Do schools kill creativity?

I've "felt" like a teacher all my life and have taught lots of things (various classes, swimming, dance, misc.), homeschooled our 2 children through 6th and 4th grades, and taught a year of school for a special needs class of 8 precious 2nd and 3rd graders.

I just lived (and worked) for the moments when they would light up. In everything we did, I really tried to see how I could approach it so each person would be able to access whatever it was (very different kids have very different learning modalities, abilities, challenges, tastes, etc.).

Granted, they were primary age (we weren't worried about careers yet), but my main thing was if, at the end of the day, they were excited because they had learned or done something (pretty much *anything*) I felt we'd won. (I guess you could say "shining eyes"). Even better was if I saw their parents' clouds beginning to lift and improve their optimism for their child's schooling, because then I felt like maybe the difference might last in their lives.

I also taught a half year of remedial (very) reading to middle schoolers, which was unbeleeevably rewarding. By then they have attitudes and decisions they've made about themselves... I knew I had to teach them reading, but my main purpose was to reignite in them some excitement about themselves and learning at all; just a little optimism - they were so defeated and resigned. I was rewarded by their complaining when we'd have to skip our phonics class - can you imagine!

Barbara.

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Barbara, my sense is that the work you did with middle school kids in remedial reading may have had a bigger impact than the one you reference in your comment about how they "complained about skipping phonics".

I talk about that sort of impact in my own experience in the "Creativity: The Artist/Coach Within" discussion on the Tribal Leadership group page in a conversation with Lynn Safford. What I hadn't seen in my experience of being so influenced by a few teachers in my life, was the impact of WHO altered the way I saw myself.

I realized while reading your comment, that by middle school age for many children, there's a certain expectation about comments from our parents. For example, I was having a conversation with my 8 year old grandson a while back while building a Knex roller coaster, and mentioned something about what his mom thought about his creative skills, being so natural. I said something like, "mom says you're a natural at building things", and he responded without pause, "well sure, but she's my mom."

Surprised, I asked him what he meant. He said something like, "Well it's not like she's a teacher, or someone. She's my mom. She thinks I'm good at everything. She's supposed to." At the time I wondered about his comment, but forgot about it until I hear the perspective of your comment. It may be that at some point authorities other than our parents move up the scale of importance. In talking to Evan about "being bored" in his Montessori School, I can see the importance of those outside environments/people. He's been expecting the kinds of stimulation he's been used to at home, and in it's missing, he naturally wonders what's wrong with him, rather than being able to discern what's lacking in the environment.

Thinking back to those 2nd grade & 9th grade experiences with those teachers I speak about in my conversation with Lynn, I wonder. Maybe the impact was significant because it was NOT my parents that introduced new possibilities for seeing myself, as you were doing with your remedial reading students.

What if by the ripe old age of say 8, as Pauline's poem jokes, we really do have a different listening for what our parents are saying about us versus the other messages we are getting about ourselves out in the world and from other "experts" - people we believe to hold authority or expertise beyond even that of our parents? And what if those people, systems, and processes don't just educate us - fill us with facts and figures - but also shift our paradigms as we're growing?

The more I think of my experiences with being labeled in 2nd grade as "creative", the clearer it becomes to me that we dwell in a very narrow definition of creativity. Could we not view Pauline's field/cow/mud peak experience as "creation" - not "a creation", nor even as "a creative experience", but as "creation"?

I enjoyed an experience similar to Pauline's in my junior year in college. It went on for 6 months. I didn't know what to call it or how to hold it, it was just there. Later others told me it was a nirvanic experience. Some said it was God talking to me. Several people told me I was just going crazy - remember this was back in 1962. For several years following that experience, I tried to figure out what had happened. I finally chose to let it be. To just have had it and keep it to myself. After all, being one-with-the-universe isn't something people talked about at dinner parties back then.

That experience was triggered following a 4 hour conversation with one of my professors (one of those outside authorities I really respected) , while driving to and from NYC. He said something during that trip that short circuited my perception of myself and life, and sent me into this strange out-of-body and out-of-myself world - he shifted my life paradigm.

