developing creativity

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

My son is like me, zero creativity. Great at learning new stuff, quite quick in his thinkings, but no creativity.

 

How can I help him stretch outside of his comfort zone, while I have no creativity myself?

 

He's entering grade 11, aiming in all sorts of directions, most likely science, although he's developed a taste for literature now, and he's intrigued by psychology.

 

In all honesty, he'll most likely end up as a software engineer, like DH and I. However, the really good positions in software engineering require a LOT of creativity. I wasn't good in that area, so I ended up doing jobs no one else was interested in, but the really good software engineers are very creative.

[PeterPan]

Has he done his art credit yet? All through high school, and into adulthood in fact, I would have said what you're saying, that I'm not creative. Turns out I'm very creative in sort of a technical way. Like I'm good at photo-editing, something that rewards attentiveness to detail and requires pre-visualization. I'm good at complex and precise handicrafts like very detailed piecing for quilting. So you might look for something like that where he's creatively applying technical or precise skills he can enjoy. Some men enjoy creating with machinery. There are engineers who enjoy machine quilting (the actual quilting), because it involves quite a bit of machinery and mechanics. Some men enjoy knitting or spinning, same reason. I've watched tv shows about men (and women) making art with welding and metal. I've also become interested lately in some forms of japanese water color painting. You can buy kits for it at Hobby Lobby and books. Again, it's sort of this technically precise thing that you do just so. I haven't actually done it yet, but it's on "my when I retire" list.

 

You know what high school art teachers often do is have the student do one project via imitation and the 2nd project, using the same exact technique, for an original product. Creativity is the application stage that comes after technical proficiency. So you learn to do something well, then you can be creative within it. Doesn't matter if it's cake decorating or programming or biology experiments with protista or whatever. You do the basic step to proficiency and then you're able to start asking what-if and take a more creative step. You can structure your assignments like that. Sometimes they'll say the imitation stage is boring, sigh, and you tell 'em to get over it. I've got some art projects for this summer I'm trying to structure like that. My dd is the impulsive type who wants to say it's boring and fly all the way to creative land. I have to reign her back, sort of the inverse of your problem. Those types of people make everything too HARD the very first time they do it, and then they never want to do it again. In your case it sounds like he's willing to STOP before he's gone the next step. So you do it one time at the basic level, then do it again in a more complex, exploratory way. That will work for ANYTHING. Build birdhouses, design pine cars, leather-working, physics labs, whatever.

 

And you know if you want to get some ideas on art projects, Dick Blick has great stuff. You can filter by age/grade, medium, etc. They specifically have some for working with metal. There's cool stuff you can do with pouring acid on metal to get colors, etc.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I think we may have a different definition of creativity, because it doesn't involve art in my case. Btw, he's a violin player, so that counts as his art credits.

 

I'm worried about his thinking outside of the box (which is non-existent). If we stick with the music analogy, he can play, he cannot compose, he can't even come up with variations. When he codes (programming), he can find solutions to problems, but never comes up with a problem on his own that he would like to solve by coding.

 

Next year, he is having a 'technology credit'. He already has a lot of know-how. I'm giving him half the year to come up with his own project and run with it. I am met with a blank stare. Two weeks later, he still has no idea. (and trust me, we've got tons in here. We've got a raspberry pi, a Lego Mindstorm. Tons of electronics, a soldering iron. He could tinker any thing up. Nope, no idea what to do.

 

 

ETA; this is the guy who would like to attend MIT, where creativity, thinking outside the box, are celebrated. He's not going that way if he can't come up with a single idea.

[PeterPan]

That's how I was with piano, and I think sometimes it's the instructional methodology that encourages people to do by rote and makes them afraid to go out of the box. I think sometimes we expect creativity to happen without STRUCTURE. If you gave him 3 notes and said make a little ditty (a tune) with just those 3 notes, he probably could. It's not like people go all the way to the end (totally original compositions) with nothing inbetween. They make baby steps. There are piano/music curricula that encourage this creativity, but they do it with small steps and boundaries.

 

Cooking contests encourage creativity by creating some structure (try to make a dessert using these three ingredients). Science contests in high school do the same thing, starting with components or a challenge. Sometimes the options are so immense, you have to boil it down. Or as one kitchen designer show put it, the most interesting solutions come when the designer is faced with a PROBLEM. So maybe you show him a problem and ask him to give you 3 workable solutions.

