Creativity in Education - Heather Dyer

I've been reading Edward do Bono's Thinking Course in order to get some exercises for a class I'm teaching on Developing Creativity. A quote in the introduction floored me. He says, "schools waste two thirds of the talent in society and universities sterilise the other third." 

A little while later I came across another quote by Ken Robinson, in his TED talk Changing Paradigms (www.ted.com). He says, "most people leave education with no idea what their real abilities are."

 

What a horrifying thought! After eighteen years of education! I asked my students (most of whom are retired or at least middle-aged) whether they felt they knew what their abilities were when they left school. None of them did.  I certainly didn't. It’s only now that I’m beginning to see my strengths - and I'm in my forties. When I left school, I only knew my weaknesses. Is this what education is supposed to do?

All due respect to those hardworking teachers, but I know what my education didn’t do for me: it didn’t prepare me for life, or show me how to be happy. It also didn’t teach me how to fix a dripping tap without flooding my flat, or drive a car, or save a friend from choking. It didn’t teach me how to invest in the stock market (or anything else), grow my own food, or manage my emotions. It makes me wonder what I was doing all that time. No wonder I ended up graduating in the sciences and then spending twenty years trying to carve out a niche in the arts without any training.

Perhaps, as one of my students said, 'it's life that teaches us who we are'. Well…yes. But in that case, should we be spending eighteen years of our most formative years sitting in classrooms rather than experiencing 'life'? Did we really need all those days, weeks, years shut in one room in order to learn to read and write and do some basic arithmetic? I certainly can't remember more than a few random facts of what else I learned.
 

What about educating ourselves by following our bliss rather than having the information that other people think we need to know pushed into us? What about being encouraged to be creative in order to find out who we really are - which is surely the starting point for anyone?

But never in those eighteen years do I recall anyone ever asking me: Who are you? What makes you tick? What can you contribute?

The first time anyone helped me find myself was when I took a month-long government-run course for out-of-work ‘artists’ when I was living in Canada. I didn’t even consider myself an artist at the time – but the course was free and I was paying my rent with my credit card and didn't have a clue what I was good at. I had just graduated with a degree in the sciences and couldn't even get work as a temp...

The acronym for the course was SEARCH, and I forget what it stood for. But on this course they asked us who we were. They helped us put together our own mission statements. They helped us create resumes composed of our genuine skills, not just our employment histories. They told us that our only hope in life was to be who we really were. I was thirty-three.

 

For the first time since I was seven years old, I remembered that I was really a writer, and then found out how and where I could apply those skills. Two weeks after leaving that four-week course (and without any qualifications in writing; just certainty) I had a job that paid double what I’d ever earned before. Six weeks after that I had another job which paid double again. Two months later I had my first picture book published.

Do you know who you are? Who helped you to find out?

Educating Gove by David Thorpe

Another year, another shakeup of the examination system in England.

Michael Gove (I don't know about you, but he always reminds me of Archie Andrews from Educating Archie. That's Archie on the right below) has announced that young teenagers will have to study more spelling, grammar, Shakespeare and boring stuff like that.

I studied stuff like that, and look where it got me.

At least I live in Wales, which is not affected by such madness.

Make them learn Latin, that's what I say. I learnt Latin and I'm sure that helped me become a better writer. Nothing to do with imagination.

Shakespeare is so relevant to today, isn't it?

Joking aside, I don't care exactly what children learn. It's the way they are taught and by whom that matters. Qualified, enthusiastic teachers.

Learning must be fun if it isn't to alienate children from the system, from their inate eternal curiosity about the world, from an enthusiasm and thirst for new experiences.

And most importantly school must encourage critical thinking.

I read today that in a certain country textbooks and curriculum in schools "not only discourage critical thinking, but foster intolerance and hatred".

So said speakers at a panel discussion at a Children’s Literature Festival. In which country? Read on.

“When emotional and sentimental content, as opposed to objective fact, is added to the curriculum it adds a sense of intolerance, bias and even hatred. That is how our curriculum is designed”. That's what one of the delegates said in a discussion on ‘Curriculum and textbooks: do they promote critical thinking?’

