Summary: Publisher Summary 1 Explores the impact that imagination in preschool and early childhood education has had on the lives of various populations.   Publisher Summary 2 Examines historical features of early childhood education and traces major innovations in the field. Explores Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian influences on the development of education from antiquity through the medieval period and up to the present day. Highlights the work of pioneers including Plato, Jean Frederic Oberlin, Annie Marie Hall (founder of one of the first schools for black children), Jane Addams, Maria Montessori, B. F. Skinner, and John Dewey. Includes a few historical b&w photos and illustrations. Morgan is a professor of early childhood education at the State University of West Georgia. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)   Publisher Summary 3 This book informs students and scholars of early childhood education about the vital influences that imagination in preschool and early childhood education has exerted upon the lives of various populations. It explores the deeper imaginations of scholars of philosophy and theory, and describes how their work has found its way into present-day classroom practices. The imagination of early philosophers, writers, and teachers, like Aesop, Plato, Socrates, Locke, and Rousseau, are considered in terms of how they affected the theories of Comenius, Oberlin, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, Freud, Piaget, and Erikson. These thinkers are integrated throughout the text in their proper historical and philosophical periods.