 

Yup, just reread your post. You're saying exactly what I'm saying. The field is too big. He needs it narrowed down more so he has more structure to work within.

 

Here's an example:

 

http://www.usanetwork.com/series/burnnotice/science/

[Teachin'Mine]

nm

[Kathy in Richmond]

Cleo, my son was similar to what you're describing (right down to the music, though his instrument is piano instead of violin - technically marvelous, but lack of the creative gene!) His love always has been computer programming, too. With subjects like essay writing, he'd freeze up at all the possibilities and have a horrible time getting anything creative down on paper, but with math and CS there was always that comfort of a right answer.

 

We did manage to get him out of the box a little bit before college. The process for him started with imitation and that led to creativity. We, too, started by giving him supplies and free time, and like your son, he really didn't have any ideas where to start. So I suggested that he try to program a copy of one of his favorite computer games (Chips Challenge, if you remember that one). He taught himself whatever CS that he needed to get over stumbling blocks. I just provided books and software and lots of encouragement. As his project developed, he started to become dissatisfied with merely copying. That's when the creative spark ignited. He began to design graphics, working with bit-mapped art work that he and his sister came up with, etc. Then he started to see ways to change and improve on the original game's design, and whoo hoo! creativity entered the equation even more...He kept on adding to it over the years that he was at home.

 

He also loved fiddling around with circuitry and robotics -- using books and inexpensive parts from Radio Shack & Lego Mindstorms, mostly. Nothing formal, just on his own in his free time and as he desired. No great projects, just tinkering. Sometimes kids just want to be left alone & not have the pressure to come up with a product. Other times they want someone to 'play' with them and help them figure it out. With ds, it was a combination. His little sister, far more the creative type, often was the catalyst for his ideas & then he went on to implement them. For example - she wanted an alarm rigged up to her door, and he gladly learned how to make one for her (side benefit - she learned a lot watching him).

 

Both these sort of free form explorations really did get him out of the box in his thinking, but it took a while, and both were incredibly helpful when he got to college (EECS at MIT). The first technical course he took there was an intro course for computer science and electrical engineering. It was taught via hands-on lab work with robots. Having that exploratory work at home was every bit as (maybe more) helpful than the textbook work he'd done at home.

[TechWife]

My dd is the impulsive type who wants to say it's boring and fly all the way to creative land. I have to reign her back, sort of the inverse of your problem. Those types of people make everything too HARD the very first time they do it, and then they never want to do it again.

 

My ds is like this - I'm so glad I'm not the only one! If I hear "It's too hard..." after a failed attempt one. more. time. I might scream.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

 

Both these sort of free form explorations really did get him out of the box in his thinking, but it took a while, and both were incredibly helpful when he got to college (EECS at MIT). The first technical course he took there was an intro course for computer science and electrical engineering. It was taught via hands-on lab work with robots. Having that exploratory work at home was every bit as (maybe more) helpful than the textbook work he'd done at home.

 

Kathy,

That sounds exactly like my family! Including the far more creative younger sister! And DS wants to apply to MIT ! So it's feasible. That's always good to know. I really have to push him out of textbooks learning into more hands-on.

[Kate in Arabia]

My ds (entering 10th) is like this as well, although his strengths lie in language arts -- he's aces at grammar, learning a foreign language, etc., but cannot manage creative writing (literally cried in younger years when we tried the first lesson in Writing Strands "write 10 sentences to describe a pencil", or something similar). I don't know about you, but I see it so clearly in so many aspects of his life; maybe it's more striking because his younger brother -- more "mathy" -- is the opposite. (e.g., older ds only wants to build lego creations following instructions; younger ds never wants instructions, he wants to make his own thing.)

 

Like others mentioned, the times I've seen his creativity have come in somewhat structured environments. I remember him studying poetry with Classical Writing and I thought it would be a disaster, asking him to write poetry, but the lessons were very structured and he actually got a kick out of that. Color me amazed.

[Candid]

I've been mulling this thread over for several days.