Okay, the country's Pakistan and the speaker was Pakistan Minorities Teachers’ Association Chairman Professor Anjum James Paul.

Now I know Michael Gove gets all starry eyed, emotional and sentimental when he talks about making children in all those parts of England which are no longer full of white Anglo-Saxons learn to speak the Queen's English, recite all the kings and queens of England and their dates and learn Shakespeare and Tennyson by rote.

But does he realise that he is emulating Pakistan's education policy?

Anyway, you don't need to hear this from me. Just listen to some of the delegates at this children's literature festival:

Raheela Akram, principal at the Sanjan Nagar School, said that both teachers and-students were confused about textbooks and curriculum. “Our books are knowledge-based but they fail to address critical thinking”.

Ameena Saiyid, managing director at the Oxford University Press, said that examinations were based on textbooks and not the curriculum. “Students are merely required to reproduce content verbatim. How is that going to promote critical thinking?”

Tanveer Jahan, executive director at the Democratic Commission for Human Development, said unless the textbooks were based on truth, they would fail to encourage critical thinking. “Is the purpose of our curriculum to produce good Muslims or good citizens?”

Sound familiar? Okay, Mr Gove, “Is the purpose of our curriculum to produce good patriots or good citizens?”

Where Angels Fear to Tread by Keren David

I took O Level English Literature at a girls' grammar school in 1979. We studied three texts: Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford; E M Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Midsummer's

Night's Dream.  A play by the ultimate English writer, and two texts connected only by their utter Englishness.
I found the detailed social history contained in Flora Thompson's memoir of life in rural England completely tedious. Forster's examination of Edwardian snobbery and xenophobia in Forster's novel was somewhat baffling, sixteen-year-old girls not being best placed to appreciate a story about a middle-aged* woman's lust for a younger man (Eeeuw, yuck, disgusting). Re-reading it, 35 years later I was surprised to find it laugh-out-loud funny.
 I didn't enjoy English Literature O level, but I was good at it, and that was why I continued on to A level, which I found much more rewarding, with its wider (but still 100% English...not even British) texts.
Around the same time my husband received a reading list from his school. It included 22 plays, including contemporary works (Arnold Wesker's Roots, Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey), four plays by George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and Sophocles' Antigone.  For W Shakespeare the list read 'Any Play'.
The list for prose was longer -  44 books. They included plenty of nineteenth century novels: Jane Austen, Brontes C and E, two novels by Dickens and one by Hardy.
There were many twentieth century texts, British, American and translated : Anne Frank's Diary; Of Mice and Men (and another Steinbeck), To Kill a Mocking Bird. George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984; Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice and The Pied Piper, Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, D H Lawrence Sons and Lovers.
The list covered many genres -  science fiction (Day of the Triffids); romance (Pride and Prejudice); historical fiction (Rosemay Sutcliff's Warrior Scarlet); memoir( Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals), dystopian fiction (Fahrenheit 451); mystery (Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair) a western (Shane by Jack Shaefer) and a thriller (Alistair McLean's The Guns of Navarone).  There were several true-life stories from the Second World War, one by a Polish writer, one by an Italian and Alan Burgess's novel A Small Woman about a British missionary in China.
This list was clearly designed to be as broad as possible, introducing pupils to classic works of literature and inviting them to find out what sort of book they enjoy. It was challenging, interesting, reflecting different social classes and nationalities, as well as ethnic minority groups.
Should schools find this extensive list too short, there was a note: 'Candidates from Schools whose extended lists have been approved by the Board may, of course, refer in addition to texts on these lists.'  My husband remembers that pupils were told to read at least five or six of the 66 texts on the list, but he read at least 20, some in class, some from the local library. The final examination at the end of the course asked generic questions such as: 'Write about strong characters in some of the books you have read.'
This list  fostered a love of  reading in my husband which eventually led him to read English Literature at Oxford University.
The really interesting thing is that he was taking CSE English at a Secondary Modern school, a school to which he had been condemned by failing the 11 plus. CSEs were widely seen as useless qualifications for thickies, but I would contend that anyone who was given that list and had a crack at reading six books on it, would find something  enjoyable and challenging to read which might inspire them to read more in the future.

