The following is an excerpt from Mr. Horwich’s new book, Not Alternative Education – Universal Private Education. This is part five of his article, Homeschooling in the 21st Century. It deals with encouraging creativity in the student.
Is there any quality a human being can have that is more to be cherished than creativity? Is there any quality in our student that we do a worse job as a nation of encouraging?
Creativity is the key to the future, not merely for an individual, but for civilization and our survival. It is the creative person who sees the world in a new way. Creative people put the pieces together into a shape no other person imagined. It is the creative person who provides advance, innovation and pleasure. Creative people solve problems.
Intelligence is a good and valuable thing. Ethics and integrity are to be cultivated in our young, most assuredly. But as a culture we have vastly underrated and underserved the creative human potential. We do so at our peril.
I will assume that you’re a homeschooler. That means that you are not bound by the severe and crippling limitations of schooling and of educational mandates established by governments and school boards who seem to have little or no understanding of children or education.
You are free!
You may create an education in accordance to your child’s best interests. Believe me when I tell you that no matter what it is your child wishes to do in life, creativity well-developed will serve him or her constantly and well.
The trick is how. What are the best ways and means one ought to apply to help develop creativity in a student?
Let me start by suggesting strongly that the first and principle tool to be employed is to avoid critique. This miserable failure of an educational approach has been pushed on teachers and the rest of us for around 100 years. It is a catastrophe, a miserable failure that has crippled the creative output of uncounted millions, of entire generations.
“Evaluating” the creative work of a young artist is almost certainly going to lead to the student’s hatred of art. What eight year-old who has just freshly inked what he believes is a great story wants as a reaction, “your spelling is wrong. That sentence is not English. What were you trying to say, here? Is this supposed to be amusing?” And on and on.
Look, I realize that often the teacher who approaches creativity in this manner honestly believes that he is assisting the student toward becoming a more “proficient” artist. At least, I hope such teachers have altruistic intentions – because the result of critique on developing creative effort in the young is usually highly destructive.
The creative works of the young are precious to them, just as your creative acts as an adult are articles of pride to you. But our children and students look up to us for guidance and support. All it takes is a few destructive comments or disappointed looks to end for a lifetime a child’s interest in expressing himself in any sort of creative manner. In just that way, a human being is deprived of one of his most important qualities, and civilization is deprived of possible creation or invention that might have improved innumerable lives.
Imagine if the young da Vinci had been told by teachers or parents that his work was awful, or in need of constant correction – and yet the rightness of his creations was ignored. Would we have had da Vinci? Would we have had Shakespeare, under similar circumstances?
Think about your own youth. What were you encouraged to do? Which of your activities were supported and admired? Which were critiqued heavily? What do you like to do NOW? I would bet that you like doing those things you were encouraged to do. In fact, I’ll bet you like doing those things for which, as a young person, you received admiration. Your child is no different than you in this respect.
Admiration is the most powerful of all educational tools. Critique is the most destructive. Welcome to modernity.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
Is there any quality a human being can have that is more to be cherished than creativity? Is there any quality in our student that we do a worse job as a nation of encouraging?
Creativity is the key to the future, not merely for an individual, but for civilization and our survival. It is the creative person who sees the world in a new way. Creative people put the pieces together into a shape no other person imagined. It is the creative person who provides advance, innovation and pleasure. Creative people solve problems.
Intelligence is a good and valuable thing. Ethics and integrity are to be cultivated in our young, most assuredly. But as a culture we have vastly underrated and underserved the creative human potential. We do so at our peril.
I will assume that you’re a homeschooler. That means that you are not bound by the severe and crippling limitations of schooling and of educational mandates established by governments and school boards who seem to have little or no understanding of children or education.
You are free!
You may create an education in accordance to your child’s best interests. Believe me when I tell you that no matter what it is your child wishes to do in life, creativity well-developed will serve him or her constantly and well.
The trick is how. What are the best ways and means one ought to apply to help develop creativity in a student?
Let me start by suggesting strongly that the first and principle tool to be employed is to avoid critique. This miserable failure of an educational approach has been pushed on teachers and the rest of us for around 100 years. It is a catastrophe, a miserable failure that has crippled the creative output of uncounted millions, of entire generations.
“Evaluating” the creative work of a young artist is almost certainly going to lead to the student’s hatred of art. What eight year-old who has just freshly inked what he believes is a great story wants as a reaction, “your spelling is wrong. That sentence is not English. What were you trying to say, here? Is this supposed to be amusing?” And on and on.
Look, I realize that often the teacher who approaches creativity in this manner honestly believes that he is assisting the student toward becoming a more “proficient” artist. At least, I hope such teachers have altruistic intentions – because the result of critique on developing creative effort in the young is usually highly destructive.
The creative works of the young are precious to them, just as your creative acts as an adult are articles of pride to you. But our children and students look up to us for guidance and support. All it takes is a few destructive comments or disappointed looks to end for a lifetime a child’s interest in expressing himself in any sort of creative manner. In just that way, a human being is deprived of one of his most important qualities, and civilization is deprived of possible creation or invention that might have improved innumerable lives.
Imagine if the young da Vinci had been told by teachers or parents that his work was awful, or in need of constant correction – and yet the rightness of his creations was ignored. Would we have had da Vinci? Would we have had Shakespeare, under similar circumstances?
Think about your own youth. What were you encouraged to do? Which of your activities were supported and admired? Which were critiqued heavily? What do you like to do NOW? I would bet that you like doing those things you were encouraged to do. In fact, I’ll bet you like doing those things for which, as a young person, you received admiration. Your child is no different than you in this respect.
Admiration is the most powerful of all educational tools. Critique is the most destructive. Welcome to modernity.
Steven Horwich is an Emmy and Dramalogue award-winning writer/director, who has split his life between the arts and education. A teacher with over 35 years and over 20,000 hours of experience from elementary school through university-level teaching, he started homeschooling his own children in 2002. This led him to author over 300 courses since 2002, a complete curricula (excluding math) for ages 5-adult, called Connect The Thoughts. Over 20,000 people have used CTT since making it available via the Internet in 2007. His curricula is presented at www.connectthethoughts.com. There is over 5 hours of film explaining his courses and approach. He has authored a book about education today, Poor Cheated Little Johnny, and a teacher training program to go with it. He currently presents a free webinar about education and homeschooling every third Tuesday.
