The Genius of our littlest learners
NASA SAYS SO!
Many years ago, NASA conducted what has become a famous study on the creative capacity, the creative genius of humans. At TEDxTucson, Dr. George Land dropped a bombshell when he revealed the results of a highly specialized test that he created alongside his colleague Beth Jarman. Designed to effectively measure the creative potential of NASA’s rocket scientists and engineers, it did just that. And more.
While Land’s test was successful for the purposes of NASA, it left researchers with further questions about creativity, primarily seeking to understand its origins. Are we born with it, or is it acquired through experience? In order to find answers, Land turned to 1,600 kindergarten children, all between the ages of 4 and 5. These children were given Land’s test; a test that looked at one’s ability to develop new, different, and innovative ideas for problems - divergent thinking. 98% of those children scored in the “genius category for imagination”. Absolutely astonished by the results, the team decided to extend their study into a longitudinal journey, testing those same students again five years later at age 10, and then again five years later at age 15.
98% to 30% to 12%.
Intrigued and perplexed, Land then took his test to adults, aged 25 years and older. After numerous studies and data collections, what he invariably found was that roughly 2% of adults scored within the genius category.
As we age, our natural, intrinsic creative capacity is smothered. It is stifled. It is squelched. It is suppressed. Whichever adjective you wish to use, we are born with immense creative capacity, born to be creative geniuses, and yet we clearly don’t keep it. However, we do a great job of preparing our children for post-secondary admission, making them ready for jobs, and ensuring that they will in fact be “productive members of society”. And while we keenly focus on this preparation, we are robbing them in the process. We are robbing them of their most natural and precious skills; to be imaginative, creative, and curious.
Most of us, parents and educators alike, have been forced to examine education and learning far more closely in the past three years. The COVID pandemic forced many of us to look beyond the lens of traditional classroom learning and yet through this, we haven’t conceived something new, something better for our children. Online classrooms were a replacement for the existing system, with technology merely replicating the offline model, neither of which promote or instil “creative genius” past the age of five.
If NASA was focused on testing divergent thinking, our traditional classrooms, whether online or once again in-person, focus on convergent thinking. Teachers are the gateway to the acquisition of information and skills. They plan and teach lessons in order to give both, learners absorb and acquire this, and then assessment (tests, culminating tasks etc.) is carefully planned and evaluated to confirm “acquisition” or retention. But make no mistake, there are many teachers who do this with immense passion and creativity, who make every effort to engage students meaningfully and with purpose. The root problem lies not with the educators, but with the model, a system that relies on instructionism - a collection of educational practices that are teacher-focused, skill-based, product-oriented and have a tendency to objectify, quantify learning, built on a foundation of data.
If we have any hope of maintaining that 98% imaginative genius in our children, we need to concern ourselves with finding (or creating) learning environments that are centered upon constructionism. This should be our priority. Parents are aware, and they recognize that it’s almost impossible to imagine what their child’s future will look like given the rapid pace and evolution of technology. Most of us can agree that it’s difficult to even know which skills will be necessary in order for them to thrive as adults in this unknown world. What we do know is that a system focused on information, instruction, and convergent thinking won’t help our children get there - whatever “there” may look like.
Constructionism is the antidote to instructionism, and it is where children apply knowledge, generate ideas, solve problems, invent products. They create the new and unimaginable, and they rely on an environment that makes child-focused, child-led, child-directed learning a priority. It is interactive, process-oriented, and meaningful because it is an environment responsive to their interests. It makes divergent thinking a priority each and every day.
It’s safe to say that we all want children to retain their creativity and imagination, to be adults who thrive with those same skills, and who put them to use in bettering our world. But if we want them as adults to build new and innovative ideas, to be inspired by wander and exploration, to develop solutions to problems through curiosity, creativity, and connection with others, then that must be the environment that they know now. They must be immersed in it throughout childhood and adolescence, as the singular model of learning, knowing, and being.
Absorbing information from teachers and educators whether on the screen or at a desk creates pupils. It creates students. It creates cogs in the educational machine that churns the same old way.
Instead, let’s create makers, innovators, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs. Our children can be one of those, and they can be all of those.
Let’s restore creative capacity.
Let’s nurture our inherent ability to think divergently, and maintain the 98% imaginative genius of our littlest learners.
Postscript: So now what?
If you know me, you know the value I place on educational reform and the need for grassroots movements that will help create change. While large in both scale and scope, I believe we are on the cusp of such change. On a smaller scale, you can help bring forth a greater emphasis on constructionism and divergent thinking right in your own home rather easily.
A tinker table for a STEAM powered family! (Science. Technology. Engineering. Arts. Math.)
Where a crafting station meets a tool box. It’s everything, and it’s absolutely nothing.
No phones. No screens. No blueprints and no instructions.
Better yet… no walls… make it outside!
Start with 30 minutes, PARENTS and CHILDREN together - we sure need to start improving that 2%.
Create a space where you are all free to create, free to do your own thing, but together. A space where everyone can learn through trial, error, and exploration. Tinkering really is playing and inventing, so the space must be filled with opportunities that facilitate play, inspire creativity, and launch imagination.
*Oh and if I was to bet - your youngest children will “hit the ground running” and you, the adults … well, there’s nothing harder than putting the first mark on a beautiful blank page. It’ll take time, but you’ll get there too ;)
A MYSTERY BAG TINKER TRADE