Our daughter took GCSE English recently, studying anthologies of poetry and short stories, a few scenes from Macbeth and Of Mice and Men; a syllabus which seemed to be designed for kids with short concentration spans. Of Mice and Men was the only text she read that ran to any length at all - all 107 pages of it. I have nothing against Steinbeck's classic, and certainly nothing against Macbeth, I am sure that the anthologies contained good material, but I have to admit to a great deal of parental frustration as I watched my daughter thoroughly turned off by this thin fare, and irritated by being asked to compare World War One poetry with Macbeth, an exam question that she found pointless and off-putting. .
I am writing this, of course, because of the recent kerfuffle over GCSE English, a row in which facts got lost to prejudice (for and against Michael Gove, for and against American literature, for and against Dickens and other nineteenth century authors).
Depending on who you read, Gove had personally interfered to ban books, or had bravely intervened to widen the curriculum, or Gove had nothing to do with any of it. As the saying goes, fools rush in, where angels fear to tread: it seemed as though the way the changes to GCSE English were reported and discussed was designed to make everyone look foolish (a Machiavellian plot by Gove himself, perhaps?)
I watched the row develop with increasing frustration, as it had so little to do with the actual crisis facing British children's literacy. Libraries are closing! Schools are being designed without libraries! Reading is being re-defined as deciphering phonics! School library services are closing! Children are spending more and more time glued to screens and less and less time reading for pleasure! These are the real crises, not whether Of Mice and Men remains on the school syllabus.
 When I read that Bailey's Prize winner Eimear McBride wants to spend some of her £30,000 prize money buying copies of Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird to give free to teenagers, I want to scream. These books haven't been banned, Eimear! Schools have so many copies that they will, no doubt, find a way of using them, perhaps by teaching them to Y9 pupils.  Instead, please give your money to the Siobhan Dowd Trust which has the simple and essential aim of promoting the love of reading among disadvantaged children and young adults.
Yesterday the review section of The Guardian newspaper asked a select group of authors and academics to pick GCSE texts (no librarians, English teachers or children's writers among them). The choice that make me giggle the most was put forward by Linda Grant: Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. And the one with which I agreed  whole-heartedly was Hilary Mantel:
Should we play the Gove game, by setting up opposing lists? Or should we ask, which Gradgrind thought up the idea of set texts in the first place? Why should students be condemned to thrash to death a novel or a corpus of poetry, week after week, month after month? No novel was ever penned to puzzle and punish the young. Plays are meant to be played at. Poetry is not written for Paxmanites. Literature is a creative discipline, not just for writer but for reader. Is the exam hall its correct context? We educate our children not as if we love them but as if we need to control and coerce them, bullying them over obstacles and drilling them like squaddies; and even the most inspired and loving teachers have to serve the system. We have laws against physical abuse. We can try to legislate against emotional abuse. So why do we think it's fine to abuse the imagination, and on an industrial scale? What would serve children is a love of reading, and the habit of it. I wonder if the present system creates either.



*As a 16 year old I definitely saw Lilia as middle-aged and her love for a 21-year-old made me queasy. On re-reading I discovered she was only 33.

Let's hear it for the kids: more literate and creative than ever - David Thorpe

Who says today's children are being dumbed down? Who says the intelligence, literacy and creative ability is weakening compared to previous generations? (Could it be Michael Gove?)

I personally detest it when people put down children in this way. Any writer or teacher who goes out to meet kids in schools knows how smart they are. I believe that modern technology has made them far smarter than us oldies were at their age. They have a wider vocabulary and a much greater appreciation of the world, brought about by the broadened horizons made available by the Internet, games, books and a smörgåsbord of television channels. They probably also travel much more widely than we did 50 or more years ago.

All of this has had a marvellous effect. This is underlined by the results of BBC Radio 2's and the Oxford University Press' 500 words competition for children announced a few days ago, in which children had to compose an original work of fiction of 500 words.

They received a record-breaking, staggering 118,632 entries. Wow. Oxford University Press dictionary's team has analysed the stories to find out what words kids are using the most and the extent of their vocabulary, etc., all stuff that is of interest to us writers.

