A Little Book Full of Big Ideas!

Cobb, Edith
The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood
Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1993

This is a book to sit with and enjoy over a cup of coffee, or to excitedly sneak a few pages of on a crowded subway; it is a book to discuss with friends, and a book to feed your teaching. Part biography, part philosophy, part psychology, part ecology, and part pure excitement for the magic of an imaginative childhood, Edith Cobb’s prose is engaging and deep. Her language is pleasantly thoughtful and gives me a familiar and almost nostalgic feeling (Cobb lived from 1895-1977 and did much of her research in the 1940s, 50s and 60s). Yet there is nothing old fashioned about this book: Cobb’s topic is current and relevant, and to me almost revolutionary in its advocacy for childhood creativity and play as the impetus for a creative adulthood. The book’s simply illustrated cover, the straightforward typeface, and thick texture of its paper make each of the book’s 100 pages seem particularly special and important to me. The book’s small size fits in my purse and the style is equally scholarly and conversational. This is just the sort of book I’d carry with me throughout the week, to read in a spare moment and to feed my creative mind and my teaching. I didn’t want to put it down!

Cobb herself was a lover of biographies (her personal collection of hundreds of autobiographies of childhood now resides at Teacher’s College’s Gottesman Library), and a central tenet of her work is that childhood creative play and work (to her they are the same) lay the groundwork for a creative and productive adulthood. This belief came initially from noticing within biographies and autobiographies of “geniuses” (artistic, scientific, and other) a consistent reference to positive childhood imaginative experiences. Cobb’s states that in her research she was not “…in search of the ‘gifted’ child, the special child, but on the contrary wished to compare the statements of adult geniuses about their childhood recollections with the ‘natural genius of the child’ (in Erik Erikson’s phrase)” (17). I believe Cobb was really onto something: as I read her words I too thought back to my own childhood, highlighting certain moments and wondering about the connection between these and my current life as a dancer/choreographer/teaching artist.

This work, which Cobb produced and revised during much of her life, is here divided into eight chapters: “Prelude to a Method,” “Wonder as the Genesis of Knowledge,” “Anatomy of the Sense of Wonder,” “The Ecology of Perceptual Organization,” “A Biocultural Continuum,” “The Ecology of Individuality,” “The Evolution of Meaning,” and “Creative Evolution: A Process of Compassion.” These titles alone excite me about this book’s relevance to imaginative teaching and learning as practiced by Lincoln Center Institute! The book also includes a glowing introduction by Cobb’s friend and colleague Margaret Mead.

Individuals who are referenced, or whose autobiographies and musings are woven throughout the work, include people as varied as Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Paul Klee, and Isaac Newton. Cobb and her architect husband, Boughton Cobb, shared a deep love and reverence for ecology and this shows throughout the work. As a result, one of Cobb’s primary objectives is to directly link the creativity of childhood to a child’s experience of ecology (nature) across her or his early life. And while this point of view does not directly link to my work as a dance teaching artist, I love her thoughtful philosophy about the topic, and the discussion feels relevant. Ultimately it is a more general understanding of the necessity of a creative childhood that stands out most to me: Cobb’s terrific advocacy for this idea, which I will carry with me.

For more information about Edith Cobb, check out this article by Margaret Mead.

Click here to purchase this book.

Click here to find a library near you that owns this book.

Authorized to borrow resources from LCI’s Resource Center? Click here to send an e-mail request (please include your name, address, relationship to the Institute, and title of the resource you would like to borrow).