.  It is only when these do not serve to produce a satisfactory response that thinking is needed—­only when there is something problematic in the situation.  Even in new situations