Education Science ›› 2026, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (4): 20-26.

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“Le temps d’après”: A “Non-Logical” Path to Safeguarding Children’s Inspiration and Creativity

Zhang Jingwei1,2, Li Pengjiao1   

  1. 1 Faculty of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China
    2 Singularity Academy, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
  • Online:2026-07-15 Published:2026-09-29

Abstract:

As an important form of children’s inspiration and creative cognition, non-logical thinking has distinctive generative power and contains deep potential for cognitive breakthroughs and individual spiritual growth. However, in the current efficiency-oriented educational environment dominated by economic rationality, non-logical thinking has been marginalized because it is difficult to standardize, quantify, and measure. Leisure, a key pathway for its development, has also been systematically compressed. From the perspective of Rancière’s philosophy of the distribution of the sensible, this study re-examines the hierarchical order of educational time allocation and the construction of children’s identity as “students,” revealing how they shape a logic-dominated learning order and obscure the space for developing non-logical capacities such as free imagination, intuitive insight, and affective association. Based on the political deconstruction of educational time, this study proposes the methodological principle of a “revolution of time”: reclaiming time to confront indeterminate meaning, stimulating suspension to create linear spaces for situated imagination, and constructing a community of the sensible to generate multiple integrated temporal sequences.

Key words: time, otium, creativity, non-logical capacities

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