What is the state of public education today?
There is new and growing concern and dialogue in America that the historic promise of public education is being stifled and that we not offering the opportunity to our young people to move beyond average in their achievement and expectations.

Over the past two years, a number of studies indicate that current educational approaches stifle both students and educators alike by focusing on a definition of “the basics” that contradicts relevant lifestyles, occupational skill sets, and a national goal for innovation in a global environment. Competency for building capacities of the imagination rests primarily with an education in and through the arts, but incorporating imagination across the curriculum produces the strongest results. Both national reports and public belief highlight the importance of developing skills of the imagination and indicate that America is falling behind other nations in that area.

Why is it important to build capacities of the imagination?
Developing the imagination will provide students with the creative workforce skills essential to a knowledge-based economy. In an era of insurmountable progress and discovery, a static foundation of facts and modest skills no longer suffices. Instead, our economy rewards ingenuity, and the quality of our personal and civic lives demands thinking and reasoning skills to grapple with a complex world.

The development and use of the imagination is not confined to a single discipline, nor can the content, skills, and modes of thought of a single discipline satisfy the demand to develop the other skills recent national reports deem crucial to the current and future workforce: collaboration and teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving, flexibility, adaptability, and the ability to communicate in multiple forms. Integrated, interdisciplinary learning is essential to developing these skills.

What is imagination?
Imagination is defined as the cognitive capacity to visualize new possibilities for human thought and action.

What is the imagine nation?
The imagine nation is an affinity population of American who believe that building capacities of the imagination is critical. In particular, the imagine nation constituency represents voters who, when asked initially, say that incorporating building the capacities of the imagination into core courses is extremely critical. This constituency comprises 30 percent of likely voters nationwide.

What does this affinity population believe?
People in the affinity population agree that imagination as developed by arts education builds 21st century skills to help cultivate creativity as demanded in today’s economy, to strengthen our civic health, and to enhance our quality of life.

Voters, and the imagination constituency in particular, also reject that the basics and technology alone prepare students for success in the 21st century. They also push back against the notion of leaving the imagination for outside the classroom. Voters feel that an education in the arts makes a major contribution to developing the imagination, participating in a group or being a team player, learning to set goals, and respecting multiple values and perspectives.

How does the public respond to this issue?
57 percent of all voters say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who came out in support of building the capacities of the imagination among students in public schools.

Voters are even more likely to punish a candidate who has voted to cut funding for building capacities of the imagination in schools. More than half of voters say they would be less likely to vote for that candidate.

How does an education in and through the arts help to develop the imagination?
The purpose for teaching the arts is to enable students to develop the capacities to create, perform, and respond with understanding, critical judgment, and appreciation of works of art. Mind, heart, and body are challenged in doing so; the human being is fully engaged.

But which cognitive, personal, and social skills are required? What habits of mind and personal dispositions are developed as the learner grows more competent?
Compilations of more than 60 peer-reviewed independent studies published in recent years by the Arts Education Partnership have begun to provide research-based answers to these questions. From an education in and through the arts, students improve in the following cognitive capacities:

	Symbolic understanding: understanding and using multiple modes to represent and communicate ideas and feelings.
	Imagination: visualizing new possibilities for human thought and action and the use of materials
	Creativity: originality, flexibility, and elaboration in making what was imagined
	Conditional reasoning: theorizing about actions, outcomes, and consequences; defining and generating optional approaches and solutions to problems and conditions
	Critical thinking: developing and applying criteria and standards for making judgments about quality
	Collaborative learning and action: participating as a contributing member in a group process of acquiring and manifesting knowledge and skills; supporting the conditions for openness and risk taking

Arts education has also been shown to develop the following habits of mind:

	Persistence: sustaining concentration and attention to a task
	Resilience: managing challenges; overcoming frustration and failure
	Achievement motivation: the desire to succeed in fulfilling goals and expectations
	Engagement: absorption in the content, processes and pleasures of learning

What can educators and policy-makers do?
The following are 5 recommendations to integrate imaginative learning into curricula.

Who comprises the imagine nation?
The imagine nation is comprised of the public itself. Through polling and combining results and data from over two years of surveys and focus group research, it is apparent that a large segment of the population is ready to act to ensure that building capacities of the imagination in education is a national priority. As a result, a growing coalition of supporters is beginning to form. Those supporters recognize this important constituency and are willing to provide access to information showing the importance of the imagination to the development of 21st Century skills in America.