The most interesting thing first of all is the gender split. Girls outnumbered boys entering the competition by about 2 to 1. Three quarters of the entrants were in the 10 to 13 age range, the rest being nine and under. That probably means that girls in that age range are more likely to read books than any other children.

Now: how reassuring that the most common noun used in the stories is: 'mum'; and the most common adjective: 'good'.

Despite the fact that girls wrote twice as many of the stories, the main protagonist is more likely to be a boy. Now why do you think that is?

And the commonest name, used 27,321 times, is Jack, closely followed by Tom, Bob and James, all solid Anglo-Saxon names. I was certainly surprised to find that the most common girl's name is Lily/Lilly (17,981), closely followed by Lucy, then Emily and Sophie, also traditional English names.

And the most common historical figure? Adolf Hitler (used in 641 stories) followed by Queen Victoria (258).

I'd like to see Nigel Farage and his ilk use this as evidence for the insidious infiltration of multiculturalism into British culture. Actually it goes to show the opposite: there is no cause for concern, if anyone is concerned, that British culture is being watered down (although the research results are not accompanied by an ethnicity breakdown of the entrants to enable us to determine whether Celtic or Anglo-Saxon-originating Brits are unevenly represented amongst the entrants).

Looking at the keywords used in the stories, children were especially interested by this year's floods, with that single noun being by far the most commonly used (4008 uses), followed largely by non-real-world originating terms, coming from films and computer games: Lego, minion (used in Despicable Me), Minecraft and flappy (from the game Flappy Bird). Other words commonly used derived either from games or recent events such as the Winter Olympics.

What about new words? The research found that popular culture and social media have given rise to new verbs such as 'friended', 'Facebooked' and 'face-planted'. These will no doubt be finding their way into the next edition of OUP's children's dictionary.

Now for the really good news: children know - and are not afraid to use - really long words, including some that you or I may not even know: how about 'contumelious'? As used in the following context:

The girl springs to her feet losing all caution and apoplectic with outrage. "How dare you?" she cries, "Fighting them is bad enough, but capturing one to be slaughtered, as if it were a common boar, is contumelious. They will take their revenge and it will be terrible." (The War Party, girl, 13)

Or hands up who knows what 'furfuraceous' means? As used in:

Folkrinne's crown was placed on his furfuraceous head. The Basilisks applauded and cheered for the corrination of their new king of Malroiterre. (The Basilisk king, girl, 12)

(OK, so there was a spelling mistake in that, but I forgive this author because I think furfuraceous is a lovely word, conjuring up such a beautiful image in my mind).

And what about making up words? Children are not afraid to do this because, as you and I know, it is so much fun. My favourite made-up word quoted from the stories is 'historytestaphobia' because I absolutely used to suffer from that when I was at school. I also love 'Mucaologist', which is apparently a collector of mucus.

Finally, telling stories is not just about the words you know but the order in which you put them, and these children seriously know how to build suspense using perfectly ordinary words. As the report writers say:

If asked to write on a theme of mystery and suspense, one would not immediately think of the words door, house, step, and walk and yet the following example shows clearly how these words can be used to build suspense:
'Something had caught his eye. He turned around and saw an old, creaky house standing on its own in the middle of the woods. He took one step towards the scary house. He got closer and closer until he reached the house. Ben slowly walked up the cracked steps to reach the front door. Ben was scared out of his skin. Although on the outside he was brave. He pushed the rotten door and took a step inside the house.' (Haunted House, boy, 11)

All of this makes me happy, because it shows that there will continue to be a hungry audience for anything we writers produce, and, moreover, in a few years' time there will be more fantastically creative young adults ready to take our place.

Let's hear it for the kids.

We Need to Talk About Apostrophe’s - Liz Kessler

Before I start, let me just make two points. The first is…yes the apostrophe in the title was a joke, not a mistake.

The second point is this: We only know what we know, and I don’t think that it’s up to anyone else to mock us for the gaps in our knowledge.

To underline this point, let me put myself and my own ignorance out there for you.

