I’m not even sure how to flesh this idea out and so I openly admit that it probably shouldn't be a blog post. But I’m here in the airport. CNN is hyping up pseudo-news and Fox is spewing propaganda. People are bored. Really bored. They're fidgeting with their phones. They're staring out into space and tapping their legs and playing with their boarding passes.
Meanwhile, I’ve written half a chapter of a fantasy novel. I’ve had some really creative tweets. My Facebook status updates have been authentic and interactive. I've written three blog posts. In other words, this dead time, this boredom, this antsy anticipation of the airport terminal is kicking my creativity into high gear.
It has me thinking about school. I wrote a whole novel by plugging away at it in math classes in high school. While the teacher lectured us on matrices, I wrote dystopian science fiction and mopey high school poetry. I sketched pictures.
It wasn’t just the solitude, though I think that helped. It was the boredom of the situation that seemed to demand my full creative potential. And although I often rail against boring teaching, I’m trying to make sense out of this reality that boring places are often a catalyst for my creativity. I'm not advocating for boredom in schools. I'm just trying to make sense out of the reality that boredom is often the beginning of creativity for me.
I think I get what you're saying. Instead of trying to gimmick creativity out of our students, we should create non-stimulating environments that allow their creativity to bubble through on its own.
ReplyDeleteMy question is, how do we train our kids to have productive creativity? It isn't something many adhere to on their own. Do we need constructed environments that become dull as the students improve?
I'm not sure how to foster the creativity. I know meaning, purpose, excitement, passion, self-awareness, etc. all make a difference. But I don't think it's always an easy thing to encourage.
DeleteWhile you were able to use your idle time wisely, I'm not convinced the majority would benefit as much from boredom. Of course, what may benefit that other group may not be what's going on at present.
ReplyDeleteThat's certainly a concern and I readily admit that my thinking here is half-baked at best. Maybe some kids naturally seem inclined to use idle time for creativity. Maybe it's something that is taught.
DeleteI'm aiming to re-claim some of the "boring" time in my life. I've filled it with RSS feeds, reading news on my smartphone, listening to the radio in the car, watching TV at the gym, etc. My subconscious has time to process everything while I'm asleep, but I think I need boring idle time while I'm awake so my conscious mind has time to reflect.
ReplyDeleteI give my students a lot of slack and freedom in order to explore. I couldn't force a level of boredom on them in order to torture the creativity out of them. We can't all turn into tortured artists.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely an interesting thought though.
One of my greatest joys in high school was to take an English assignment that I thought was ridiculous and turn my final product into a satirical version of itself. It was my own version of civil disobedience.
I wish there was a clear path to nurturing Or teaching or guiding that kind of thought to students.
As we say, schools need caves, campfires, and watering holes and the right to choose the one you need when you need it. So, while it is hard to imagine most schools actually being MORE boring, what you are asking for is the right to get to your cave when you need to, and to work on what you need to work on when you need to work on that.
ReplyDeleteThis is all about "undoing academic time" http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2012/01/changing-gears-2012-undoing-academic.html and reimagining learning spaces http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2012/01/changing-gears-2012-changing-rooms.html
Unless, of course, we still persist in our goal of producing workers for Foxconn instead of for Apple, Google, etc
Ira Socol
You do realize that Apple and Google are corporations as much as any other corporation that are run by CEOs whose egos match just about anyone at GE or Ford or any financial industries company and they expect just as much out of their worker bees as anything and if those people fail they're likely to be fired because they're not holding up their end of the bargain.
DeleteDon't idealize a company just because you happen to like its product and because it fits your meme.
I think the trick has to be in deeply knowing your students. If you can discover what triggers each of their creativity to flourish then it's much more possible to make it happen for them.
ReplyDeleteOf course, a huge part of that is creating a physical, emotional, and social environment that gives you and your kids opportunities to explore what DOES trigger their creativity.
Random thought/question- I wonder what the high school you would have done if your teacher had called you out / cracked down on your "off-task" behavior? I wonder what the high school you would have done if the teacher had done the opposite- if they had changed the way their classroom works and embraced your creativity? If it were the high school me, I could see BOTH those situations actually stifling the creative thoughts... Which is an interesting thing to think about.
What you're describing is not so much boredom as disengagement. When you're at the airport, you have permission to let your mind wander. When you are at school, you are supposed to pay attention. That leads to much yawning and yearning to be elsewhere. I remember daydreaming quite a bit, and, possibly as a result of that, receiving checked off comments of, "does not follow instructions."
