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
By
Kenneth Nwachinemelu David-Okafor
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.
Sir Robinson apart, other scholars including Gai Lindsay and
Marvin Bartel have reinforced this assertion and gone ahead to state their own additional
arguments.
However the position I am presenting here is that for the Nigerian
(African) context, it is our prevailing child-rearing system, in addition to
the school system, that is "educating people out of their creativity."
In my earlier post I did not dwell on this point in any
detail. However for this recharged version I decided to touch upon the culture
of child-rearing system and a number of attenuating factors which the same
culture.
Firstly, our traditional and hierarchical cultural inclinations, while to
be commended in terms of respect to elders (even if that is under threat),
harbours within itself the self-limiting seeds of encouraging the imposition of
"counsel" from elders even when, in fact, such counsel might be
outdated, uninformed or ignorant outright. Our culture teaches and propagates
that the elders know the right paths as custodians of wit, wisdom and
experience which might not necessarily be the true position because of new
knowledge and fresh developments about which the elders are clueless.
Secondly, many parents and guardians are without support in their parenting
and guardianship roles toward the tedious yet ennobling task of molding their
children through their formative years. Nigeria with all its peculiarities of a
developing and mono-cultural economy had compelled parents and guardian to err
on the side of caution when it comes to the future of their children and wards.
They avoid risky choices and go for safe bets, especially as it pertains to
career choices.
Thirdly, the converse is that there are the hyper-preoccupied parents and
guardians who outsource child rearing to househelps and schools, choosing to
provide things than engage with the child.
Fourthly, there is the recurring challenge for parents and guardians to
accurately read the temperaments and aptitudes (including areas of high
affinity or flair) of their children.
Fifthly, the constraints of routine guidance and counseling which has no
backing of a detailed and systematic psychological profiling and character
study of the counselee.
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".
Gai Lindsay on the other hand says, "British educator Ken
Robinson blames formal schooling for killing off children’s creative potential.
Actually, this process starts much earlier – when early childhood educators are
not well trained in the artistic knowledge and mindset to nurture children’s
imagination, meaning-making, and creative expression using visual art materials
and methods.
"If educators and communities do not nurture children’s
artistic creativity in the vital early childhood years, their lifelong
potential for engaged creative learning is stifled."
Dr Marvin Bartel in turn wrote, "In many cultures some
families and most schools use a lot of negative behaviour management. If
children grow up in a highly controlled environment with too many prohibitions,
only a small percentage of them manage to persistent and retain their natural
creativity. Most of their neurons and thinking habits that would have developed
to make a creative mind have been pruned. Their natural tendencies to be
adventuresome, experimental, and creative become suppressed. There may always
be a very few highly creative who can resist the drill and kill educational
methods and the excessive prohibitions of controlling parents. Tragically, the
majority of children give up and accommodate. They abandon their imaginative
and creative curiosity about life in favor of more secure, but imposed and
programmed kind of thinking habits. They accept answers from their instructors
as correct (without enough thought)."
 |
The United States’ Children’s Creativity Museum is an
interactive art and technology museum for kids. The Children’s Creativity
Museum mission is to nurture the 3C’s of 21st-century skills – Creativity,
Collaboration and Communication – in all youth
|
For
Nigeria, successful child rearing should be a
matter of fostering a helpful climate
rather than "command and control" and the learning environment should
be experiential, flexible and adaptable type rather than "drill and kill"
type.
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 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 a definite 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 learning
curve through innate creative development too 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. Better yet develop your own more culturally
appropriate tactics.
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.
I am in complete agreement with William Arthur Ward who said,
"We
have not completely fulfilled our responsibility as parents until we bequeath
to our children a love of books, a thirst for knowledge, a hunger for
righteousness, an awareness of beauty, a memory of kindness, an understanding
of loyalty, a vision of greatness and a good name."
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 CURIOSITY AND DISCOVER THE JOY OF DISCOVERING THINGS. . .
This blog post was updated June 18, 2016