Like my 2nd grade teacher, or my professor, you as someone who cared, may have created new paradigms for your remedial reading students. That may be another way "creativity" shows up in the world.

Have you checked back on those remedial reading students of yours? Or maybe, have you seen one of them now working as a teacher? Or TV commentator? Have you thought about what paradigm shifts you may have created for those students?

Good work Barbara.

Brian
Posted 4 days ago | Delete comment

Stage 4 tribes

In response to what I said about right brained thinking, Lynn came back musing, " The notion of creativity is the chatter for later -- a representation of the thing. The authentic experience for me at once is visceral and ineffable. In hind site, a Stage 3 [the stage at which most organizations function] state was more like a systemic, unhealthy condition that permeated itself from the top down. Is it plausible to interpret a Stage in the pejorative... sort of seeing it from the dark side?"

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Lynn,

It seems to me that at every stage there is a set of core values around which tribal members are aligned. They may not be consciously distinguished, and viewed from a different stage they may even seem detrimental, but they are there.

It's clear to me, having spent much of my executive career in stage 3 organizations that there were, and are, very real core values in place. I assert that domination and avoiding domination were two of those core values. And I also assert the people working in those entities are aligned with those core values, and are quite adept at working within that framework.

It occurs to me that stage 4 is a shift - something shifts in the makeup of the core values. And that shift is a function of some sort of consciously chosen cause - what we're calling here the noble cause. The effect of that noble cause is to regenerate an innate sense of integrity, one I see for instance, still naturally operational with my 8 year old grandson - one that is not yet snuffed out.

So I want to avoid making stage 4 some sort of romantic ideal. The first time I experienced it, it wasn't something we were trying to attain. It was a collective shift in being that caused extraordinary business results while leaving us (tribal members) related to each other within a different framework, feeling like what were doing really mattered and who we were as individuals had to contribute to what "we" were doing. Those that were about themselves, or not contributing were not tolerated, a true meritocracy

In that stage 4 state conflict was missing. I don't mean there weren't passionate disagreements. There were. But the territorial aspect wasn't there, so the word "conflict" didn't fit. There was variance, tension, competition, divergence, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Yet there was a harmony to it. The context was not territorial. Disagreement, when it arose, was a cause for reminding ourselves of what we were up to not for dominating another.

It's interesting when you say, "The notion of creativity is the chatter for later -- a representation of the thing.", because creativity was rampant in that setting but I doubt most people would describe the experience that way. Intense, energized, passionate, active, fun, and high-risk-but-safe, maybe, but not what they might label as "creative". For few of them thought of themselves, or even the process as creative.

As for what you say about how stages or entities come and go. I think it may be the natural order of things. Our TLCC group and indeed I think, given a choice most people, want to belong to stage 4 or 5 tribes. From stages 1,2, or 3 we think of stages 4 and 5 as nirvanic, something we want to last forever. It doesn't.

It may live as a possibility, something to strive four (pun intended), but just as you describe about the dissolution of the stage 3 organization above, (and it's unpopular I know to say) but stage 4 tribes, like all these modeled stages, come and go, ebb and flow.

Ability to create

While having a conversation with a friend, Lynn, regarding various stages of tribal development (the book is Tribal Leadership) and how to shift a company to stage 4 behavior, Lynn asked me, "I wonder how not knowing the authentic self effects ones ability to create? What do you think?"

Lynn. Mostly I think it's just another box. Like anyone else I live in my own box, so I don't want to exult my point-of-view as the new better. I actually agree that most people are much more creative than they think of themselves to be, but those ways of thinking and being are pushed into the background by our social conversations, as so devolve to a somehow "untrusted" status.

As a result of my particular experiences, and my education, my habit has simply become one of trusting my instincts, being a divergent thinker, and being more comfortable with ambiguity. But I still see patterns, order, flow and relationships within what may appear to others as a chaotic world, and so it seems less threatening, or scary to me, than maybe it does others.

