UnitnbspnbspBirthnbspfnbspBrightnbspIeasnbsp本单元教学目标：nbsp“Imaginatinnbspisnbspmre.doc

Unit 8 Birth of Bright Ideas 本单元教学目标： “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” said Einstein. Yet education has for too many years ignored this fact. Now, research in America shows that students who study imaginative subjects like art, music and drama score as much as 68 points higher on a national university entrance examination than those who have no education in these areas. In addition, the more arts courses students complete, the higher the examination scores are. Such results have occurred repeatedly for more than a dozen years with over one million high school students. These results and recent brain research on arts students have finally registered the importance of imagination to learning. In this unit, you will meet many examples of imaginative thinking which show that famous people do not succeed without this essential quality. 　 背景知识 ⑴ Richard Wagner (1813-1883), the greatest composer of German opera, made a major addition to the nature of opera through his writings about and the creation of music drama. Music drama combines singing, orchestra, verse, story, drama and spectacle. Wagners works include the The Ring of the Nibelung (1853-1874), a set of four operas based on historical German stories. For an introduction to Wagner as well as other resources on the Internet, please visit /wagner/index.html or /entertainment/music/. ⑵The Rhinegold, the first of the four operas in the Ring cycle, exemplifies Wagners theory of music drama in its purest form. ⑶ La Spezia is an industrial port and Italys chief naval station in northwest Italy. Wagner visited here in 1853 when he left his exile in Switzerland to which he had escaped during World War II. For more information such as maps and photos, etc. of La Spezia, please visit /ct_00067.asp (or in general). ⑷ Henri Poincare (1854-1912), a great French mathematics and theoretical science professor at the Sorbonne (University of Paris), had a highly original influence on the development of p