I have been re-reading a wonderful article from the June/July 2008 issue of Scientific American Mind. The magazine’s Executive Director, Mariette DiChristina, sat down to talk with three experts in the field: John Houtz, author of The Educational Psychology of Creativity; Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way; and Robert Epstein, author of The Big Book of Creativity Games. It was a fascinating discussion that had my brain pinging with teaching ideas.
Epstein, a psychologist, has done extensive research on creativity and identified four skills sets that are necessary: capturing, challenging, broadening and surrounding. In capturing, we find some way to preserve ideas as they come—jotting them down, recording them into our phone apps, leaving ourselves a voice mail message—whatever we need to do so those fleeting ideas are not lost. Challenging is the practice of giving ourselves tough problems to solve. Under stress the behaviors we’ve ingrained will compete with each other until they interconnect in new ways that give rise to new behaviors and ideas. Broadening means that we keep learning and studying new things so we have a wider knowledge base and surrounding means we ensure we live in an atmosphere of diverse things, people and ideas.
Epstein points out that though children all start out very creative, in too many homes and classrooms their creativity is discouraged. Students are encouraged to be quiet and cooperative, to stop daydreaming and stay on task. Parents caution children against pursuing arts careers out of fears they won’t be able to make a living at it. These concerns are understandable. It is hard to teach children if they are not attending to the lesson and it is very difficult in our cultural and economic climate to make a living in the arts. However, creativity training is vital and not all that hard to incorporate, and creativity is for everyone—not just artists.
All four—the interviewer as well as the three experts—offer some terrific suggestions for helping children develop their creativity. Houtz recommends allowing children to make decisions instead of always making choices for them. The interviewer, DiChristina, recommends looking up answers to questions together—even if you as the parent or teacher already know the answer, thus modeling how to find information for yourself. Epstein recommends keeping questions open-ended and not limiting the answers, saying, for example, “give me at least three ideas” instead of “give me three ideas.” Cameron recommends changing how we talk about creativity, being careful not to send the false message that all artists are crazy, or broke, etc.
I will definitely be practicing these suggestions in my studio and parents can too. An example might be allowing a child to decide when they will practice or which piece they will focus on that day; the parent maintains control by setting the expectation that it is necessary to practice, but gives the child choices that empower them. If my students have a question about a music term I will bring out the music dictionary or fire up the browser on my laptop so we can look it up together. Parents can ask kids to tell them at least three things they enjoyed about their lesson, or at least three things they learned in school that day. And we all can model capturing, challenging, broadening and surrounding by teaching kids systems for preserving their ideas and signing the family up to try something new together—archery, a cooking or jewelry-making
class, or a concert of music in a style they are unfamiliar with. Most importantly, we adults can stop our own negative talk around creative experiments—ours and our children’s. Allow yourself to play and silence the inner critic so children will learn that it isn’t necessary to do something perfectly, only to experiment, practice and enjoy!
Epstein, a psychologist, has done extensive research on creativity and identified four skills sets that are necessary: capturing, challenging, broadening and surrounding. In capturing, we find some way to preserve ideas as they come—jotting them down, recording them into our phone apps, leaving ourselves a voice mail message—whatever we need to do so those fleeting ideas are not lost. Challenging is the practice of giving ourselves tough problems to solve. Under stress the behaviors we’ve ingrained will compete with each other until they interconnect in new ways that give rise to new behaviors and ideas. Broadening means that we keep learning and studying new things so we have a wider knowledge base and surrounding means we ensure we live in an atmosphere of diverse things, people and ideas.
Epstein points out that though children all start out very creative, in too many homes and classrooms their creativity is discouraged. Students are encouraged to be quiet and cooperative, to stop daydreaming and stay on task. Parents caution children against pursuing arts careers out of fears they won’t be able to make a living at it. These concerns are understandable. It is hard to teach children if they are not attending to the lesson and it is very difficult in our cultural and economic climate to make a living in the arts. However, creativity training is vital and not all that hard to incorporate, and creativity is for everyone—not just artists.
All four—the interviewer as well as the three experts—offer some terrific suggestions for helping children develop their creativity. Houtz recommends allowing children to make decisions instead of always making choices for them. The interviewer, DiChristina, recommends looking up answers to questions together—even if you as the parent or teacher already know the answer, thus modeling how to find information for yourself. Epstein recommends keeping questions open-ended and not limiting the answers, saying, for example, “give me at least three ideas” instead of “give me three ideas.” Cameron recommends changing how we talk about creativity, being careful not to send the false message that all artists are crazy, or broke, etc.
I will definitely be practicing these suggestions in my studio and parents can too. An example might be allowing a child to decide when they will practice or which piece they will focus on that day; the parent maintains control by setting the expectation that it is necessary to practice, but gives the child choices that empower them. If my students have a question about a music term I will bring out the music dictionary or fire up the browser on my laptop so we can look it up together. Parents can ask kids to tell them at least three things they enjoyed about their lesson, or at least three things they learned in school that day. And we all can model capturing, challenging, broadening and surrounding by teaching kids systems for preserving their ideas and signing the family up to try something new together—archery, a cooking or jewelry-making
class, or a concert of music in a style they are unfamiliar with. Most importantly, we adults can stop our own negative talk around creative experiments—ours and our children’s. Allow yourself to play and silence the inner critic so children will learn that it isn’t necessary to do something perfectly, only to experiment, practice and enjoy!
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