For a period of time back in my early 50's, that became a being of arrogance for me as an executive and a person, which of course created some unworkability. Thankfully, it was the experience of leading a company into stage 4 that allowed me to shed that behavior. That model didn't exist back then, but it was clearly where we went.In a moment of inspiration I invited my employees into being partners in building that company and sharing in the fruits of it, and I was shortly confronted with their passion and until-then-hidden-creativity.

Actually I can't tell if it was hidden or suppressed. What I can say was when I, as CEO, was no longer the only one expected to have creative ideas about how to build the company, there was, in a relatively short period of time, lot's of ideas from people at all levels in the organization, many of which were way better than my own. And those people went to the same public schools I did, but weren't art majors and didn't get trained to think the way I had been trained.

I was quickly confronted with maybe I wasn't all that big a hot shot and I should listen to what they were offering. That act of surrendering - of me getting out of the way - allowed us to shift into a new stage. I still paid attention to aligning us on what impact we wanted to have out in the world. And I gathered enough courage to trust the flow. I can't tell if surrendering was a creative act or just self preservation. I do know it was humbling. And I found myself being inspired and moved by those people. Many remain close friends today.

So I'm no longer so sure I'm right about anything. Actually I doubt it. I'm more struck by the power of inspiration/passion, alignment/collaboration, risk/invention, and wonder/adventure (a holdover way of speaking about things I learned from Bucky Fuller - a teacher - in college).

Finally I worry about making anything the new rule. Somehow it seems to me, cultures always seem to generate the will to rise to their challenges. It may be time for our culture to shift itself to more right-brain thinking, I don't know. But right-brained thinking will also argue right-brained thinking isn't the "right" way - it's not the new box/identity. It's just a way.

2nd grade teachers

I'm doing a program with the folks from Tribal Leadership and it's had me looking at some of my most fundamental assumptions and beliefs going way back to childhood. About two weeks ago I found myself dreaming back through a sequence of experiences during my elementary and secondary schooling. It was an unusually vivid and extraordinarily strung together dream. It seemed to go on all night but for all I know it may have been but a few minutes.

I don't know why I remember Mrs. Boyle, my first grade teacher, but I do. I remember our "coat room" off to the side of the classroom and I remember getting whacked on the back of my hand by a ruler by Mrs. Boyle, but not much else. It left an impression that people in authority could be dangerous.

In 2nd grade my teacher who's name I don't recall, praised me no end for a drawing I did of a tree on a Halloween mural the class was doing. It's funny I don't remember this teacher's name because she had a big impact on me. I didn't think the tree drawing was all that incredible. It was just a tree. I knew and loved trees and spent a lot of time up in them with my brother and all our playmates so I knew how they were built and how they looked and I just drew what I knew.

Well that teacher went on and on about it and I ended up getting some sort of award and my parents and grandparents starting talking about who I had inherited my "artistic" talent from (some distant great uncle or something). At the time I remember it was just embarrassing for me. What was all this fuss over a tree?

Third grade was another one of those revelations as I was able to master the times tables and division easily so my teacher began to tell me I had the makings of being a scientist or an engineer, whatever that was. I wasn't really all that worried about what I was going to be yet, but it seemed to be important to the adults so I went along with it.

Fourth grade algebra was fun and challenging, and I heard more about what that meant about me. But I just recall loving to work out the answers and discover the underlying system and logic. From that point on numbers and math were easy for me, all the way through calculus and trigonometry, but it wasn't really all that meaningful. It was just something I did.

By the time I had gotten to 9th grade however a dilemma appeared. In an an class I did a sculpture of a small mouth bass jumping out of the water and my art teacher went nuts. Again I was taken by surprise about this. My dad loved fishing and he was teaching my brother and I how to be really good fisherman (I now have 26 fishing poles), and our favorite fish to catch were small mouth bass. So I had caught my share of those amazing little critters and seen them dance across the water, when we hooked them. That was the image I created in that sculpture. I don't think my art teacher had done much fishing, so she was easily impressed.

