Monday, November 18, 2013

How We Lost Our Curiosity – and Our Creative Bend



The Killer Rhetorical Question: Don’t You Have Something Better To Do?


 “The true novelist, poet, musician, or artist is really a discoverer.”

An Anatomy of Inspiration (1942)
Rosamund E. M. Harding

“Curiosity and creativity are genetic characteristics of humans, well demonstrated in pre-school youngsters. Later, the characteristics often atrophy as people adapt to the pressures of structures, inertias, reward systems, and responsibilities associated with schooling and employment. Interactions with this surrounding culture can yield a much more positive result if the individual develops some understanding of the process of creativity, and/or if the culture facilitates and motivates creativity. In other words, the spark of creativity can be smothered or fanned into flame. The potential is genetic and we all have it; its nurturing determines its strength.

“Civilization is in the midst of unprecedented growth. This presents unprecedented opportunity and responsibility. Creativity and the associated invention/innovation and entrepreneurship, benefiting both individuals and society, are essential elements if civilization is to move to a desirable, sustainable condition. Pioneering schools are changing educational methodologies so as to give creativity the high priority it deserves.”
                                               
Unleashing Creativity (1995 Speech)

Paul B. MacCready, AeroVironment, Inc.

A keynote presentation at the Lemelson Center's symposium, "The Inventor and the Innovative Society," November 10, 1995



CURIOSITY, AND THUS CREATIVITY STARTS WITH CHILDREN.

Dr Paul MacCready, one of the most prolific American inventors in his lifetime, said in the Keynote speech at the 1995 Lemelson Centre’s symposium excerpted above "Watch a 3-5 year old youngster and you see in action a curious, creative inventor, an explorer, a self-motivated scientist/engineer, an artist, a comedian, a remarkable linguist, and, in uncanny skills for manipulating adults, a consummate psychologist. And all this can be relatively independent of IQ and socioeconomic circumstances. As the child acquires skills and knowledge in schools, and later experience as an adult, some narrowing occurs. "

What causes the narrowing that Dr Paul MacCready talks about?

Before I start in earnest I want to adjure you, especially if you are a parent or guardian, the next child you see fiddling with some old equipment or contraption, please do not ask that child, "Don’t you have something better to do?"

It was Ken Robinson that argued that the current education system is "educating people out of their creativity". In my second post on this blog, I had promised to explain why I agree with Ken Robinson — actually Sir Kenneth Robinson, educator and author.

However the position I am presenting here is that for the Nigerian (African) context, it is our prevailing child-rearing system that is "educating people out of their creativity."

Sir Kenneth Robinson is an English author, speaker, and international advisor on education in the arts to government, non-profits, education, and arts bodies. He was Director of The Arts in Schools Project (1985–89), Professor of Arts Education at the University of Warwick (1989–2001), and was knighted in 2003 for services to education. In his scholarly work, Sir Robinson has focused on creativity in the general population with respect to education.

From his ideas about education, Robinson has suggested that to engage and succeed, education develop on three fronts. First, that it should foster diversity by offering a broad curriculum and encouraging individualization of the learning process; That it should foster curiosity through creative teaching, which depends on high quality teacher training and development; And finally that it should focus on awakening creativity through alternative didactic processes that put less emphasis on standardized testing, giving the responsibility for defining the course of education to individual schools and teachers. He believes that much of the present education system in the United States fosters conformity, compliance, and standardization rather than creative approaches to learning. Robinson emphasizes that we can only succeed if we recognize that education is an organic system, not a mechanical one. Successful school administration is a matter of fostering a helpful climate rather than "command and control".

For Nigeria, successful child rearing should be a matter of fostering a helpful climate rather than "command and control".

The statement I believe with which most parents and / or guardians, whenever they have uttered it without thinking, killed their children’s and / or wards’ curiosity and thus their creative inclination: DON’T YOU HAVE SOMETHING BETTER TO DO?