 

First, I think Kathy is definitely onto something in terms of pushing him slowly towards being more creative. The more assigned projects he gets the more basis he will have to be able to expand himself further out from their assignments.

 

I'd also listen for when he says "I wish" about wanting something to do something. Use that as an assignment. Since he wants to do the same work as you you'll have an advantage in that if he gets stuck you can ask him rhetoric style questions to get him thinking about the task.

 

But I keep coming back to the thought that I am not totally sure creativity can be taught. I am pretty sure that you can't make all students into novel writers nor all musicians into composers. My husband was a math major who in his junior year woke up to the fact that he really wasn't good at math. He was good at following rules and applying equations, but the leap to some of the most creative work humans do was not in him. He added a second major, went to a good law school and is now well respected (I guess lawyers don't have to be creative).

 

So I think you should also be looking for what your son can do that will get him more respect than what you describe yourself as getting. Cal Newport's new book is supposed to be on this theme: http://www.amazon.co...rds=study hacks You can download an interview with him on this topic here: http://gtd-vsg.blogs...al-newport.html

[Kathy in Richmond]

I've been mulling this thread over for several days.

I've been thinking about this, too, and debating with myself (lol) this morning. Good topic, Cleo!

 

But I keep coming back to the thought that I am not totally sure creativity can be taught. I am pretty sure that you can't make all students into novel writers nor all musicians into composers. My husband was a math major who in his junior year woke up to the fact that he really wasn't good at math. He was good at following rules and applying equations, but the leap to some of the most creative work humans do was not in him. He added a second major, went to a good law school and is now well respected (I guess lawyers don't have to be creative).

 

Yes, I think that's true. You can nudge the process a little, but I only saw results when it was an area of clear passion for ds. As far as writing went...well, let's just say that he still struggles if any kind of personal reflection or creativity are required in his writing.

 

It was interesting to watch his choice of post graduate career, too, in his college cohort. He didn't want to pursue the PhD (I wonder if that decision was partly due to having to come up with his own creative research idea?) and instead opted to work for a relatively large company. The work is very challenging (his primary requirement for job happiness), but it's still withing the corporate structure of working on problems presented by clients. Hmmm..... Some of his classmates who also opted to stop at the MS degree preferred going the start up route, but he had no interest in that. Maybe that's a personality thing, too, since he's never been a risk taker.

 

So I think you should also be looking for what your son can do that will get him more respect than what you describe yourself as getting. Cal Newport's new book is supposed to be on this theme: http://www.amazon.co...rds=study hacks You can download an interview with him on this topic here: http://gtd-vsg.blogs...al-newport.html

 

LOL. I just ordered this book yesterday. It was on my wish list for a while, but this thread got me thinking in that direction again! :D

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

When DS was doing SoTW 1, he came up with the idea that he will be *the guy* to deciper LInear B writings (or whichever it is that's not deciphered yet). He was confirmed in this when he learned that Champollion cracked the hieroglyphs. Champollion and Ds share a few things: both were/are homeschooled, both speak French as a mother tongue, both taught themselves to read at a young age, both learned Latin and Greek before they turned 10. etc..

Fast forward a few years, DS is enamored with Sanskrit (I even found a self-teaching Sanskrit book for him!) His passion for old languages is still there, but that doesn't make a career. But he loves computer programming and is pretty good at it, totally a natural. So slowly, I'm pushing him towards cryptology. He really has the mind for that. It's computer, and languages, and deciphering. But since the idea comes from mom, he's not having it. Sigh....

 

Kathy, your son is doing exactly what I did. Not interested in startups, quite at ease in big stable companies (I ended up at Microsoft, in the good years). I'm quite happy to work on what others thought up,

[Rebecca VA]

Here are a few summer camps that he might enjoy:

 

Emory-Riddle Aeronautical University (Arizona) Global Security and Intelligence "Spy" Camp:

http://prescott.erau.edu/degrees/programs/camps/index.html

 

Duke University TIP Program -- Cryptology, Codebreaking, and the Mathematics of Spying:

http://www.tip.duke.edu/downloads/ssp/academy.pdf

 

CTY/JHU -- Cryptology, Advanced Cryptology

http://cty.jhu.edu/summer/grades7-12/intensive/catalog/math.html#

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

Unfortunately his summers are already taken by Air Cadets. He's doing an aerospace camp for 6 weeks this summer (including some days at Canada's Space Agency), next summer he should be learning how to fly a glider, and the following one a Cessna. However it's possible he does not get chosen (although he's on track).

