In his amazing TED Talk, entitled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, Sir Ken Robinson tells the story of going to see his son in the play A Nativity Scene. When the three wisemen appear (three costumed young boys), they deliver their lines with only the interpretation that youngsters can deliver. There are no ‘rights’ and no ‘wrongs’ - only point of view (I won’t ruin it for you…you’ll need to watch it for the punchline). Sir Robinson concludes, with (paraphrased):
Kids really aren’t frightened of being wrong. Unfortunately, we stigmatize mistakes and give them that fear. And the problem is that if we aren’t prepared to be wrong, we’ll never come up with anything original. We are educating people right out of their creative capacities.
In my presentation about unleashing the creative beast in work teams, my first and most important point on creating a positive, creative space is to make a safe space…where there are no ‘dumb answers’. But this level of trust takes a heckuvalotta time to achieve. Why? Well, we were taught that wrong is bad a long, long time ago. Wrong answers were met with no reward and, sometimes (often), punishment. And nobody wants to feel bad.
In addition to this we are also taught there is one right answer to almost every question. Even the most liberal curriculums have bias. What about POV? We are all well aware of the hordes of perspectives erased from historical recording. Science? It’s experimentation where theories are taken as truth (until refuted by new theories, which are, then, seen as truth). Furthermore WHAT we choose to study and from WHICH ANGLE these things are studied is incredibly biased.
My son brought home an assignment on matter, where there were multiple choice answers. In one question, it asked which of the following is a characteristic of the molecular structure of a solid: a. the atoms are spaced far apart, b. the atoms do not vibrate, c. there are no atoms. From my recollection, all three were wrong. However, b. was the answer. A quick lookup in a science journal told me that the atoms do, in fact, move, but just not very much. I urged him to write a paragraph that refuted the answers and he looked at me in horror.
But the answers were all wrong! They were misinforming students, perhaps to simplify, but they were doing a disservice nonetheless. Tad didn’t care too much. Not because he didn’t care (because in the right instance, he would take a stand), it was because he knew he couldn’t change it. There was one way to pass his class and a thousand ways to fail. He would rather just go with that one ‘right’ way.
Think about how, everyday, we have disagreements on individual POVs. Human relationships are riddled with them. Usually neither party is “right”, but there is nothing in the known universe that could resolve the conflict based on “facts”. The closest thing to the truth is that there is never one ‘truth’, only thousands of perspectives…even from those closest to the situation. It’s the messiest thing in the world to unravel truths. Then, I wonder, how do we suppose that we can so certainly ascribe any particular set of ’standards’ and ‘answers’ to learning? Why are we beating diversity and imagination and curiosity right out of the heads of our people?
So, it isn’t really that our brains are broken. It’s that the ’system’ is broken (and I say system, because I can’t think of a more accurate term right now).
We’re a whole lot of square/triangle/oblong/octagon/hexagon/etc. pegs trying to fit into round holes. And some of us find it easier to ‘fit’ than others.
A friend of mine sent me a link to this page that reads:
You’re going to the therapists because your parents know that you are not happy. You are not happy because you don’t fit in. You don’t fit in because you are not normal. So, if the therapist(s) can help you to be normal, everything will be all right.
Except for one problem.
You are not normal. There is something wrong with you. Your teachers know it. Your parents know it. Your brother and sister know it. All of the other kids know it - and they make sure that you know it, too. And how many therapists do they think it takes before you know that you are incurable. You may not be as smart as everybody thinks you are, but you’re not stupid.
I encourage everyone to read it. Maybe you see a piece of yourself there. I know that, even as a high achiever, I did. The only difference is that I dealt with it differently, with defiance, with resentment and with defensiveness.
Now, I know what some of you may be thinking (or maybe I don’t?): “If we don’t have measurements, how can we expect to understand progress? Performance? Etc.?”
I don’t know. Do we need to understand these things in 2-dimensions? It seems quite trite and externalized. It’s forgetting the amazing intrinsic motivations we naturally possess.
As well, defining one ‘right’ is, naturally, going to favour SOMEONE. It would stand to reason that those who set those measurements have set them to favour themselves. Just like the writing of history. I’ve witnessed several painfully inaccurate POVs presented as ‘truths’ in my own experiences. Hegemony surrounds us in this system. A system that uses measurements that favour a few will perpetually be in power.
If we were to make a list of what we would ‘lose’ by removing standard measurements versus a list of what we could gain, I wonder what the outcome would be?
7 Comments
I don’t want to pass too much comment on the US education system, other than the say it appears from many edublogs to be in a complete mess. Multiple choice was something we gave up on in Scotland 10 years ago.
If you want to be reassured that education systems are fit for purpose - or at least striving to get there - take a look at some of the stuff we’ve been developing in Scotland, specifically in East Lothian:
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/excel/index.html
I was in an elementary classroom the other week where they put up their mistakes onto the wall, before, eventually, putting up their best effort. Why? Because young kids tend to forget what they did the day before quite easily and this way they can use their mistakes to learn and get where they want to.
