Eureka, Ah Ha and the Teacher in the Classroom

 

 

I am often asked by people, “What do you teach”. I say, “Creativity”, not “English language or literature”! That takes them by surprise. I then explain, that whatever I teach, I try to teach creatively – meeting sometimes with failure and sometimes with success. Indeed, we might well ask, who is a creative teacher and why is creativity so important to teaching. There are many definitions of creativity. The one that I like particularly is that given by James Webb Young: “An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements”. All you have to do to get an idea is take things you already know and combine them in a new way. The Latin verb cogito, for ‘to think’, etymologically means ‘to shake together’. So when we shake and stir common things together, we get uncommon ideas. Newton put the tides and the fall of an apple together and got gravity. Gutenberg put a coin punch and a wine press together and got the printing press. Salvador Dali put dreams and art together and got surrealism.

 

Lipman put a pencil and an eraser together and got a pencil with an eraser! To be creative in the class, a teacher must frequently examine what she does, how she does and what her doing does to students. How does a teacher create ah ha moments in class? Well, it may sound strange, but a creative teacher is more often someone who encourages students to break rules. In the history of ideas, some of the best scientists, thinkers, and artists have been those who have broken rules. Van Gogh broke the rules on what a flower should look like. Picasso broke the rules on what a woman’ face should look like. Freud broke the rules on how to think about the human mind. Pasteur broke the rule on how to treat diseases. So a creative teacher pushes students to break rules, to break the boundaries of thought and imagination. A creative teacher must also be a breaker of fixed habits or a breaker of routine. Learners respond positively to teachers who don’t follow the same old steps in the same old way, day in and day out. They appreciate teachers whose lessons have surprises and elements of fun. It is a fact that children enter school as question marks and leave as full stops.

 

It is necessary that teachers continue to encourage them to ask questions, lots of questions again. When I first started teaching I told my students that for every problem there was a solution, an answer, an idea. I was wrong. I now know that there are hundreds of solutions, hundreds of answers, hundreds of ideas. It is said that Henry Ford invented the assembly line simply by changing the question from “How do we get the people to the work?” to “How do we get the work to the people?” Edward Jenner discovered the vaccine for small pox simply by changing the question from “Why do people get smallpox?” to “Why don’t milkmaids get smallpox?” Indeed, the greatest philosophers, scientists, and artists wouldn’t have become great if they did not start by asking questions; if they didn’t see a problem where nobody saw one before; if they didn’t ask ‘why’ instead of ‘how’. So creative teachers must make students ask as many questions as possible in the class or outside.

 

A creative teacher makes students embrace failure. Let us remember that while attempting to make the electric bulb, Thomas Edison tried out over a thousand ideas before he hit the one that worked. A teacher, therefore, should not criticize an idea of a student; instead she should ask the student to build on it further. We must remember that there are no bad ideas. Madam Curie had a “bad” idea that turned out to be radium. Joseph Priestley invented carbonated water while he was investigating the chemistry of air. Columbus discovered America by accident. And a Bengali discovered rosogolla by accident! Today, what we are witnessing is a black swan moment in our teaching learning processes. The most innovative pedagogical changes, however, are not coming from colleges or universities; the most radical changes are coming from social media, online resources, web tools and virtual learning platforms. What must be the way forward? Probably, it is to follow what I call the Steve Jobs model of education as technology and technology as arts. We must remember that whereas Steve Jobs was the guru of gadgets, he was also a liberal arts romantic. Jobs repeatedly said that without his certificate course class in calligraphy at Reed College, a liberal arts college (where he never finished his degree), the Macintosh would never have happened. Indeed, Jobs was a tech-artist who wanted to re-enchant the world by fusing art with technology. This is also the thing we need to do for our students. We need to create learning spaces that will transform young minds into tech-innovators and art-creators like Steve Jobs. (The author is Professor of English at Hislop College.)