I rarely read a newspaper nowadays. I stopped quite a few years ago when I found that it was too full of horrific things being done to people – usually children – and it took me days to get over each horrible item I read. This means that, nowadays, I rarely know what’s going on in the world and I often don’t know who people are when I probably should do. I’m not saying I’m completely clueless about politics or the world* but there are gaps in my knowledge which some people could find painful.

Equally, yes, I admit it, I am pained by some of the grammatical gaps in knowledge that I see around me every day. But just as I hope people don’t judge me too harshly for my gaps, I don’t blame the perpetrators of these grammar slips (let’s not call them crimes). But I do want to do my bit towards helping put them right.

The main one that bugs me, and the one that is probably the most badly abused and misused little squiggle in the world, is, of course the apostrophe. But how do you do anything about this without upsetting people, losing friends and generally getting a reputation as a grammatically uptight know-it-all?

The answer is – or might be – you write an ABBA post about it!

I think that most of the people who follow this blog are writers, bloggers, teachers, librarians etc. As such, I'm sure most of you know exactly how to use apostrophes. But I bet you’ve all got a friend who has at some point sent you a text saying “Hope your OK” and you’ve bitten your lip and replied to their kind sentiment rather than replying, as you might have wanted to, “Hope YOU’RE OK! YOU’RE YOU’RE YOU’RE!!!!!!”

So, right. I'm obviously not doing this for you. I'm not even doing it for your friends because, to be honest, most of them probably KNOW how to use apostrophes; they just don't care quite as much as I do if they accidentally use them incorrectly from time to time. Let's just say I'm doing it on the off chance that there's an occasional reader of this blog who's never been a hundred per cent sure when and where to put their apostrophes but is way past the point where it's deemed acceptable to ask. Like I would feel about, say, asking who's the shadow chancellor or something like that.

And yeah, I'm doing it for me. Partly just to get it out of my system and share my pain because I’m tired of seeing things like this around the place and weeping silently to myself.

With thanks to Candy Gourlay and Fiona Dunbar, who suggested that it might mean you literally get a dog's welcome - i.e. a lick on the face and a sniff of your bum - with your Cornish Cream Tea.

And partly because, actually, I've always quite fancied writing a guide to the correct usage of apostrophes.

So here is my (very brief) guide to the correct usage of apostrophes. 

For those of who don’t care, don’t have a problem with this or would rather move on to the next blog with the cute kitten photos on it** please skip the section in blue.

OK. Apostrophes have two main uses.

1. To show possession of something. Here’s how you do that.

Look at your sentence and decide who or what is the person (or animal or thing) that is owning the other thing. When you know who that is, put your apostrophe after it.

For example…

The boy’s toys. (All the toys are owned by one boy.)

The boys’ toys. (All the toys are owned by a group of boys.)

The lady’s house. (One lady lives there.)

The ladies’ house. (A house where lots of ladies live.) (Make of that what you will.)

A missing apostrophe at the Edinburgh Book Festival - just to show that even the experts make mistakes.

The only real exceptions, where you indicate possession without an apostrophe despite the word looking as if it might want one, are “its” and “your”.

Without getting into extended discussions about possessive pronouns, just remember, if they are being used in the context of possession, the words “its” and “your” do not EVER need an apostrophe. OK?

For example…

The cat licked its paw.

Your hair looks nice today.

No apostrophe. Think of the “its” and the “your” in this context in the same way as if they were “his” or “her” or “my”. No apostrophe.

The ONLY times that “its” becomes “it’s” or “your” becomes “you’re” are when they fit into rule number two…

2. To indicate that a letter (or letters) have been left out.

For example…

It’s an interesting blog but can we move on now please?

Same with “your” and “you’re”. If you are using the word instead of “you are” it is always“you’re”. Never (ever ever) “your”. Ever.

Hope you’re OK.

You’re a star.

You’re starting to labour the point a bit now.

And finally, there is NEVER any need to use an apostrophe just because something is a plural. Never. Never. Never.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

OK, that's the end of my lesson. You can come back now.

If in doubt, the main things to remember are:

1. If you are married to a writer/English teacher/other grammatically-obsessed person, you may need to double check your Facebook status updates before posting them, just to be on the safe side.