But without me knowing about it, she entered my sculpture into a regional school art show and I won first prize. Surprise, surprise. My mother was so proud of me, she cried when I came home and told her about it. This was when I actually began to consider that maybe I actually had something people referred to as talent. I didn't really know what that meant, but it was clear to me that when I did things people called artistic, I won lots of praise and got attention from my mom. That was the up side. It was important to me because to me my mom seemed to love my brother more than me and I somehow wanted to prove to her that I was worthy.

There was a downside to this art business as well. My dad was not impressed. When I announced that I wanted to take art as a "major" (1 class a day mind you) in high school, my dad took me outside for a walk and told me he wanted me to go to college and become an engineer. He said he didn't want me getting all wrapped up in something like art which I couldn't use to make a living. But I had been "fast tracked" in junior high, so I had completed some high school courses that I needed to graduate so I had a lighter load and had more electives, so I told him art was an "elective" I was just doing to fill my schedule. That seemed to satisfy him.

By my senior year I was spending half of my day in art and photography classes and regularly winning praise and awards. So I ended up applying to go to Lehigh University for engineering and to the Philadelphia College of Art when I discovered there was something I could do called Industrial Design which combined both art and engineering - and because it resulted in a Bachelor of Science degree that it was attractive enough that my dad would agree to me going there. I didn't really know the difference between a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Fine Arts or a Bachelors of Nut Cracking.They were all degrees to me.But it sounded like it was important and it got me past the "useful" hurdle so it's where I ended up going and what I ended up getting.

What's notable about all those distant recollections is that this is the first time I've ever recalled them in this strung together fashion and began to connect those nascent experiences and the impact they've had on my life choices and the way I see myself and my connections to others.

What was instructional was to realize that I have always been a bit embarrassed by attention. I shied away from the popular people, thought of myself as outside the "in" crowd, and never thought of myself as a people person. That was my my brother's domain and I marveled at how masterful he was at it. And as I compared myself to him, it was clear I would never have that skill or talent. So being an artist fit. In those days it was an outside-the-mainstream kind of calling and obviously where I belonged. Do you think?

Well just as I got that first 30 years of my life story all grocked and into place I woke up. Now I go to bed wondering when the next chapters are going to show up. So far nothing. But when they do I'll let you know.

Grandson knows best

So Evan, my grandson, is teaching me how to play Pokemon using a deck of cards from one of his playmate friends, Jake, who left his cards at Evan's. Evan has his own deck. It's sorted, cataloged, and filed in a big binder. He knows all the values of his cards and of the cards in the deck he gives me to play with. Of course, I don't know how to play so I start reading the little instruction notes on the cards, only to learn that we aren't playing the game "that way"; we're playing the game the way Evan is going to tell me we play the game.

So there are "damage" points, that are used to take out an opponents cards based on their value. I forget what they term for the value is, but there's an official term for the value of each card. Anyway according to Evan we pick a card and use it's damage value to damage, or kill, an opponent's card(s). He tells me he doesn't use the word kill because that "sounds to violent". Ok, so we "eliminate or take out" an opponent's cards. Clear?

After I've lost a dozen of my cards, I finally manage to kill, uh "take out", one of Evan's high value cards, only to discover he has a card that allows him to "reverse" the action and through the eliminate back on me. So in an an instant he takes out my stalwart knight and I'm left on the down side of a slippery slope which I can see has me losing in a matter of minutes.

I begin to notice a pattern here. Pretty much all of my cars have values below 80, while Evan's seem to be over 100 and in a few cases up to 500. It seems that Jake's card deck isn't as high in value as Evan's partially because Jake only has about 1/5th the number of cards as Evan. It gets clear to me that Evan has pulled out his highest value cards to play against me (I'm a slow learner). When I'm down to my last 6 cards to Evan's 35 cards, I capitulate, uh, that's "give up" in Evan's language.

The whole battle takes about 30 minutes, and I go meekly into oblivion. As we're cleaning up the cards and refiling Evan's in his binder, he says to me in all seriousness, "Well geez pop pop. You really need to get much more intelligent about how to use your cards." Not only have I been humiliated by an 8 year old, now he's lecturing me on my intelligence! Such is the lot of grandfathers.