Active Learning & Creativity

by

Rae Pica

When a child engages in fantasy or dramatic play, she’s imagining “what if.” This requires creativity. And although typically considered the domain of artists alone – and thus often considered expendable – creativity is a life skill, requiring the ability to see beyond what already exists, or to imagine. And when one can imagine, one can envision possibilities and the solutions to problems.

True problem solving is the result of what’s called divergent production – the ability to find multiple solutions to a single challenge. With  computer software programs, children may be provided a menu of choices, but there’ll be only one correct answer. In life, that’s rarely the case.

Each of us solves hundreds of problems a day. It can be as simple as producing a decent meal from leftovers, or figuring out where to look for the answer to a question, to the more complex dilemma of balancing a budget, or salvaging lost data from a crashed computer system. For some of us, problem solving involves launching a spaceship or ridding the world of cancer.

“Drill-and-practice” software, which involves the repetition of specific skills, no matter how it’s disguised as game playing, doesn’t foster creative thinking. One study reported in the Atlantic Monthly found that elementary school students using a favorite drill-and-skill software program for reading showed a 50 percent decline in their creativity scores! After seven months of working with this software, all of the students tested had trouble answering open-ended questions and were unable to brainstorm with the same level of creativity they had originally shown. There were no similar problems among children who were not using computers.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which people have lost the ability to imagine – to create. Of course, in such a world there’d be no artists – no novels or movies to entertain us, no paintings to admire, and no songs to soothe our souls. But there would also be no new discoveries in science and medicine. No advances in technology. People would be unable to feel empathy, which is dependent upon being able to imagine what it’s like to be someone or something else. And they would be unable to create solutions!

Now imagine what happens to a child’s ability to imagine when she is surrounded by ready-made images and has no need to create her own. With the push of a button or the flip of her hand, she is presented with images the software programmers, video producers, and flashcard manufacturers deem important. Those images are outside of her head – absorbed through the eyes only – and not the result of an inner process that leads to the discovery of such concepts as:

• Flotation (“What happens when I put these things in the water?”)
• Balance (“How far can I lean in this direction?”)
• Time and space (“What’s the fastest way to get from here to there?”)
• Color (“What if I mix red and blue paint?”)
• Sound (“What will I hear if I shake the oatmeal box?”)
• Texture (“What will the clay feel like if I dunk it in water?”)

These are all sensory experiences (and, yes, sensory deprivation is another consequence of a two-dimensional world, along with failure to understand cause and effect) that begin with an idea, proceed through a process of exploration, and result in a discovery. And it’s wonderful when a child can take ownership of that discovery himself. Not only is the experience meaningful, but the lesson is learned and retained as well.

Rae Pica is a children’s physical activity specialist and the author of A Running Start: How Play, Physical Activity, and Free Time Create a Successful Child (from which this article is excerpted). Read more of what she has to say at her blog, The Pica Perspective, and hear her interviews with experts in the fields of early childhood education, motor development, the neurosciences, and more at www.bodymindandchild.com.