14-09-2006, 03:58 PM
An interesting article on creativity: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.d...242/health
Do you think creativity can be taught? How?
Cheers,
Christina
Do you think creativity can be taught? How?
Cheers,
Christina
14-09-2006, 03:58 PM
20-09-2006, 07:18 PM
I know that some people may perhaps yawn or think that I am harping, but the phenomenon of puppetry opens a very wide window on the subject of creativity in children and adults. It raises a myriad of questions that inevitably must be asked just to begin framing an answer to the question, Can creativity be taught? This is a question that needs boiling down as it relates to education. And to the larger question of harnessing the human imagination, promoting scientific inquiry, or empowering the young to think creatively, you have to frame the question in context of nature.
Over that art which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes.
--Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Creativity is inherent in nature. Creative minds glimpse, think, and work with their hands creatively, and scientists see connections and patterns that may somehow hold as law or predictability. Children are inherently creative. It would seem more prudent to foster their creativity than to ‘teach’ them creativity. All too often creativity that is taught becomes subject to the academic anvil and the hammer of the test and the grade, if not judgment.
Now take the gifted child with the talent and an inborn attraction to make music on an instrument: the adult working with, coaching, nurturing, or teaching the child, as well as the parental-adult objectives surrounding this process, will determine whether the child will flower with his music-making or ultimately reject it.
Creativity is more like a spring-fed stream or the silk that runs from the spider’s spinnerets. In people, creativity is a complex behavior rooted in the brain but fed by the senses—and the use of the hand. A creative child living in a culture devoid of play and sensory input will eventually grow to reflect the culture. (I’m betting there are studies that support this observation.)
One of the best books I have read on this subject is, In the Mind’s Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Learning Difficulties, computer images, and the Ironies of Creativity, by Thomas G. West.
Then there is the elitism and exclusivity that accompanies the activity of creativity. The famous artists with work that commands thousands, and the aspiring artists who work toward that goal, the teacher who puts creative work up on the bulletin board—all of these view art as an end product. The creative process is subordinate to the product. This domain of the product makers is exclusive. These are the A students of creativity.
The hierarchy of creativity is built on perception of value and this rests on the old academic, competitive culture we promote. It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz where these poor, self-negating spirits (the rest of us) search for the Wizard who will give them all we need to be whole. Meanwhile, their teachers who are simultaneously the gatekeepers of creative IQ and personal worth are often, just like the Wizard himself, the most afraid of being creative and playful with children, and equally the most critical judge of their own creativity. And herein lies the dilemma of teaching, let alone modeling, creativity in our schools. “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” wrote Gandhi. Our schools, classrooms, and teachers, increasingly in lockdown because of standardization, were never really the icons of creativity and inhibition around whom children need to feel safe and expressive. And so what we have in classrooms is a captive audience held by captive adults, working in captivity where freedom of movement, self, expression, and speech are denied in the name of education.
This is why I wrote in a previous forum that you can read all the books and subscribe to all the pedagogic theories like Multiple Intelligence, for example, but unless you find a way to harness and grow the creative forces inherent in nature that are also inherent in children not yet damaged by the culture, you will not be able to foster the kind of creativity that empowers and reaches every child with its taste and aroma. In a given school, you have the 'creative' teacher or two. The creative ones get stuck with doing all the work for a special program for parent’s night. The large majority of the school’s large majority of children in a school are not deemed 'gifted or talented', even though, given the chance and the nurturing, they would love to feel the surge and spirit of creativity. I can’t tell you how many times I have conducted children’s workshops and had the teacher come up to me afterwards and say, “I’m amazed. I didn’t think they could be this creative.” Thus, the point here really is that the same space for creativity must be accorded teachers in their development that we (at least in principle) want for children. If we don’t empower adults before they work with children, they will, unintentionally
Over that art which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes.
--Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Creativity is inherent in nature. Creative minds glimpse, think, and work with their hands creatively, and scientists see connections and patterns that may somehow hold as law or predictability. Children are inherently creative. It would seem more prudent to foster their creativity than to ‘teach’ them creativity. All too often creativity that is taught becomes subject to the academic anvil and the hammer of the test and the grade, if not judgment.
Now take the gifted child with the talent and an inborn attraction to make music on an instrument: the adult working with, coaching, nurturing, or teaching the child, as well as the parental-adult objectives surrounding this process, will determine whether the child will flower with his music-making or ultimately reject it.
Creativity is more like a spring-fed stream or the silk that runs from the spider’s spinnerets. In people, creativity is a complex behavior rooted in the brain but fed by the senses—and the use of the hand. A creative child living in a culture devoid of play and sensory input will eventually grow to reflect the culture. (I’m betting there are studies that support this observation.)
One of the best books I have read on this subject is, In the Mind’s Eye: Visual Thinkers, Gifted People with Learning Difficulties, computer images, and the Ironies of Creativity, by Thomas G. West.
Then there is the elitism and exclusivity that accompanies the activity of creativity. The famous artists with work that commands thousands, and the aspiring artists who work toward that goal, the teacher who puts creative work up on the bulletin board—all of these view art as an end product. The creative process is subordinate to the product. This domain of the product makers is exclusive. These are the A students of creativity.
The hierarchy of creativity is built on perception of value and this rests on the old academic, competitive culture we promote. It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz where these poor, self-negating spirits (the rest of us) search for the Wizard who will give them all we need to be whole. Meanwhile, their teachers who are simultaneously the gatekeepers of creative IQ and personal worth are often, just like the Wizard himself, the most afraid of being creative and playful with children, and equally the most critical judge of their own creativity. And herein lies the dilemma of teaching, let alone modeling, creativity in our schools. “You must be the change you want to see in the world,” wrote Gandhi. Our schools, classrooms, and teachers, increasingly in lockdown because of standardization, were never really the icons of creativity and inhibition around whom children need to feel safe and expressive. And so what we have in classrooms is a captive audience held by captive adults, working in captivity where freedom of movement, self, expression, and speech are denied in the name of education.
This is why I wrote in a previous forum that you can read all the books and subscribe to all the pedagogic theories like Multiple Intelligence, for example, but unless you find a way to harness and grow the creative forces inherent in nature that are also inherent in children not yet damaged by the culture, you will not be able to foster the kind of creativity that empowers and reaches every child with its taste and aroma. In a given school, you have the 'creative' teacher or two. The creative ones get stuck with doing all the work for a special program for parent’s night. The large majority of the school’s large majority of children in a school are not deemed 'gifted or talented', even though, given the chance and the nurturing, they would love to feel the surge and spirit of creativity. I can’t tell you how many times I have conducted children’s workshops and had the teacher come up to me afterwards and say, “I’m amazed. I didn’t think they could be this creative.” Thus, the point here really is that the same space for creativity must be accorded teachers in their development that we (at least in principle) want for children. If we don’t empower adults before they work with children, they will, unintentionally
22-09-2006, 12:47 PM
Thanks very much for your reflections on creativity.
You make a very important point that teachers who are not given space to be creative are not likely to inspire creativity in students. Teachers are not given enough freedom in their classrooms. How can teachers infuse their classrooms with their own creativity when their hands are tied by standardized tests? We need to restructure our education system to encourage creative thought.
Cheers,
Christina
You make a very important point that teachers who are not given space to be creative are not likely to inspire creativity in students. Teachers are not given enough freedom in their classrooms. How can teachers infuse their classrooms with their own creativity when their hands are tied by standardized tests? We need to restructure our education system to encourage creative thought.
Cheers,
Christina