Warhol, Leadbelly, and Vygotsky

"To criticize and criminalize transformative creation and remix is, at best, itself an 'unresisting imbecility' and, at worst, an enormous hindrance to creative innovation."

-Brain Pickings

Reading Maria Popova's thoughts on transformation as authorship has me thinking about early childhood education, as always.  If we have a great idea, or have a revelation about what will make something work or make something better, how much credit needs to go to other people?  How much work have others done to get us to that breakthrough?

There are "aha" moments, of course - reading Jonah Lehrer's Imagine brought me on a journey thorough the interaction of nature and nurture in creativity and innovation. Reading the Brain Pickings post, I thought back to this TED talk by Kirby Ferguson about "Embracing the Remix":

Maybe we don't remember that we have seen or heard something before.  Or maybe we're so inspired by an image or a sound and we want to put our own spin on it, sending a message about culture and our personal view on it.

I wouldn't think of Warhol as copying - I think of this piece of art as fitting right into what Popova describes as "remix as a tool of innovation", along with Kirby Ferguson speaking above.  Warhol's work takes an iconic piece of American culture and uses it to send a powerful message about consumerism - I doubt anyone could strongly argue that Andy Warhol was trying to capitalize on the popularity of tomato soup.

I am always listening to music, and I am always looking for more wonderful music to listen to.  I put this mix together a year or two ago - I found myself listening to great covers of great artists and songs.  It is a bit more literal than what Ferguson talks about above - but just wait until John Fogerty sings Leadbelly's Midnight Special.  Its a different animal, but just as wonderful.

In education, I think one of the best things we can do to promote children's creativity is to set them up to remix great ideas.  We can give children inspiration - from their past work, for example.  When a child creates an intricate sculpture using a variety of materials from around the classroom, we might document that experience and encourage the child to revisit those materials, or the idea of creating a sculpture, by sharing the documentation with them.

We might read three different versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and then encourage children to retell it orally or write and illustrate their own retelling of the story.

Perhaps one child has an idea, and we encourage children to explore that idea as a community - to expand, embellish, improve, make personal, the work of peers.  One of my favorite classroom experiences was "the tower", made by M and then remixed tirelessly by everyone else.

I think about Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development - that sweet spot for learning.  In Vygotsky's words, “what the child is able to do in collaboration today he will be able to do independently tomorrow” (Vygotsky, 1934/1987, p. 211). In The Culture of Education, Jerome Bruner expands on this idea:

"If pedagogy is to empower human beings to go beyond their 'native' predispositions, it must transmit the 'toolkit' the culture has developed for doing so.  It is a commonplace that any math major in a halfway decent modern university can do more mathematics than, say, Leibniz, who 'invented' calculus - that we stand on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us" (Bruner, 1996, pp. 17-18).

I enjoy a good remix - I think great things inspire even greater things.  One responsibility as educators, then, might be to really think about the environment, the materials, the sounds - all of the things that are going to be inspiring remixes from children.  We can think about much of what we do as providing the raw material to children and stepping back to see how they remix it.

*

again, via brainpickings.

I thought about the read-along when I read this : creativity and innovation can require blood, sweat, and tears, and there is no such thing as an overnight success.  That is the part of creativity that no one talks about, right?  Sometimes, understanding just takes time.

Jonah Lehrer's Imagine : Educator's Read-Along

This August, I'll be hosting a read-along and discussion of Imagine by Jonah Lehrer for educators.  A handful of people have expressed interest in joining in, and I hope we'll hear everyone's thoughts and ideas in this space as the month goes along!  The schedule for the discussion is at the bottom of this post.

Lehrer's book is about creativity, which is not exactly a science.  But his examples and vignettes are about creative minds and creative institutions.  As teachers, we know that our students will benefit from creative, open-ended experiences that challenge them to solve problems and think outside of the box: those are traits that come from experience and have more real-world application than many academic subjects.  We cannot deny that academics are important, but embedding creativity into educational experiences, in my mind, is something that can promote innovation in some of those age-old subjects.  Innovation not only in the way that they are learned, but also in the way that they are taught.

Another reason why the subject of creativity feels important for teachers to explore is for our own creativity and innovation.  If we expect people that we teach to be creative, don't we need to explore our own creativity?  Instead of sitting down in front of last year's planning book and copying old ideas, don't we need to innovate lessons and educational experiences?  If we think that we need to give children a variety of modes to express their understanding to respect multiple intelligences, don't we need to accept and explore our own intelligences?

As teachers, we spend a lot of time thinking about what can make education, from individual classrooms to public policy, better.  Reading about creativity is about practicing what we preach.  I really hope you'll read along!

Discussion Schedule

The post with a discussion prompt for the chapter listed will be posted on the day listed.  Please plan to have read that chapter and join in as soon as it is posted!  You can subscribe to the blog by email on the righthand side of the page.

Monday, August 6 : Chapter 1, Bob Dylan's Brain

Thursday, August 9 : Chapter 2, Alpha Waves (Condition Blue)

Monday, August 13 : Chapter 3, The Unconcealing

Thursday, August 16 : Chapter 4, The Letting Go

Monday, August 20 : Chapter 5, The Outsider

Thursday, August 23 : Chapter 6, The Power of Q

Monday, August 27 : Chapter 7, Urban Friction

Thursday, August 30 : Chapter 8, The Shakespeare Paradox + Wrap Up Discussion

We have a few days to read each chapter, so if you have an opportunity to read slowly and keep notes on what you're thinking in relation to education, it will be easier to share and discuss.  The prompts will be open ended, and I encourage you to ask your own questions in the discussion as well!

Sharing your thoughts is key to the discussion aspect, so please join in the conversation in the comments!  Feel free to start conversation about the introduction in the comments section of this post if you're ready to begin.

Happy Reading!

Do schools kill creativity?

A wonderful talk by Sir Ken Robinson.



"All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." -- Picasso