I absolutely LOVED our class today on symphony and, again, enjoyed the chapter. It keeps surprising me that this book is so well-written and easy to understand (maybe I'm a bit jaded after Freedman...). Pink describes the sense of symphony as, "The capacity to synthesize rather than to analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelates fields; to detect broad patterns rather than to deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair (130)." As both artists and art teachers, this is something that we do every day. We make meaning by creating metaphors and ideas, connecting thing to thing to thing. This chapter reminded me a lot of Gardner's chapter in Five Minds for the Future and his Synthesizing Mind because they are essentially the same. While we as teachers and artists are skilled at creating connections, this may be something that our students may not be as experienced with. It is important to teach students to think metaphorically and synectically not only to create meaningful art, but for more well-rounded minds. Teaching students for symphony will aid them in all of their other coursework because they will be able to create intellectual spider threads that combine what they have learned to what they already know, building on prior knowledge and thus building a beautiful web of symphonic thought.
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