It’s 21:19 and I’m sat on the sofa with a peppermint tea. The girls have not long settled, my husband is out at a meeting and I have seized the moment to open my laptop and write.
I’d hoped to write sooner, the delay is certainly not due a lack of things to say, but more the energy, head space and time to get round to getting my thoughts down in a cohesive and coherent way!
Learning about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and getting my head around the potential implications of the proposed legislation took priority in January. I wrote to my MP with our concerns and followed the bill’s progress intermittently through the committee stage.
Reflecting on it, it’s fascinating how the very idea of our rights being infringed upon, can cause a lack of creativity and motivation, and this observation leads nicely onto what I wanted to focus on in this post: creativity, mistakes and learning.
I recently listened to a brilliant TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson about creativity and education. It got me reflecting on my own experience of school in the UK, what I am discovering as an adult, and the experience I am seeking to facilitate for my own children as a home educator. I’ve summarised my reflections in three sections:
- Mistakes are part of learning
- Educating the whole brain
- Being creative for the sake of being creative
Mistakes are part of learning
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Sir Ken Robinson | Do schools kill creativity? | TED Talk 2006
As a child at school, I remember being so concerned with getting ‘the right answer’. I remember the feeling whenever I dared raise my hand, the fear of being wrong. Where did that come from?
My experience of the education system in the UK is that mistakes tend to be treated negatively, whereas the right answers are praised, and the pre-determined learning path that you are guided through, leaves little room for exploration and curiosity.
As a home educator, I can easily start to fall into similar patterns of thinking when I become too focused on ticking boxes and providing ‘evidence of learning’, often for fear we need to prove learning externally.
As pointed out by Robinson, if we are afraid to be wrong, and I would add here that if we are so focused on ticking boxes, we are less likely to explore different possibilities.
In maths there are often multiple ways of solving problems. In literacy there are multiple nuances and possible endings. Upon reading a certain text or piece of literature, different people will absorb and interpret different elements, or retell a narrative differently. Yet if we focus on gleaning one particular aspect or answer, we miss out on a whole array of different learning possibilities.
Educating the whole brain
“It can get complicated, but the basic idea is that while the left brain is logical, linguistic, and literal, the right brain is emotional, nonverbal, experiential, and autobiographical – and it doesn’t care at all that these words don’t begin with the same letter.”
The Whole-Brain Child, 2012 (p.16) | Dr Daniel J. Siegel & Dr Tina Payne Bryson
In our modern and rapidly changing society, we do not know what our children will need to know in 2, 5, or 10 years time, but, as pointed out by Robinson, creativity will serve children regardless. Yet the subjects that are given highest priority in the current education system are predominately left-brain orientated, whereas more creative, right-brain subjects, are not.
Imagine if art, music and drama were prioritised as much as literacy and maths! Robinson highlights that the education system is designed for those who are academic to do well, yet many of us have different strengths and the potential to shine in other areas, if we were given the right learning environment, time, space and opportunities to grow in these skills.
Being creative for the sake of enjoyment and discovery, not productivity
“But the function of education is not to give technical skill, but to develop a person: the more of a person, the better the work of whatever kind…” Charlotte Mason | A Philosophy of Education
With so much focus on providing evidence of learning, tests, grades, sets and the consequent comparison these inevitably cause, education can quickly become about productivity, performing and achieving.
Whilst there is nothing wrong in celebrating achievements, I do wonder how we can create a healthier learning environment for our children.
If we become so focused on grades and achieving, the joy of learning for the sake of learning can fall by the wayside. I notice this in myself as an adult when I start to wonder if my interest in some new creative pursuit could be a potential business opportunity. We are so focused on productivity, yet what about creativity for the sake of pure enjoyment?
It doesn’t have to be like this.
