Creativity; Counting the Uncountable

Sucianik, Student of English Education Department,
 UIN Sultan Syarif Kasim Riau  

Progress that influences the quality of education, it is increasingly needed nowadays. Being a student of English Department means taking a challenge to solve what today’s education is facing. It needs to be developed from all sides. For instance, some students are smart and have high achievement at school, but
they cannot be independent students. In contrast, some others are not too brilliant at school, but they can create a company after finishing their study. It does not mean that being an employee is not good. Yet, it needs to be considered that something has been wrong and influences mindset. So the view in life is to make an opportunity, not to fulfill.     

Now, what to be discussed is about smart children who are potentially failed, and vice versa. Carol S. Dweck divides two groups of children. The first is children who have high achievement and have been well-known at school. The second group consists of those who have ordinary achievement in learning. They just think about how to survive in life.

The both of them are interviewed and given several questions; some questions are elementary, others are intermediate and advance level. During the experiment, it is found that the first group mostly complains when they have to answer the questions that they do not know the answer yet. They reject the questions. They leave the papers and say “It is not yet taught.”

It is possibly because they are smart so that they know what they know and what they do not know. In contrast, “survived” children accomplish all questions. They do not too care whether it has been taught or not; they do not complain. They do not care about their image after finishing the questions. When it has finished, they are asked to tell what they experience during the test.

Carol surprise, the result reveals that the first group dramatizes what they get during the test. They tell more than what they have done. The second group tells the true. After analyzing, he found two types of human behavior toward success and failed.

“After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I’ve ever seen: Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and harms their performance. How can be? Don’t children love to be praised? Yes, it is true, especially for their talent and cleverness. It causes encouragement—but only for the moment. The minute they hit a snag, their confidence goes out the window and their motivation hits rock bottom. If success means they’re smart, then failure means they’re dumb. That’s the fixed mindset.” (Carol Dweck, 2006)

Whether the students are smart or not, it does not matter. Yet the matter is when they have FIXED MINDSET. Fixed mindset harms creativity. It is truly related to mental building. So, the core of the problem is, mostly educators measure the intelligence of students by seeing their score in examination only, but not by their capability to survive in life. The result is, when a student feels smart at school, he mostly concludes that it is enough. 

To the more success persons, they are not having a good response. It restricts smart children, meanwhile those who feel “survive” can grow and change. Those who “survive” often feel that they are not smart. They attempt to do many new things. So, that is not a start that influences a result, but the process, and how to grow an idea in facing the challenging in life. It is called as GROWTH MINDSET.

 “Becoming is better than being. I believe ability can get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. It’s so easy to begin thinking you can just ‘turn it on’ automatically, without proper preparation It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you are there. When you read about an athlete wins over and over when you read about an athlete that wins over and over, remind yourself, ‘More than ability, they’ve character.’ ” (Carol S. Dweck, 2006)

Character is shaped since childhood. It is developed until the child is being adult. So that, for parents, it is not good to be proud of having smart children who are forced to learn at course. Children need the building of mindset, it is called self-regulation. They have to be trained to solve many things in life. They need to adapt, respect to difference and others strength. When the children are expert in memorizing the formula of a subject, spelling the letter, or something like that, it is easy to done by others. Yet, it does not happen when what they have is creativity, the ability to experiment new thing, ready to evaluate own-self, and have morality. It is called as an executive functioning like Ellen Gallinsky said it is “Essential Life Skills.”

Well, creativity belongs to the second group and intelligence belongs to first group. Creativity helps people to survive in life because they will always have ways to solve every single problem that comes to them. Yet, it is different from intelligence. Intelligence is also ability to solve problem, but the result is not as much as creativity.  

Creativity and Intelligence is not the same thing. Stenberg (1999), who included creativity in his triarchic theory of intelligence, says that many highly intelligent people produce large numbers of products but they are not necessarily novel. He also believes that highly creative people defy the crowd, whereas people who are highly intelligent but not creative often try to simply please the crowd.

Creative people tend to be divergent thinkers (Guilford, 1967). Divergent thinking produces many answers to the same question. In contrast, the kind of thinking required on conventional intelligence tests is convergent thinking[1]. These are several ways to guide children creativity, as follows:

Have children engage in brainstorming and come up with as many ideas as possible. Brainstorming is a technique in which children are encouraged to come up with creative ideas in a group, play off each other’s ideas, and say practically whatever comes to mind.