I'll keep those camps handy, just in case. Thanks for the research!

[Arcadia]

But he loves computer programming and is pretty good at it, totally a natural. So slowly, I'm pushing him towards cryptology. He really has the mind for that. It's computer, and languages, and deciphering. But since the idea comes from mom, he's not having it. Sigh....

 

 

I'll tease him with information about hacking competitions by leaving information lying around coffee table style. It is a lucrative field to go into since he has the interest and talent, and takes a different kind of creativity.

 

Luring young web warriors is a priority. It's also a game. (United States wants to attract hackers to public sector)

Virginia's Governor's Cup Cyber Challenge information - it has nice short individual writeups of the 40 finalists, mostly high schoolers. The youngest is an 8th grader

 

ETA:

Hubby's idea for creativity is to hide all instruction manuals for Lego and other stuff once the kids get the hand of it. So that they don't rely on the instructions and will innovate.

[lisabees]

I'll tease him with information about hacking competitions by leaving information lying around coffee table style. It is a lucrative field to go into since he has the interest and talent, and takes a different kind of creativity.

 

Luring young web warriors is a priority. It's also a game. (United States wants to attract hackers to public sector)

Virginia's Governor's Cup Cyber Challenge information - it has nice short individual writeups of the 40 finalists, mostly high schoolers. The youngest is an 8th grader

 

 

Arcadia, you reminded me of something my oldest has done a few times. He has attended Hackathons or Hack Days in the city. It's a great way for programmers to feed off of others and their creativity. These events are NOT about hacking into computers. In my son's case, he has attended days in which they try to solve of the city's problems. Groups spend an intensive day or more designing and presenting their plan. Here is a listing of events in our area.

 

Here is wikipedia's description of a hackathon. I believe one that my son attended was through Code for America. I don't know much about it, but maybe it offers some possibilities for your son.

 

I would say that the greatest way to develop creativity is to be around others who have it.

 

AoPS has certainly helped my in-the-box kid with out of the box thinking. He also reads and hears all of the time that scientists need to have an imagination. He knows it is important to what he wants to do in the future. And lo and behold, he has become an amazing photographer in the last six months. Really creative stuff, even if it is not what the OP had in mind. I have definitely seen ds13's creativity being developed this year.

 

eta: My boys and I are looking forward to reading Ken Robinson's book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative this summer. We love him!

[Nan in Mass]

What a great topic, Cleo! This is something I have thought about quite a lot, since part of my goal with youngest was to encourage out-of-the-box thinking. I often think about something one of my clan said awhile back. He is an actuary who for a mid-life crisis, began doing pottery (after work lol). The long-time potters in the area are amazed and astounded at what he does. He must be very creative, right? Well, he tells the following story: When he was young, he and his friend played lots of d+d together. He says they did well together because they were each creative in a different way. His friend was horrible at being a player, but very good at making up game scenarios in the first place, so he was the dungeon master. He, himself, was utterly incapable of writing a game but was very good at being a creative player. He just needed something to be creative WITH. If that is true, then where did the innovative pottery designs come from? I know he read book after book about pottery and spent lots of time browsing in stores, looking at glassware and pottery ware. Was he gathering material to be creative with? I don't know. I believe that everyone can be creative (I think) but that like intelligence, the end results of that creativity might vary. I think in general, the people who aren't creative either haven't found an area to be creative in that inspires them (so they aren't trying), or they lack experience and training.

