Almost a bust

It wasn’t a total bust, but almost—my last Monday night class. My students are all going to be English teachers, and we had just done a little (admittedly contrived) writing based on two seemingly incongruent photographs (they each had different photographs), a writing which was then meant to be a prompt for oral conversation. What I really hoped to do was to discuss creativity, and I was armed with dozens of quotations from various artists, scientists, and inventors—and we could discuss those quotations in light of their own school and out-of-school experiences. It was a dud. Rather than talk about creativity, some of my most articulate students in so many words questioned the assumption that creativity might be valuable.

(I should confess I’m not very neutral about this.  It might be human creativity more than anything that gives me hope in the face of some of our planet’s colossal problems. That doesn’t mean that I don’t also value disciplined study, that I don't also value learning what other people have already figured out. In fact, how can scientists do science without mastering a body of knowledge AND being creative?)

Okay. Now what? 

Well, I had another class of English teaching majors, and before I subjected them to the same questions, I opened with pictures of the four greats. . .

FIREWORKS AND GUN POWDER

THE COMPASS

MOVABLE TYPE / PRINTING

PAPER MAKING

. . . and, given that they were beaming, it was easy to ask after each picture if they were a little bit proud of China’s legacy of inventiveness and creativity.

I then had pictures of other great Chinese inventions. Their eyes were bright.

"CHINA"

SILK THREAD

 I then asked them if, as teachers, they hoped to sustain China’s great legacy of creativity.  (Was I leading the witness or what?) But they played along eagerly. Li Bing. Amazing engineer. We discussed many other more recent artists, engineers, scientists--and some of their creations.

I then quoted a few people who had something to say about creativity in China, but I made sure they were party officials—including a former premier.

In a sense, they had permission to talk. And they did. They had things to say.

I realized that some of my other quotations were too hard—few of my students realized that Einstein was being ironic when he said that the secret to creativity is to know how to hide your sources. They had each drawn a quotation they could talk about if it resonated with them, but I mostly wanted to hear their stories. And they talked. (In English! Not easy! Some of their comments are below.)

Mind you, these are incredibly creative students: Even if the exam system doesn’t exactly reward creativity (more on that in a future blog post), it’s not that the students aren’t creative. Today, for example, they were putting on plays, some of them grounded in fairy tales and myths, but turned inside out. It was Dan (not Cinderella) whose shoe fit right, Romeo was gay, Little Red Riding Hood used her I-phone while solving some of her problems and her grandmother was a superhero who stood up to the wolf. And so on.  They sang and danced. More contemporary films and TV shows were also fodder for their whimsy. They were witty, funny, passionate.

Below is a random list of some of these students' comments. . .they had quite a bit to say about the educational system, good and bad, and offered personal memories. Most of what's below are less personal observations.

"Sometimes people are limited by 'certainties.' So breaking up the regulation and rules maybe can stimulate people's ability of creativity."

"From my perspective, creativity requires us to see something different from the average people. The imagination is very important. We must see so-called relationships that ordinary people can't see easily. And different people see the same thing from different perspectives --and you can see something that others can't see, even they think it doesn't exist."

"Before you get success, you may meet fail many times. At this point, if you are afraid to fail one more time, you may not have chances to  make your creative ideas come true."

"I think people may have many imaginative ideas in the first place. But they always let them slip away when they have the thought that they may be illogical, absurd, etc. Doubt prevents them from thinking into the ideas."

(This one is for Ann. . .) "In our art class, the teacher asked us to paint a picture and hand it on next week. At that time, I liked making things, but I didn't feel like to paint a picture. So I used the waste paper and other things we didn't need any more to 'create a picture.' My teacher praised me for my creativity and my 'picture' won an award in an art competition."

"In my middle school, my headmaster thought that students should be the center of study and . . .students can teach students. . . "

"We should have the courage to suspend something that are certain. . .we shouldn't be afraid to show the views of our owns in any time. . .we shouldn't be afraid of professional answers. . . "

"It seems to me 3 to 10 years old is when I was most creative. . ."