            Children are usually whatever told to hold off from criticizing other’s ideas at least until the end of the brainstorming session. Whether in a group or individually, a good creativity strategy is to come up with as many new ideas as possible. Famous twentieth-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso produced more than 20,000 works of art. Not all of them were masterpieces. The more ideas children produce, the better their chance of creating something unique. Creative children are not afraid of failing or getting something wrong. They may go down twenty dead-end streets before they come up with an innovative idea. They recognize that it’s okay to win some and lose some. They are willing to take risks, just as Picasso was.

Provide children with environments that stimulate creativity. Some settings nourish creativity; others depress it (Nakamura and Csikzenthalyi, 2003). People who encourage children’s creativity often rely on their natural curiosity. They provide exercises and activities that stimulate children to find insightful solutions to problem, rather than asking a lot of questions that require rote answers. Adults also encourage creativity is valued. Howard Gardner (1993) believes that science, discovery, and children’s museums offer rich opportunities to stimulate children’s creativity.

Don’t over-control. Teresa Amabile (1993) says that telling children exactly how to do things leaves them feeling that any originally is a mistake and any exploration is a waste of time. Letting children select their interests and supporting their inclinations are less likely to destroy their natural curiosity that dictating which activities they should engage in. Amabile also believes that, when adults constantly hover children, the children feel they are being watched while they are working. When children are under constant surveillance, their creative risk is taking and adventurous spirit wane. Another strategy that can harm creativity is to have grandiose expectations for a child’s performance and expect the child to do something perfectly, according to Amabile.

Encourage internal and motivation. The excessive use of prizes, such as gold stars, money, or toys, can stifle creativity by undermining the intrinsic pleasure children derive from creative activities. Creative children’s motivation is the satisfaction generated by the work itself. Competition for prizes and formal evaluations often undermine intrinsic motivation and creativity (Amabile and Hennesey, 1992).

Foster flexible and playful thinking. Creative thinkers are flexible and play with problem, which gives rice to paradox. Although creativity takes effort, the effort goes more smoothly if students take it lightly. In a way, humor can grease the wheels of creativity (Goleman, Kaufman, and Rya, 1993). When children are joking around, they are more likely to consider unusual solutions to problem. Having fun helps disarm the inner censor that can condemn a child’s ideas as off-base. As one clown named Wavy Gravy put it, “If you can’t laugh about it just isn’t funny anymore.”

Introduce children to creative people. You may not know a clown named Wavy Gravy whom you can ask to stimulate a child’s creativity, but it is a good strategy to think about the identity of the most creative people in your community. Teachers can invite these people to their classroom and ask them to describe what helps them become creative or to demonstrate their creative skills. A writer, poet, musician, scientist and many others can bring can bring their props and productions to the class, turning it into a theater for stimulating student’s creativity. Poet Richard Lewis (1997) visits classroom in New York City. He brings with him only a large clear glass marble. He lifts it above his head, so that every student can see the spectrum of colors the marble produces. He asks, “Who can see something playing inside?” Then he asks students to write about what they see. One student named Snigdha wrote that she sees the rainbow rising, the sun moving a lot, and the sun sleeping with the stars. She also writes that she saw the rain dropping on the ground, stems breaking, apples falling from trees, and wind blowing the leaves. [2]  

            To sum up, creativity is the goal of education. Yet, it is not easy to be gained because it must be shaped since childhood. Parent’s over control is one of the most dangerous things in building the student’s creativity. On the other hand, what teacher does at school is truly effective to grow it. Well, for parents, start to let your children explore themselves by going to some places alone without control. For teacher, start to stimulate your student’s creativity by getting them to know creative people. What this nation hopes is to have young generation who are able to create something new, not only who can answer the examination by the highest score but it does not effect on future. It is only small, but changing. So, start counting the uncountable!           

Pekanbaru, June 23, 2014

References

John W. Santrock. Child Development: Tenth Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies. 2004

Carol Dweck. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York. 2006

Halim, Adreas. Kamus Lengkap 20 Milyar. Surabaya: Sulita Jaya.

Guidelines of International Essay Contest. UNESCO. 2012

     

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[1] John W. Santrock. Child Development. Tenth Edition. McGraw-Hill Companies. 2004. Page 209

[2]Ibid, page. 302