2. If you are a friend of a writer/English teacher/etc and are asking after their health, please bear in mind that your correct use of apostrophes in the phrase “Hope you’re OK” (as opposed to the incorrect “Hope your OK”) will be at least as pleasing to them as the fact that you are thinking about them. Probably a little more, actually.

3. If you live in a small seaside town in Cornwall and are in the process of writing your menus for this year’s summer season, please send them my way before going to press. I will happily proof read them for free, and you will have no need to hurt people’s eyes with your pizza’s or pastie’s.

Thanks for reading! 

* Especially now. In fact, I found the results of this week's elections and the advances made by far right organisations so horrifying and scary that the twenty-something-year-old me, who was very loud and active and political and who is still in there underneath everything else, is definitely planning a comeback.

** I think I might have implied that there were going to be photos of cute kittens. Just in case you were holding on for that, here you go...

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The Silent Einsteins - Andrew Strong

I was once a great believer in philosophy for children.  I’d read a class of children the wonderful chapter from Winnie the Pooh, ‘Eeyore’s Birthday’ in which  Pooh wants to give Eeyore a pot of honey but eats the honey, and Piglet has a balloon for Eeyore, but it bursts.  So Eeyore ends up with a burst balloon and an empty pot, but he’s delighted, he can put the burst balloon into the pot and take it out again. He’s happy.  Then, of course, the children can discuss happiness and what it is and what it means, and how it happens.  The wordy, confident pupils usually dominate the discussion, sometimes offering insight, often demonstrating some sort of philosophical approach.  “It depends what you mean by happiness,” one will say, and I will be delighted.

The quieter children will still be thinking about the story, or are lost somewhere along the way, maybe stalled at the point where Piglet falls on the balloon and thinks he’s dead.  But, you know, we have to move things along, get to the philosophy bit.

Except the other day a wordy confident child asked me if I knew what E=MC2 meant.  Well, I said, I do, sort of, but I can’t really explain it beyond the most superficial outline.  I did my best and he said he understood it.  I explained that Einstein had one of his first major breakthroughs when he thought of someone falling.  A person falling for long enough would achieve weightlessness.

I asked the wordy, confident boy to imagine he was in a lift, holding a pen, and then the cable broke and the lift fell, and kept falling until he was weightless.  Imagine, I said, you then let go the pen.  What happens to it?

Wordy boy mimicked the pen shooting up out of his hand.  And then, from behind him, I noticed a girl who had said nothing, but who was listening intently, suddenly leaning forward.  She was staring at me and her eyes were bright.

“It would stay there,” she said. “The pen would just stay there.”  She nodded to herself as if confirming her idea, and sat back, resuming her silent rumination.

These silent children, these children who don’t shine or sparkle, or who fail to make any early impression on the world, I am convinced their thoughts are quietly gestating.  Their minds are finding new ways to reimagine the world.  The wordy, confident ones, the brilliant academic children who fly through exams, they have often matured early, they know to repeat what they’ve been told, adding some calculated sparkle for good measure.

Here’s an example of a test question that so infuriated me I set fire to it and let it float, a fiery cloud, over the silent fields of my suppressed rage.  It asked pupils to read a text and then describe what a character was ‘feeling’.  In order to do this, it seems, a pupil scours the page for synonyms of the word ‘feel’ and then quotes these phrases.  ‘He sensed doubt’ ‘His worries compounded’ and so on. Yet throughout the passage there were louring skies, distant cries, a current in a pool eddies and swirls, all these things externalising the protagonists fears. Yet none of these were acceptable.  The limits of what the text could do had been set in stone by some evil test setter. 

Education rewards the wordy group, and more and more, demoralises the others.  The winners go on to become evil test setters.  And things like ‘Philosophy for Children’ just exacerbate it.  The quieter pupils allow images to rise and fall, let them simmer and settle.  The wordy ones want to pin them down as soon as possible, try and articulate something immediately. 

But literature is not a science, and art cannot have such simplistic one to one relationships.  A single word is a trove of associations, a text is a universe, and there is far too much to be found to expect everyone to discover the same things.