Childhood imagination and acting on the stage

Yesterday, I had the chance to see Fintan in a stage performance. It was not a theatrical show, as such, but more of a guided theatrical performance, with the help of their teacher.

Seeing Fintan transform from a child into a rocket, then a moon buggy, then an astronaut, and an airplane and back to a child again, told me much about the quality of his inner imaginative life.

Fintan was very committed to each action, each role, each image that he had to portray. He was very expressive, physically, in how he relayed the meaning of what he had been asked to do - and he was very, very enthusiastic. Above all, it was his imagination that was clear from his work. There was great physical detail in his imagining of the roles he was to portray - careful placing of body, arm, hand and face to give just the right meaning to what he intended. There was nothing half-hearted about what he did: it was clear that he both enjoyed it and was good at it.

Other kids of his age showed fair imagination, too (four year olds).

Yet, what was really telling, for me, was what happened next. We waited to see the performance of the five and six year olds. The contrast was clear. The older kids were more capable with words - more at ease with their use - but there was something dreadfully missing. Someone had stolen their imaginations. There was a marked reduction in imaginative power, creative commitment - and, compared to Fintan, detail of performance, in the older kids. I was surprised at this. I had expected to see a steady development of ability - a progression to higher things. But that is not what I could clearly see up on the stage. I saw more use of words and less use of body. I saw a lot of talk at the expense of expressiveness, imagination, creative daring, commitment, enthusiasm, insight and simple stage presence. Fintan showed all of these qualities at four - and his agemates showed more of them than the older kids. It was an odd and unsettling realization. Somehow, it seems, that children lose something as they get older: they lose their "childish" imaginations - but they don't gain anything worthwhile in return. Where the younger kids were fluid and fun, the older kids were stiff and dull. It was sad to see.

I have not had the chance to see this comparison in other cultures and races. But it may be general - and if so, it is a worry. Clearly, in this education system at least, the children are rapidly losing the very quality we would most want to see flourish: their creative imaginations. Not that alone, but they are losing it very early on. I saw a marked difference between four year olds and five/six year olds. A decline should not be noticeable over such a short time - but it was. Perhaps we should look for a different place and way to school Fintan - and Tiarnan - before they, too, are rigidified.

Then, again, it may not just be the school. It might be a natural process. Or it could be the whole culture. Whatever is to blame, it is most obvious that young children are losing their imaginations at a very young age.

You may say I didn't see enough children. Well, I did. There were two groups of about fifteen children each. The difference between the typical performance of the four year olds and the typical performance of the five/six year olds was marked. There was no doubt about it.

I really wonder at what schools do for children: do they open their minds up - or close them down?

This experience has really set me to wondering.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and nine months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and two months, and Tiarnan, nineteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

The right answer is no answer.

Different cultures vary in how much they stress uniformity of thought. Some cultures, like those in Asia, are rather keen on it.

It begins in the education system. Education, around the world, too often stresses the "right answer". Students are encouraged to yield to the authority of the teacher and the system, in the matter of what is "right" and, in so doing, give up any native drive to be creative. You see, if there is a "right answer", then the answer must already be known. If it is known, it is not new. If it is not new, it is not creative. So, a "right answer" culture, means a no creativity culture.

Singapore is very much a "right answer" culture. I have taught in its schools, and I was very surprised by the instruction I was given by the Head of the English Department that I then worked in (some years ago, now). I was told that I had to write model answers for all the essays that I set the students. I was then to mark their output against my model answer and grade them accordingly. I found this profoundly disturbing - for it meant, very clearly, that there was only one right answer, in that school, in that system. The education system had reduced a quintessentially creative and expressive subject, like English (and the General Paper, which I also taught and for which I was given the same instruction), to a subject in which only one "right answer" was possible. In so doing, the school was enforcing conformity of thought - for anyone who deviated from the "one right answer" - would be marked down. Anyone whose thought conformed to the model answer would be marked up - and rewarded for their conformity of thought. Such a practice can only lead to a student body lacking in creativity and intellectual initiative - and this is precisely what I observed in them. They were unable to think for themselves or to originate ideas. So often when I, against usual practice, set them tasks that actually required them to think I would hear: "But you haven't told us what to write." Sad, isn't it?

I have written a little on this topic before but I felt that it needed to be revisited, in more detail.

An education system may either be open to its students' thoughts and contributions - or it may close down those thoughts and contributions - by insisting that, for all questions, and for all situations, there is only one right answer. Singapore follows such a system in its public education. Many other Asian countries do - and to a lesser extent many countries around the world. Yet, having lived in Asia, I would say that the tendency is vastly stronger here than elsewhere. Wherever this tendency occurs, students are being ill-served by their education. Many years of such a classroom situation can only erase any native creativity there is in the students.

The only right answer is that there is no right answer - except in matters of maths and science - but even then, there is room for a new answer in science and a new method in maths. Education will only ever be educative, when the teachers and the system realize this.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and no months, and Tiarnan, seventeen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Those who will never understand

An imaginative child or adult has a very special gift. It is one that allows the gifted one to alter the world, inside, to see things anew and to envisage what has not been, but might yet be. It is the foundation of all artistic and much scientific creativity: the imagination itself.

Imagination is not equally distributed among the gifted. There are gifted children who don't possess much of it: they are bright but not given to imaginative thought. Then there are imaginative children who rarely stop imagining. In a welcoming world there is room for all types. Yet, there is a problem. The unimaginative can never understand the imaginative. Why do I say this: well, it is obvious that someone who is unimaginative cannot conceive of what an imaginative person is like to be. Why is this? Well, simply because, you guessed it, they lack the imagination to do so!

