CAN CREATIVITY BE TAUGHT?
Reflections after reading http://www.forbes.com/sites/augustturak/2011/05/22/can-creativity-be-taught/2/
I first looked at this question as part of obtaining my GATE certificate from San Bernardino State under Dr. Susan Daniels. She had come up to Napa to run a year-long course that included three trimesters: GATE, PBL and Creativity.
When it came to the third trimester, she asked us this essential question: Did we believe creativity could be taught?
It is such a loaded question really. When I think about creativity and what it really is, I find it is so inexorably linked with intelligence. That is my schema for creativity. In the absence of cognitive impairment, brain damage, I think every functioning human brain is amazingly creative. As Patricia Wolfe re-quoted:
“If the brain was simple enough for me to understand it, I would be too simple to ask the question.”
That one really makes me laugh everytime I recall it!
Dr. Susan Daniels believes that creativity can be taught or at least facilitated. It is the job of the teacher to create the conditions on the classroom under which creativity can flourish.
One thing we do know about creativity now that we have fMRI’s that enable us to see inside the human brain, is that there is no such thing as right brain and left brain thinking. We “creatively” solve math problems and we “logically” think about art. I love this! I never believed the right brain/left brain description of people or their thinking in the same way that I do not accept Gardiner’s theory of multiple intelligences. We all have all the intelligences; we have just convinced ourselves that we are stronger in one or more areas and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are a “visual” learner, you can bet that your auditory system will kick in if you suddenly lose your sight, (This is proven in brain plasticity research.) and your perceptions of the “type of learner” you are would adjust. You are all types of learner.
One thing they found when they did an autopsy on Einstein’s brain was that the part of his brain that connected the two hemispheres, the “corpus callosum”, was thicker than usual. This showed that he was able to get very creative when thinking about the mathematical wonders of the universe. His neural connections between the two halves were thick because he was constantly accessing them back and forth as he problem solved, much like we learned that we our brain literally changes and increases in neural networks as we use it. But how do we measure creativity? There are so many ways to be creative.
Dr. Daniels gave us a creativity test. It was a paper with nothing on it except circles the size of a 50 cent piece. We were given a set number of minutes to free draw as many different “things” with the circles as we could. Everyone began drawing furiously. I decided to see the circles as portholes that we were looking through. There was no connection between my circles. Each one was just a stream of consciousness of what I imagined when looking through that porthole.
When we were done, and she called, “Stop!” You can imagine my chagrin when everyone had used the circles to draw “something”. They turned them into animals and people and full moons, etc.
I thought I had failed the assignment. I saw her stop by and look at my paper. I wanted to hide it. She just glanced and went, hmm, and moved on. I still don’t know if that represented a lack of creativity on my part or an aberration. (Maybe that girl didn’t understand the test!) But the truth is that I see myself as a highly creative person; I’ve written three screenplays and I always have more running in my mind. Who is to say who is creative or not!
I believe that we are all amazingly creative and the public school system as it exists squashes it out of us. I am NOT saying that I don’t believe in building skills sets and providing automaticity in some very key areas (phonics, grammar, multiplication, etc.); I am just saying that we need a balance in school and there has to be a place for innovation and creativity time built into our school days.
I also think that we are on the brink of huge changes for the better. It is an exciting time to be a teacher and to be shaping the classroom of the 21st Century!
Reflections after reading http://www.forbes.com/sites/augustturak/2011/05/22/can-creativity-be-taught/2/
I first looked at this question as part of obtaining my GATE certificate from San Bernardino State under Dr. Susan Daniels. She had come up to Napa to run a year-long course that included three trimesters: GATE, PBL and Creativity.
When it came to the third trimester, she asked us this essential question: Did we believe creativity could be taught?
It is such a loaded question really. When I think about creativity and what it really is, I find it is so inexorably linked with intelligence. That is my schema for creativity. In the absence of cognitive impairment, brain damage, I think every functioning human brain is amazingly creative. As Patricia Wolfe re-quoted:
“If the brain was simple enough for me to understand it, I would be too simple to ask the question.”
That one really makes me laugh everytime I recall it!
Dr. Susan Daniels believes that creativity can be taught or at least facilitated. It is the job of the teacher to create the conditions on the classroom under which creativity can flourish.
One thing we do know about creativity now that we have fMRI’s that enable us to see inside the human brain, is that there is no such thing as right brain and left brain thinking. We “creatively” solve math problems and we “logically” think about art. I love this! I never believed the right brain/left brain description of people or their thinking in the same way that I do not accept Gardiner’s theory of multiple intelligences. We all have all the intelligences; we have just convinced ourselves that we are stronger in one or more areas and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are a “visual” learner, you can bet that your auditory system will kick in if you suddenly lose your sight, (This is proven in brain plasticity research.) and your perceptions of the “type of learner” you are would adjust. You are all types of learner.
One thing they found when they did an autopsy on Einstein’s brain was that the part of his brain that connected the two hemispheres, the “corpus callosum”, was thicker than usual. This showed that he was able to get very creative when thinking about the mathematical wonders of the universe. His neural connections between the two halves were thick because he was constantly accessing them back and forth as he problem solved, much like we learned that we our brain literally changes and increases in neural networks as we use it. But how do we measure creativity? There are so many ways to be creative.
Dr. Daniels gave us a creativity test. It was a paper with nothing on it except circles the size of a 50 cent piece. We were given a set number of minutes to free draw as many different “things” with the circles as we could. Everyone began drawing furiously. I decided to see the circles as portholes that we were looking through. There was no connection between my circles. Each one was just a stream of consciousness of what I imagined when looking through that porthole.
When we were done, and she called, “Stop!” You can imagine my chagrin when everyone had used the circles to draw “something”. They turned them into animals and people and full moons, etc.
I thought I had failed the assignment. I saw her stop by and look at my paper. I wanted to hide it. She just glanced and went, hmm, and moved on. I still don’t know if that represented a lack of creativity on my part or an aberration. (Maybe that girl didn’t understand the test!) But the truth is that I see myself as a highly creative person; I’ve written three screenplays and I always have more running in my mind. Who is to say who is creative or not!
I believe that we are all amazingly creative and the public school system as it exists squashes it out of us. I am NOT saying that I don’t believe in building skills sets and providing automaticity in some very key areas (phonics, grammar, multiplication, etc.); I am just saying that we need a balance in school and there has to be a place for innovation and creativity time built into our school days.
I also think that we are on the brink of huge changes for the better. It is an exciting time to be a teacher and to be shaping the classroom of the 21st Century!