Shrugging Off the Herd Mentality

Are original-thinking children being short-changed by the system? How can we enlist a child’s creativity and channel it for good?

In the following animation, one alien child’s differences rock the boat too much for the comfort of his peers, parents, and educators, and so he is evaluated, picked apart, and diagnosed as very, very ill; too ill to exist within societal norms. The alien child is sent away—banished and ostracized to outer space. His alien parents give a sigh of relief and move on with their lives, happy to be relieved of their burden: a child who is a creative and original thinker.

Alien Rejects

The child is put through a transformation/gestation process and sent to earth in a womb-like capsule, where it is presumed, he will be reborn a human. As the capsule nears its target, the planet earth, we see in the distance, other similar capsules containing the rejects of their former society, all meant to become earthlings due to their supposed inferiority.

It isn’t easy being an original thinker. Original thinking seems messy, disorganized and downright chaotic. Our compliance with the basic setup of things is, let’s face it: less work for the rest of the herd.

Take the classroom, for instance. The teacher has a curriculum she must cover within a certain amount of time. That’s her job. But not every student learns the same way.

Shushed And Shunted

What happens to the student who cannot make his personal learning style jibe with the state-mandated curriculum of the teacher? How many gifted students have their creative ideas shushed and shunted aside for the sake of order and covering educational ground?

Today the experts acknowledge that there are many different types of learning styles, for instance visual, audial, and kinesthetic. If a child is a kinesthetic learner, and can only learn through touching, moving, and doing, are we accommodating this child’s needs within the classroom? Are the child’s strengths acknowledged by the system?

Here are some tips teachers can use to foster rather than stunt their creative-thinking students:

* Integrate interesting media into assignments

* Have kids make book covers for their reports

* Students can act out historical events

* Have kids prepare and present speeches

* Use jingles as a musical memorization aid

* Use stories and analogies to get the point across

* Have kids use bright-colored highlighters in assorted colors to emphasize important text

* Student can make models to illustrate science principles—a model of an atom can be a candle with many wicks, or how about an atmosphere cake with different colored layers?

This post has been copied in its entirety with the kind permission of www.cognibeat.com and can be found at http://community.cognibeat.com/2010/12/encouragingcreativity/