Dear At.
Thank you for your kind and encouraging words.
The training is finished for a while and all papers have been turned in so
I thought I would make a few comments on the threads I have been seeing
here.
SO with the kind indulgence of the list :
> How much improvement of creativity can be enforced externally
> by training rather than be gained by internal self-learning? Here we
> must be very careful to set up a training course which strictly
> forbids any manifestation of creativity other than those allowed and
> seeked by the course itself.
When my son was in grade school I had the opportunity to coach a group of
gifted and talented students in the area of Creativity. The name of the
program is Odysee of the Mind, it is a program designed to increase the
skills of creativity. The group would be given a problem or a task that
required a creative solution. The solution could be either a way of doing
or an interpretation that was unique. They then took these solutions to
competition and were graded against the solutions and uniqueness of other
problem solvers. The challenge and creative endeavor for me was to
"teach" creativity. I found this to be both frustrating and rewarding.
HOW do you teach creativity? Traditional methods DO NOT WORK. The "sage
on stage" style of teaching that is the "norm" in most school settings
does not work. I can not impart my creativity by lecture, it is something
that has to be learned and developed internally by the learner. This
pretty much follows your statement :
> [...] ... I have had to help many a student to escape from this hell
[lecturer taught creativity] by showing
> them how to respect their own creativity while avoid confrontation
> with the lecturer's demands.
To do this we had creativity exercises that stretched the boundaries of the
creative ability and the patience of both the coach and the students.
These are too lengthy to go into here but the basis of the program can be
found at: http://www.jesuit.room.net/clubs/om_t.html
This program has been used successfully to broaden the creative skills of
the participants. Of the 30 students I had for three years in the OM
program only one did not go on to be either an Engineer, Architect, Chemist
or go into Theater.
Another example of the education + (observed) experience = creativity
formula happened to my Dad. He was an Aeronautical Engineer working on
unpressurized high altitude military aircraft in the '50s. His education
said that his design for a pressurized tank for liquid storage would work
but it didn't. He worked on the problem for about a month with failure
after failure. He then noted that a local farmer was using a fishing net
around a container of unprocessed milk in a makeshift centrifuge to speed
up the separation process.
When he asked about the use of the net the farmer said he didn't know why
it worked but the net kept his containers from breaking at high speeds.
Dad went back and put a fishing net with one inch squares around the tank
with immediate success.
>[...] ... learning or creating, we must still know
> which comes first. Thus we have to observe carefully in the actually
> day to day running of education, whether it is good (true) or bad
> (false). In order to do this, we have to know exactly what is the
> difference between creating (creativity) and learning.
>
> What is difference between creating (creativity) and learning?
The difference, for me, is there is no difference. You must have the one to
have the other. The creative artist has observed and through trial and
error learned, what colors and textures and shapes go together to produce
acceptable art or music. The inventor has learned through trial and error
and basic knowledge how to put things together to evolve a given object
into a usable item.
> Have we carefully observed how each student becomes a master
> of some branch of knowledge, or do we merely observe how they try to
> master our training?
OUCH!!! Were you looking over my shoulder when I wrote my last paper???
One of my three main interests in graduate school is learning styles. Most
teaching is done face-to-face in a controlled atmosphere and therefore the
teacher and the student can "bond" in an acceptable manner to produce a
learning experience. But is this what actually happens? If the teacher is
good ...YES! If the teacher is not ...NO! The question of creativity in
this setting is two fold. 1) Is the instruction given sufficiently broad
enough that creativity can fill in the gaps? 2) Is the student's individual
learning style stimulated enough to WANT to fill in those gaps? I will not
go into these at this time because of time and bandwidth restrictions.
These are two questions that major papers are made of!!
>Thus it seems that learning comes
> first. But should we have used the phrase "creativity depending on
> knowledge", an entirely different meaning is possible. It may mean
> that creativity comes first, but that its products, knowledge being
> one of them, promotes creativity. How does this happen if this is the
> case?
The same question as above only worded differently.... Which came first the
Chicken or the Egg?
This is a circular argument that has no direct answer. The question of
creativity and knowledge is even more of a challenge and, as stated before,
personally, they are one and the same.
> Bruce, whatever my questions above leads to, I have great admiration
> for how you have articulated the challenge of education:
Thank You!
Bruce Jones
brucej@nwths.com
http://www.scenemaker.com/anon/495/cover.dhtml
--"Bruce Jones" <brucej@nwths.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>