Once Again About the Semantic Nature of Imagination

Abstract

This is the paradoxical semantic realism – the realism of children’s imagination, when the technical aspect recedes into the background, but in the process the image remains adequate. Vygotsky [not cited in the original.–Ed.] already wrote long ago about the fact that preschoolers in general take a semantic approach to solving the problems they confront (this is a concretization of his overall idea of the semantic structure of human consciousness). This latter fact, unfortunately, is often overlooked by the authors of many programs of teaching representational activity, which from the outset place an emphasis on learning, say, the technical methods and instruments of drawing and do not care at all about developing in children a semantic vision of the world based on imagination. Yet, this is the most important factor.