I don’t know if this ever happened to you while growing up. You were out in the backyard, alone or with some playmates, ‘fooling around’ with some old junk you found lying around and a parent, seeing you busy do nothing, at least from their own point of view, then comes and asks, "Don’t you have something better to do?"

Of course, your parent(s) means well for you. They want you to succeed in life: get a good education and get a well paying job afterwards. However this may not necessarily be your own pathway to success in life. But your parent may not know this.

Certainly, children require robust guidance and the setting of strict limits, so they do not wander off tangent. What should be aimed at therefore is balance. The challenge is knowing what that balance is or should be. Parenting skills are hardly taught in this part of the world, so how would a parent (educated or not) learn how to raise a curious and creative child?

Children are curious, very much so. What do you do with curious children?

I have no perfect answer — I am still pondering the question myself. However I have used my personal experience growing up to try and give my own children a better chance at exploring their natural curiosity.

WE CAN TEACH OUR CHILDREN CREATIVE THINKING AT HOME WHICH IS WHERE CHILDREN, I HAVE OBSERVED, ARE MOST INTUITIVE.

This is definitely a challenge, I acknowledge, with most people already choked with the effects of trying to provide the basics for the same child. Yet if we can support the child’s development in this way, then you would achieve a much better outcome. Learn the child’s temperament, natural inclinations, tendencies as well as idiosyncrasies...then guide the child. It would be a far more rewarding and enriching relationship.

Let me highlight the work of Graham Wallas, English social psychologist and London School of Economics co-founder. Published in 1926, The Art of Thought — outlines 4 stages of the creative process, based both on his own empirical observations and on the accounts of famous inventors and polymaths.

In the Graham Wallas stage model, creative insights and illuminations may be explained by a process consisting of 4 stages:

(i) preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),
(ii) incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),
(iii) illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its preconscious processing into conscious awareness); and
(iv) verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).

Some people like to consider 5 stages: often adding ‘intimation’ (the creative person gets a "feeling" that a solution is on its way) to the process after ‘incubation’.

Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, which allowed humans to quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments. THIS IS WHERE I DIFFER FROM GRAHAM WALLAS. I am of the view that creativity is divinely inspired rather than a legacy of the evolutionary process. 

Beyond Graham Wallas’s work there are several other models proposed in the creativity literature for the process of creative thinking. Arieti (1976) cataloged seven additional such models that were proposed during the period 1908 to 1964.  Several more models have been proposed since. Analysis of these various models reveals some common threads.

  • The creative process involves purposeful analysis, imaginative idea generation, and critical evaluation the total creative process is a balance of imagination and analysis.
  • Older models tend to imply that creative ideas result from subconscious processes, largely outside the control of the thinker. Modern models tend to imply purposeful generation of new ideas, under the direct control of the thinker.
  • The total creative process requires a drive to action and the implementation of ideas. We must do more than simply imagine new things, we must work to make them concrete realities.

These insights from a review of the many models of creative thinking should be encouraging to us. Serious business people often have strong skills in practical, scientific, concrete, and analytical thinking. Contrary to popular belief, the modern theory of creativity does not require that we discard these skills. What we do need to do, however, is to supplement these with some new thinking skills to support the generation of novel insights and ideas.

Let children, play, and learn from what is around them. Guide their curiosities, and channel their energies. Try not to stifle their creative development to much by compelling them to conform to rigid and inflexible curricula of formal education. Follow up with the stages of the creative process Mr Wallas proposed, if you find it useful. If you run out of ideas, GET HELP. All these should not stop the parent making sure the child still gets a regular education, too.

Again, I say that curiosity and thus creativity starts with children. LET US ALLOW CHILDREN DEVELOP THEIR CURIOSITY. It has great future rewards, I believe. PLEASE, LET OUR CHILDREN FOLLOW THEIR CURIOSTY AND DISCOVER THE JOY OF DISCOVERING THINGS. . .

Reference & note:

Arieti, S (1976) Creativity: The Magical Synthesis. New York: Basic Books.

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