Introducing poetry through the Japanese haiku

Abstract

Teachers believe that each child is a creative individual possessing an active imagination. The imagination is both a seeing and shaping power. In children, the imagination is a marked capacity for the intent, absorbed seeing of the actual, accompanied by strong responsiveness of feeling. Whenever the imagination is stirred concentration is heightened. Facts do not necessarily absorb and interest young children, nor are they inevitably excited by their own environment. One needs the catalyst of an active imagination in the teachers, to relate the facts to the child's experience, to bring the environment to life in the child's mind. One of the major purposes of education is to bring children as far as possible to true 'seeing', to make them capable of honesty towards fact and feeling. All teachers want their pupils to be responsive to experience, to develop in sympathy and understanding so as to express themselves fluently in speech and writing.