 

I think some kinds of creativity have a lot to do with connecting things in different or new ways. It is hard to be creative in this way if you have no pieces to be creative WITH. So, if you are trying to make a widget that does something like pick up a ring, you can think about other things that pick things up - cranes, dough hooks, vending machines, Grandma's grabber, fingers, tweezers, fishing rods, vacuum cleaners, etc. To encourage this sort of creativity, you can propose something (like my picking things up idea) and then list all the things that do that that you can think of. This works better if you do it with two people at first, so the answers range more widely. Another connecting game you can play is picking two very different objects and then finding the likenesses between the two. An example would be dogs and leaves. Some are both brown. They are both alive. They both are vascular. They both live on earth. They both prefer temperate climates. They both can be eaten. The trick with both these games is to keep reaching past all the obvious answers into the weirder, more silly, unobvious ones. You can work backwards, too. You can look at something creative and think about how the inventor came up with the idea. I made my oldest write a Farside-like cartoon every day when he was homeschooling. In order to do that, we first had to look at the Farsides and think about how they were written - by flipping something around like the hunted doing the hunting, etc. You can play "necessity is the mother of invention" by need and an unlikely materials list. Again, this works best if you have a wide experience of how things are done more conventionally. You can learn things that use the other half of your brain. Drawing, for example, uses a different half than speaking. I think drawing uses the same half that waking up with the solution to a problem does. Did you ever do that when you were programming? I did. I agree with the idea of limiting the scope (OhElizabeth's suggestion). And the idea of beginning with imitation. When I wanted my son to start inventing with electronics, first I waited in vain for it to spontaneously happen, since he was fairly creative. Then I began thinking about how the people I know who do this started. Kits. They started by building electronics kits. So I got kits from the Make store. After a few kits, my son started doing things on his own. It isn't exactly something he is passionate, so he didn't get that far, but he made a nice beginning. Modeling what you want and imitation go a long way towards encouraging creativity. I don't think anything will work if your son doesn't want to do it. Creativity is tricky that way. What is your son curious about? What does he want that he doesn't have that he could try to make for himself?

 

Nan

[Susan of Croton]

I agree with Nan that part of the creativity issue is finding the area for your own creativity. For example, I haven't got a single artistic bone in my body, but I love creating systems around the house that reduce work or make work more productive. Maybe I'm creatively mundane or mundanely creative. Either way, I get to be "creative" when I play to my strengths or interests.

[Gwen in VA]

I agree with Nan that creativity is connecting things in new ways.

 

1) I think for this to happen, the person needs to be very familiar/comfortable with multiple fields. (My understanding is that Milton Friedman contributed so much to economics because he applied his field -- statistics -- to a new area, economics.) Connections and new insights require knowledge of the basics!

 

Some people can be creative earlier by winging it, while some need to "master" their fields of interest before they can be creative.

 

2) Some people learn incrementally, while some learn by leaps and bounds. They may take the same length of time to learn a skill, but the process looks completely different. Example -- dd1 learned to ride a tricycle by diligently "practicing" every day for quite a while before she really took off. She learns incrementally. Ds1 learned to ride a tricycle by getting on, getting frustrated, leaving it alone, and some months later getting on and riding it perfectly. (They hit "tricycle mastery" at almost the same age!) He has always been a stair-step learner -- it looks like he isn't doing anything but then boom! He will have the skill completely mastered.

 

If your son is a stair-step learner, he may be mastering new skills while seeming to ignore the material at hand. Once he is really comfortable, he may surprise you!

[Nan in Mass]

Gwen, I love your tricycle example!

 

One of the things that bothers me about the whole college application process is the advantage that early bloomers have over late bloomers. It is sometimes hard to tell a bright late bloomer from a someone who is a bit dimmer. (And then, lol, there is the question of whether there are dim people at all, or whether dim people are people who haven't had the time and energy to discover the conditions under which they will bloom, and whether blooming really has anything to do with intelligence, which I actually define to myself as being able to pick out patterns and make connections, also, very much the way I define creativity. It is rather muddling, but for this post, I will set those wonderings aside and assume that some people do have more capacity for creativity than others, and that creativity can be taught and developed up to the limits of that capacity.)

