Charles,
I quickly read through your attached E-mail, and I think I can add a few
thoughts to what has been said.
I should say by way of introduction that my 40 year career has been one of
creative innovation and that from this, several major developments have gone
to market. Two you may recognize are the non -polluting safety liquid
transformer coolants which my group worked on the early 1970s and the
release paper coating which is found on the back of every pressure sensitive
label which we pioneered and brought to market in the early 1960s.
ENVIRONMENT is all-important. Creativity is badly stifled when it is
discouraged. Employers must encourage, but control creativity.
CONTROL is instituted by thoroughly grounding the creative individuals in
the goals and objectives of the group. Creative individuals have a tendency
to wander from idea to idea. They can and will control the ideas they spend
time on when they know where they can gain support. Control has to be loose
enough so as not to be discouraging. The people doing the control walk a
fine line between encouraging and discouraging creativity.
FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION FREES CREATIVITY. The better educated the creator is
in fundamentals over a wide area, the better creator he/she becomes. It
allows poor ideas to be discarded or modified early. Creative people really
ought to have a number of undergraduate degrees in a wide range of science
and business. A Ph.D. in a single discipline is usually unlikely to be very
creative. Which is fine. A dentist , doctor, or lawyer in private practice
is rarely ever creative for if he/she were, they would make too many
mistakes.
Direct comments on what was said.
"I believe the job of the teacher is to light the lamp, not to do the
searching. Leave the searching to the student.
Efficiency can absolutely be vastly improved with good mentoring, and the
opportunity to fail repeatedly without undue censure.
The error content can definitely be lowered through increased education and
practical experience. The same is true of dealing with obstacles.
While imagination can be guided, the true creator is a better champion of
his/her own original ideas. Ergo, give him credit for thinking up the idea
wherever possible.
"Hold the standard high, but not out of reach."
Thanks for making my day with your posting.
Dick Montgomery, 20th Century Cooperative
Our Mission is to help our customers increase their sales.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Wankel" <
cxx@BELLATLANTIC.NET>
To: <
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: Can creativity be developed in the classroom
> POSTED ON BEHALF OF: Emil Zahner <
canmor@compuserve.com>
>
> Emil writes:
>
> Can creativity be developed in the classroom?
>
> Sure, why not?
> Some qualifying questions:
> Can efficiency of creativity be improved?
> Can error - content of creativity be lowered?
> Can effects of obstacles within creative processes be reduced?
> Can imagination be guided as to "trip" over the "thing" that sparks the
new
> idea?
>
> Like in any other learning process we must differentiate between the means
> and the execution.
> Example:
> A teacher (maestro or not maestro) must transfer the principles of the art
> and skill, and provide examples.
> Application: A music teacher must transfer the knowledge of what concerns
> the music, and examples which clarify the intended results. Musical
notation
> is not an absolute. It is an interpretive language. A guidance on
> a long lesh.
> As poorer the knowledge, know-how and ability, as more "noise" content
will
> be in the music. Ability is a combination of muscular control and
> subconsious "feeling". Both have to be developed.
> Of course it make a lot of difference how these ingredients are
transmitted
> to the learner. Following Pareto, there might be 20% excellent teachers.
> Since this law hardly changes, however much is invested into teachers, we
> need to ascertain that the big mass is doing an appropriate job.
> Here we are facing a problem which looks like a kind of "nature's law".
The
> top guys often have no clue why they are superior to the mass. They have
the
> talent to perform superbly in their field, less talent to clone their
talent
> unto others. To measure effectiveness, it might be better to look at the
> results of the masses, the average (creativity) teacher.
>
>
> Obstacles of creativity efficiency tend to be located in the environment.
> Efficiency in creativity is mainly dependent on the ability to asking the
> right questions.
> Guidance of imagination is related to navigation in poorly charted areas.
>
> Obstacles are fear based.
> The NAY sayers in the organization (including the idea killers) fear the
> strangeness. New ideas induce fear, like anything strange. The effect on
the
> adrenaline is there. Fear calls for distress. People who are not aware
> of this simple fact tend to be unable to handle it. Sometimes the new idea
> excites eustress. A positive result, yet not a warranty against thinking
> errors. This calls (in a nutshell) a matter of mind/body control. The
smooth
> talkers in an organization who will rather talk fuzzy than clear fear
taking
> a stand for something. They are more concerned not to "harm someone's
> feeling" than to clarify appropriately what needs to be said. (How they
want
> to be loved!) It might be evident that (biological) sensitivity changes
> reciprocially with signal strength. At some stage even tickling will be
> rejected. A creative team will degenerate into a fun driven group of
> creationalists who expel any strong argument and persistent question for
> lowering group spirit. This is not a case in support of being rough or
rude.
