Insight-Imagination

The Emancipation of Thought and the Modem World

Insight-imagination "will stimulate and enrich the

thinking of anyone concerned with where our

education - and our culture - needs to be heading."

Ron Miller, Founding Editor
Holistic Education Review
Originally published in 1993 when A Nation at Risk sparked a national campaign for more strenuous political and economic demands on schooling, Insight-imagination offers an alternative vision. Douglas Sloan thoughtfully describes the essential philosophical and cultural issues that we must confront if we are to replace the factory model of schooling with ways of teaching and learning that honor the deep ecological and spiritual roots of human existence.

Now available for the first time in paperback, Insight-imagination is an important contribution to emerging postmodern understandings of science and epistemology.  Sloan argues that the modem 'technicist' worldview is responsible for the ecological devastation and pervasive spiritual alienation threatening humanity in our age.  He explains in clear, non-technical language how the ideas of physicist David Bohm, philosophers Michael Polanyi and Owen Barfield, and other holistic thinkers portray a way of knowing that engages the whole person in a deeply meaningful relationship with the world.

Insight-Imagination is a book that will inspire teachers, administrators, and policymakers who seek fresh answers to the challenges of a deeply troubled and rapidly changing world.

Douglas Sloan is professor of History and Education, and Director of the Center for the Study of the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Fetzer Institute and teaches in the Masters Program of the Waldorf Institute of Sunbridge College.  Professor Sloan has written or edited several books on the cultural foundations of American education and was Editor of Teachers College Record from 1977 through 1984.