Towards creativity
USHA RAMAN
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Education is supposed to trigger the curiosity of the child. But do schools do this?
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Reuters
What will I learn tomorrow in school?
The little hand lies in mine — trusting, confident that I will care and share in her quests. Then she points at this and that. The eyes drink in everything, absorbing the world, giving the mind a value-free storehouse of information. She questions — why, what, how? I begin to answer, almost automatically. Then I stop. Many of my answers are not answers. They are unthinking responses, schooled, practiced, and accepted. They represent what will become Truth in that fresh mind and perhaps quell the questioning spring. Each response I feed that mind must be a stimulant, further fuel to that spark of inquisitiveness.
But what will I do tomorrow, when she goes to school, where she will not only be given answers but also made to learn them, repeat them, until they are seen as the Truth? Will the questions disappear? Will they accept that all questions are valid; that answers must lead to more questions, that questions are the basis of learning and that to question is to think? And that to think is to remain on the path of education?
As parents, we hope that our children will be stimulated and encouraged to learn when they enter school. That the child grows into an informed and confident individual who is able to hold her own in a confusing and often frightening world. That she will be able to make choices that will benefit both her and the society. Do our schools do this? Do they provide environments within which inquiry is nurtured, self-responsibility and accountability engendered?
The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines school as an "institution for educating children". Informally, the word is used as a verb meaning "(to give) experience or activity that provides discipline or instruction". The same dictionary defines "education" as an activity that "trains the mind and character".
So, if one is to follow the literal meaning of the two terms as defined in this dictionary, "to educate in a school" translates into "an institution that trains (and instructs) the mind and character in a manner that provides discipline". Taken formally, this is enough to make the sensitive parent apprehensive. To be sure, schools do not see themselves as instruments of regimentation, but the run-of-the-mill school is in fact highly regimented and fosters conformity.
Schools do this in a variety of ways. The division of the day into periods within which only certain books may be opened and certain questions asked is the first step in sectioning off at the root thus ensuring that certain comparisons that may never be made, or certain links undiscovered. Children are taught not just what the answers are, but how they should sound and look; form becomes paramount. A curious hand that weaves into an answer surprises gleaned from other periods, and other books, is told to stick "to the point". The few who break free and become truly creative do so in spite of this kind of schooling, not as a consequence of it.
Is this what I want for that trusting hand and enquiring mind? Sooner or later, the hand will be trained to write without connecting to the mind, to do without thought for consequence, and the mind will be stilled in the certainty that many questions will never be answered only because the questions were not raised in the textbook of the time.
This is not to ignore the virtue of a certain amount of standardisation in society, or to completely devalue an adherence to rule.
But behind the standards must be a constant search for newer standards that meet newer and different needs, to question rules so that they may serve us instead of being served by us. What we have now is a multitude of institutions that run us and run our lives, whereas what we need are a similar number of places that allow us to discover our world and recreate it in a more equitable and productive manner.
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