> An appropriately open mind is able to accept a strange idea without
> preconceivement. It knows the sensitizing process and handles information
> accordingly. In a nutshell: The mind has to learn receiving information
> without letting it induce fear. The presenter must know the art of
employing
> the sensitizing process as to reduce fear. As a rule of thumb, it is the
> speaker who is responsible that the message is not being misunderstood.
> Eliminating fear is a prerequisite for asking the right questions.
>
> Asking the right questions
> The typical diverge/converge process applied and taught might be the core
of
> what is being taught at universities and similar establishements. There
> might be a relation to Osborn's Brain Storm, an approach quite often
> distorted by the users. These creativity processes tend to be of low
> efficiency, error proneness, and breakthrough results tend to be very
> random. One field where asking the right questions makes or breaks success
> to an extreme extent is software development. 60% of code is still wasted,
> vanishes from the market almost without a trail. 20% makes it. (Numbers
1998
> from a Toronto university professor who was 20 years IBM soft
> warrior.)
> TRIZ has appeared on the market. Relying very strongly on big computer
> resources, it is definitely a tool worth knowing, if technology is the
> applied environment. In my view it is no more a tool to _teach_ creativity
> than mathematics is one. In both cases specific examples will, however,
> enlighten the process of finding new questions and checking the results
for
> correctness.
>
> Prospective thinking may be related to a map of related questions, one
> leading to the other. As is typical for a map, we may start our way at any
> point. A map contains tried and untried routes. Uncharted territory is
> "white". We may set a route and change intermediate goals as we gain
> knowledge. We may even change the (sub) goal or objective as we gain
> knowlede during a development process. Prospective thinking starts with
> clarifying where we are and what we actually have. The where and why play
an
> important role. Then we go from known points (pegs of knowledge) into
> adjacent areas to reseach their characteristics. The main objective is of
a
> very general nature. (Not how to sell more cars. Rather how to provide
> better transportation. GM in the transportation business). The general
> nature of the higher objective ascertains that alternatives are not
> automatically discarded. A number of people have common ideas how such
> research should be done. Some
> are Greek from the antiques, others are of more recent times. (Ostwald,
> Goethe, Zwicky, Holliger, Einstein, Polya, Kant, Planck, Heisenberg,
> Leibnitz, Laurent, Descartes, and more).
>
> Guided imagination
> Guided imagination is letting our mind wander on a long lesh, which powers
> an interplay between creativity and intuition. We apply the reseach
> principle of the rescue team. No stone remains unturned if it is within
the
> research area we specified. Not wild research, not wild creativity. Not
> thousands of answers but the best ones. We follow certain ways of
> progression, quite often using a successive approximation process where
> there is no direct route of low risk. Along the way we employ variant
> thinking and modular problem solving. These variants are attached to
> specific characteristics of a function. Not the function itself. The
> function may be fastening - by a nail. The nail can have different
> characteristics. These don't change the function, but they do change the
> ease of manufacture, use and the efficiency of the function.
>
> These morphological principles of invention - if understood properly and
> applied correctly will permit a team to be a more consistantly inventive
> resource than the sole inventor tends to be. The principles taught at most
> universities are based on psychology. They are sure to create fun,
> relaxation and large numbers of "results".
>
> A matter of recogintion
> Whatever skin is pulled over the motor which drives creation will not
change
> the power of the motor. The current psycho engine is under heavy attack by
> the Russian TRIZ. It might be worthwhile to invest into researching the
> Euro-American resource of Creative Morphology and Guided Intuition. By the
> way, it easily accommodates Triz into one of its major creativity tools.
> Just to eliminate a typical misconception: The
> morphological box is only one of the tools of dimensional morphology. It
is
> not the system.
>
> Emil Zahner
> Website:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/canmor
> Morphological Institute Canada,
canmor@compuserve.com
> Fax +1-519-884 1132
>