 

I can try to describe what I do when I create something? Maybe that would be helpful, especially if you aren't feeling creative yourself? Once, when I was writing a poem, I noticed that every time I write a poem or song, I follow the same procedure, and that the procedure seemed awfully familiar. The creative process has been pretty well documented. It is even taught in schools. It has different names depending on the subject. One example is here: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/writing-the-research-paper-part-i-preparation/ Another is taught as the steps of the scientific method. Engineers are taught the design process. These all follow the same general format, but sometimes emphasize different parts of the process. In general, it goes something like this:

 

- An idea arrives. Sometimes it arrives out of nowhere. Sometimes somebody challenges or assigns you to do something. Sometimes it starts with a personal wondering or curiosity. Sometimes it starts with a need. Sometimes it starts with noticing something doesn't fit or is missing But somehow, there is an initial idea. This whole process cycles back on itself, usually, so the initial idea may well morph into something entirely different by the time you've looped back here a few times. This whole process is very looping and recursive. I'm just writing it out straight because otherwise it would be confusing. They did a miserable job of encouraging and teaching this stage in school when I was growing up. They seem to do a much better job now. At least the existance of this stage is acknowledged. Fear of failure causes one to suppress the generation of ideas, I think. There isn't much room for failure in conventional school settings. It is difficult for schools to teach both discipline AND this at the same time.

 

- The idea is investigated. This is the learn-everything-you-can, go-down-lots-of-dead-ends, gather-the-information, develope-and-elaborate-and-prune stage. Lots of emphasis on this stage in school. When you've gathered everything you can gather and done everything you can do and you get stuck, this stage ends.

 

- The information is slept on. This is the stage where you stare into space a lot. Sometimes it begins with throwing the thing at the wall and stomping off frustrated, or with giving up and move on. Personally, I have to do a combination of staring at the thing not thinking about anything, walking or driving (moving, in other words), and thinking about it right before I go to sleep so that I might possibly wake up with an idea.

 

- Eurika. Voilà. This is the light bulb moment. Some of them seem more lightbulby than others. Some are a giant flash and others are more like a string of Christmas lights that you follow.

 

- You apply your new discovery or idea or solution and figure out if it will really work. It might not. Or it might.

 

As I said, in real life, this seldom goes straight through from beginning to end. A project usually consists of a whole series of these.

 

Cleo, there is nothing wrong with helping your son with the first part, with getting him started doing something. If he hasn't done a lot of his own projects before, then he probably is going to need help with some of those stages. The third one just is a matter of suggesting he sleep on the idea or problem when he gets really stuck or gets too frustrated. "Sleeping on it" might well look like going off and "gathering" some more. You can't teach the fourth step - it just happens, but there is nothing at all that says the first step has to be something your son does alone. Ditto with the second and the fifth, although I would be fairly cautious about helping with the fifth because "help" with that stage can hurt feelings and you have already taught him the second. It looks a lot like messing around with something, fiddling with something, research skills, and study skills lol. I would start suggesting project ideas and encouraging him to ask people what they would do if they were he and had to do a project. If he is still interested in languages, he could try writing one. He could limit the scope by making up a pretend community to use the language. He could think about what they needed to be able to say to live in that community and write structured ways for him to say those things. Just an idea... Whatever he decides, it needs to be something that he wants to do. You can even help by offering to let him skip doing something he dislikes if he works on his project lol.

 

Nan

 

ETA - Forgot to say that I drop into that third stage fairly easily, the thinking-about-it-by-not-thinking-about-it stage, but if you have trouble doing that, you can do things that help, like restating the problem in a totally different way, perhaps drawing it (no words allowed) or defining/describing it some other totally different way, or trying to describe it as fast as possible, faster than you can think. Both may sound like those stupid games that some of us feel it is beneath our dignity to play, but I do think that games like Taboo and Pictionary can help give experience with that elusive third and fourth stage, at least for some people. The nice thing about games like that is that they have nothing to do with anything you could possibly care about lol, so they don't ruin anything. When you are really working on something, it might be a more private or a more serious thing that doesn't want to be examined. Or you might find tha the very process of describing the problem to somebody else gives you your eurika moment. We did that a lot when we were programming. The other person didn't even really have to be listening that hard lol.

[Nan in Mass]

You might find this interesting: http://www.wbur.org/npr/177040995/more-than-50-years-of-putting-kids-creativity-to-the-test Or perhaps not. It doesn't exactly answer your question of how to develop creativity, only how to test it, which sounds if-y to me.

 

Nan

[laughing lioness]

Studying poetry- in poetry you distill the meaning being conveyed through the use of tropes and metaphor - metaphor is symbolic representation and is a great exercise in higher level thinking/creativity. Memorizing and writing poetry are both great exercises.