We mustn’t knock creativity out of people before they reach the end of school but, likewise, we can’t expect traditional hierarchical organisations to have successful ‘ground up’ approaches - their system, their infrastructure, and their culture all count against that possibility.
The problem is with our whole seemingly hard-wired obsession with measuring everything. And measurements generally tell us little of any use beyond what they reveal about the assumptions of the measurers.
I think you might enjoy a book that was written about thirty years ago, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” by Robert M. Pirsig. I won’t even begin to explain all of what’s in it, but one part in particular deals with the education system. The author spent time as a teacher at a college in Montana. He taught freshman English. He decided to suspend grading for a semester to see what would happen. He wanted to restore creativity to his students, and take away the “if you won’t whip me, I won’t work” credo that he thought grading enforced. It was an interesting experiment… The students went through stages, like grief: anger, denial, bargaining, etc. Eventually acceptance, first by the brightest students, then by the others. But it did create problems, too… long story. But an interesting read. It did “unblock” kids and improved their writing because they stopped worrying about the grade they were trying to get and started thinking about how to write better. Again, I think you might enjoy the book. Many interesting, thought-provoking ideas about the source of “creativity.”
Dead on! Check out the Tribes Learning Community idea for schools as well. Here’s a quote below from their site.
And here’s another great quote about being different from a science fiction novel trilogy I read a long time ago (that got me interested in political science, philosophy, and martial arts) called The Man Who Never Missed by Steve Perry.
I think this is why I love reading books and watching movies so much because they help us to achieve a different perspective on life and the world around us that we might not have had the chance to experience otherwise.
There are some REALLY interesting correlations to be made with the topics in this post… I’ll have to think about them some more at length later.
From your post:
It’s interesting to think that the One who IS right, is already favored; God. He already has the power.
Also interesting is that He doesn’t force it on us, but gave us free will, to go and try wrong things. (and loves us even still)
Of course, the above comes back to the fact that I believe there is a single Ultimate Truth. This still doesn’t solve important questions like “Banana Split or Chocolate Thunder”, so there’s still a lot of thinking and (yummy) investigation to be done.
Two last things before I go:
1. Newtonian physics is Wrong, but we still use it. It’s a suitable approximation, until you look closer and have to use relativity and quantum stuff, which are also approximations. I’m not sure what approximation level your son’s science class was working at, but among the three answers, it has some minor validity.
2. For your grain of salt to take this with, consult my disclaimer, which points out that your view of the universe may differ.
The system really, really is broken. And it is a “system”. A “human system”, anyway. Probably the best description of how it’s broken in relation to education was articulated by John Taylor Gatto in The Underground History Of American Education. Gatto describes the Victorian/Early Industrial Era origins of our current education infrastructure, and how it is designed to support turning out people who will be good employees for industry, rather than good independent thinkers and creatives, and people who can solve problems on their own, and sustain themselves.
The people who funded, and guided the creation of our modern industrial society literally believed that a tigthly-managed society, with an elite few in control at the top, would lead to a Utopian existence for all. A huge amount of our lives are still jacked into these fundamental assumptions and world-views. Especially education. Both public and private. Pedagogical principles are rooted in industrial people-management thinking.
What is happening right now, which is very interesting, is that the “pressure” from the tightly connected system of government, corporations, and public and private education is actually pushing people into creating a semi-parallel socio-economic system that is slowly building all of the infrastructure of the current system. But, the new infrstructure is based around emergent, and complex-adaptive, and human-centric assumptions. This is very new, and has only partially solidified in certain areas of society.
One area I’ve not encountered a lot of new ideas about is education. It would be really neat to see a decentralized education system emerge, one that could support the education of both adults and children, both through remote and locationbased learning, but based on totally different fundamental assumptions than some of what current educational instutions are operating under.
I can imagine that funding could actually be commons-based, so that if I sent my child to this type of schooling, which could be world-wide, I could pool my money with others world-wide. My child could opt to travel to other countries when he or she is old enough. Facilities could be set up similar to a Coworking model, but distance-learning could also play a possible large role. Independent educators could basically team-up to create an alternative educational network. This network could offer education from pre-school to University-level education. It could start it’s existence as means to educate people to live and work in an alternative global economy and society of networked independents.
Just an idea, anyway…
I just want to share one quote from Bruce Mau that I love with respect to “wrong answer”.
6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
source: An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
One Trackback
[...] ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon » Our Brains are Broken “I wonder, how do we suppose that we can so certainly ascribe any particular set of ’standards’ and ‘answers’ to learning? Why are we beating diversity and imagination and curiosity right out of the heads of our people?” (tags: education creativity life learning psychology) [...]