ReplyDeleteIf we do not create caves, then we have ways of creating our own. In second grade, I used to keep a messy desk which periodically used to get me kicked back to a long table at the back of the classroom. Nothing made me happier, and my second grade teacher remained thwarted in her desire to shame me into being neat.
Creativity cannot be taught, but it can be fostered. How many more poems would I have written in my youth if I had had some safe haven away from all the bullies at school and away from chaos at home? Whether it's cave or not, we all need sanctuary, a place where we feel protected, secure and nurtured. We need more educators willing to be mentors.
What stifles creativity and wonder is the rigid schedule we impose on kids. Forty, fifty minutes and then onward to the next subject and the next classroom. Unless we teach all kids to jot a quick note to themselves, they lose a lot. Hard to retain a train of thought if part of the time is realizing that it's time to move on to the next thing.
Boredom is a choice, and so is creativity.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, some are conditioned to believe that boredom simply means a lack of stimulation. Those folks combat feelings of boredom by seeking stimulus: tuning into Faux News, tweeting, pinning, texting... consuming. Others have perhaps the natural propensity to or are also conditioned to instead create their own stimulus. You, for instance, created stories or wrote blog posts. Others may dance, create music, cook... produce.
And absolutely creativity can be taught. And freed. And encouraged by building environments that support it.
When students say they are bored, ask, "What have you tried?"
When students say that they are not creative, ask, "What have you tried."
It's a choice!
I think productive creativity derives from background knowledge. Frist, students need to learn something to form foundation. Fostering creativity is the next step. Therefore, teachers try to get students invoved in the class instead of being bored.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting. Exactly, whenever I feel bored or kill my time, I start to think about something interesting or new and about what I am. That time have enriched my thought, personality and creativity.
ReplyDeleteWhen I felt bored in junior high school and high school, I was thinking what I would do if I were the teacher in the boring class to make it more interesting and valuable. That led me to start to study by myself.
This situation could be good but could be bad because some students would just hate the subject. It would stifle their thinking, their opportunity to get the stimulus and just make them asleep...
Hey Pal,
ReplyDeleteFun thinking.
Here's my addition: The criteria that I'm starting to see as most important for kids is actually persistence. The creative space that the airport -- and high school math class -- created for you would have been wasted if you weren't determined to use that space to work towards your passion.
And that persistence is something that I think a lot of kids just don't have.
What worries me is that I think persistence will continue to be erased in tomorrow's world simply because EVERYTHING is easier (or at least apparently easier) than it was 10 years ago. Why work hard to decipher or create when there's (seemingly) always a reset button or an easier opportunity just around the corner?
#interestingstuff
#thanksformakingmethink
Bill
Not so much about boredom as freedom of agenda.
ReplyDeleteI love this post!! I've never read about this topic though it's very common. When I'm in school I always do something productive when it's down time. I've always done that. I know exactly what you mean. I don't think schools should be more boring but I wish students would make more of their down time. Although, I hope to keep my lectures as entertaining as possible so my students don't miss out. Students need the ability to feel freedom in certain cases.
ReplyDeleteHey, John Spencer
ReplyDeleteI'm Giorgio Lymon a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. This was a very random post like you stated but while I was reading it I seemed to notice that you and me share that same trait of being more creative when we are faced with boredom. From personal experience, I believe that if we put certain students in a boring atmosphere that their mind is forced to be more creative. For example, when I was in high school I noticed that I learned better and that wrote better essays when I was in on campus suspension because I was not around my normal classmates. Keep the posts coming they are really interesting.
Thanks, Giorgio Lymon
EDM310
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ReplyDeleteDaily News Online | Daily News Headlines | Daily World News | Daily Business News
Late to the party here, but I second your story. My sophomore year of high school, my actual schedule looked nothing like my official class schedule. I took writing class (biology), choir (actually choir, but frequently looking ahead at other music during slow moments), lunch with a book (trig), trig (a week's worth over one lunch), board games (history and English), and German (actually German, but working three times faster through the book). It was probably the most productive year of my academic career.
ReplyDeleteThe "play" time I got with the games- not educational board games, just chess or euchre or Fluxx or Zendo- also spawned great conversations with other players about *their* extracurricular learning activities, which led to my own independent study about quantum chemistry or Finnegan's Wake or string theory or whatever new idea they were excited about. I don't know how you can structure a school so that students both have space to explore their own interests independently and have informal space to share about it, but I think that's what's needed.
The only other takeaway for me was that huge blocks of whole-class instruction was a waste of time, because it was only ever 40%-class instruction, at best, and I was almost never in the 40%. But we knew this already, right?