Unit 4-Creativity

"Games are the most elevated form of investigation." -Albert Einstein

I was excited about the fact that the student exploration was highlighted numerous times in Gardner's chapter entitled "The Creating Mind." The thought of exploration among young people took me back to the days I worked at a Montessori preschool. The students appeared to be playing, but were exploring their world and spending the entire day working on projects and testing, failing, testing again to see which was the most successful end result. They spent all day thinking of creative solutions to problems. The teachers allowed productive mistakes.

Unfortunately, in the typical public school, the K-8 teachers are required to complete X amount of workbook pages per day. A popular CA Language Arts curriculum is actually scripted, so the teacher must read from his/her teachers' editions for the entire 90 minute class period. Although the scores on standardized tests can try to prove that student achievement has improved, in actuality, teachers are not allowed to be creative, and certainly even more so, students are not allowed to be creative. Instead of open-ended questions, many have just one right answer. Students who don't fit in the box of "model student" often check out.

The most creative students I have taught have often been the ones who are diagnosed with ADD or Dyslexia. Unfortunately, these are the ones quickest to get into trouble in school and be undervalued. As Gardner said, "There is a reason why so many famous creators hated or dropped out of school-they did not like marching to someone else's tune (and, in turn, the authorities disliked their idiosyncratic marching patterns). (Gardner, p. 83)

We must all begin to value time spent on developing the creative mind. They must work on their own without a "helicopter" text or teacher telling them what to do each step of the way. I have found a wonderful resource in Daniel H. Pink's book A Whole New Mind. His eighth chapter is simply titled "Play" and includes numerous resources to help us all develop our creative mind. There are numerous examples of why we need to continue playing and what value there is in it. That led me to the website
http://www.inventionatplay.org/index.html
which is run by Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Within this site the student can choose from four "games" that focus on different aspects:
*Exploration/Tinkering (physics game where you move objects around to create a path for a rolling ball),
*Make Believe/Visual Thinking (you design a cloud and watch it float by),
*Social Play/Collaboration (you see short story that someone else has started online. You grab words from the word bank and add to the story) and
*Puzzle Play/Problem Solving (a game like Tangrams where you use various shapes to put together a picture of something.)
In addition to the games, there is a wonderful section titled "Inventor insights" where students are able to click on an inventor and read what he or she has invented and the story behind it. They are encouraged to doodle and see Bell's doodling for a telephone. It is a wonderful website, and easily accessible at home as "homework" if the teacher feels there is no time in class. It encourages play, which does amazing things to help develop the creative mind.

References:

Gardner, Howard. (2008). Five Minds for the Future. Boston, MA; Harvard Business Press.

Pink, Daniel H. (2005). A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York, NY; Riverhead Books, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.