Why should this be a problem? Well, it can be a big social issue for a child if they are imaginative but living in an unimaginative social context - and this happens more often than you might suppose. For it is clear that the unimaginative children - or adults - around them, might suppose the child somehow to be "ill" because of their propensity to disregard bald reality in preference for something more interesting. Clearly, on a social level this can lead to much misunderstanding and unhappiness, but there is a greater danger. What if such a child encounters an unimaginative "professional" - working in the psychological arena? All sorts of terrible outcomes could result, simply because the "professional" lacks the imagination to truly understand what kind of child - or adult - is before them. There may very well be a tendency to mislabel them - when all that is happening is that the imaginative child - or adult - is being creative with the world, playing with it, seeing it in new ways.

So, if your child is imaginative, be on guard to protect them from the unimaginative responses they might receive: the unimaginative can be directly harmful to the imaginative, especially in terms of social response - and never, ever take them anywhere near a dull, prosaic, unimaginative professional.

This post is an extension and development of a response to Kathy, who posted something under my post about a child's imagination, recently.

Thanks.

A child's imagination: can it be too much?

Can a child have too much imagination?

This was a question posed as a statement, "child too much imagination", by a searcher who arrived on my blog, recently. I found the outlook that would lead to the search somewhat unsettling. For what kind of parent would think that their child had "too much" imagination? (This assumes it was a parent - it could have been a teacher, of course.) Let us rephrase the question in another way to get a better understanding of it. How does a child benefit from having LESS imagination? Is it better to be unable to see new things in the old? Is it better to be unable to conceive of a new idea? Is it better to be unable to play with that which is not there, physically but only exists in the mind? Is it better to be without the basic capacity to create?

In some way, the searcher believed all these things. In viewing their child as "too imaginative" they were proposing the opposite standpoint as superior - that of the unimaginative child who cannot conceive of the new, who cannot think of that which is not, who cannot, in truth, take the first step towards creating something by imagining.

I would say that a child can never have too much imagination - but I would say that a parent (or a teacher) could have too little.

It is sad to think how that child might be brought up. The instinct to create, to play, to imagine, might be met with great unwelcome - thought of by the parents as somehow a silly thing to do. If the child is at all socially sensitive, they will pick up on this and learn to avoid imaginative play. In time, the capacity to imagine will wither - and that child will become as the parent is: unimaginative, afraid to create, unable to play - and perhaps even disapproving of the imagination. A potentially creative being would have been snuffed out by an incomprehending, unwelcoming parent.

If a child wishes to play in a world all of their own, let them: the capacity to create such a world is the foundation of many adult pursuits of great inherent value - writing, art, science, acting and music are all products of an adult engaged in imaginative play. An adult could not pursue any of these disciplines had they not been free as children to play with their imaginations, exercising them until they become reliable allies in reforming the world, at will.

It might very well be true to say that all geniuses start life as imaginative children. The least they should expect from the world is a parent who allows them the freedom to be imaginative: without that license so much may very well be lost from the world.

So, no matter how "imaginative" a child is, it can never be "too much". To say so, is similar to saying that a child is "too intelligent". Neither statement is ever true. It is impossible to be "too gifted" - no matter what the gift is - for every level of gift has its value - and the greater the gift, the greater its potential value. There is never a point at which a human gift or human quality becomes "too much". To think otherwise is to see value in shackling a human spirit - and that really is "too much".

More lessons from the classroom: morality

I wrote, recently, of the lack of imagination observable in many young people today. What implications are there for their functioning in the world?

Well, one implication came to light today in another brief conversation, I am aware of:

Teacher: "What would you do if you found a wallet in the street?"

Student, from mainland China (the same one as in the earlier posting):

"I have never found a wallet."

End of both thought and conversation.

This particular student has displayed a lack of imagination in many contexts, in the past, however, the implication that he was unable to consider a moral situation - because he lacked imagination - is a new observation. It is shocking to realize that the lack of imagination means he is not able to consider his own responses in situations he has never been in. Fundamentally, therefore, it means that he cannot know himself. Lack of imagination is, therefore, a kind of pervasive mental disability whose wide-ranging effects are little appreciated. We think of it in terms of not being creative - but it is much more than that. Without imagination a child is not fully human, and lacks the mental resources to understand themselves. Imagination is a key aspect of what it means to be a fully alive, thinking being.

Any education that imperils imagination, imperils the very future of Man. A world without imagination, is a world in which people cannot even understand themselves - never mind the world they live in.

Is this young man - for he is eighteen or nineteen years old - unable to imagine because of some native deficiency - or is it because of the way he was educated in mainland China? In some way, I hope that it is a deficiency, for if it is his education then the implication is clear: there may be over a billion like him, all having received such a debilitating education. I don't know which it is - but I can tell you this: I have seen this lack of imagination in many others of his origin. I do not know the cause - whether it be innate or environmental. The question may be essentially undecidable without doing an experiment that would, itself, be questionable.

I will keep you posted on more observations of this phenomenon, as and when they arise.

(If you would like to read of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and three months or his gifted brothers, Fintan, three, and Tiarnan, thirteen months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, the creatively gifted, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Conversation from the classroom: creativity at risk

I heard something today which is enough to alarm anyone who values creativity. It was nothing more than a fragment of a real conversation that took place, but the implication of it, is quite unsettling.

Teacher to student: "I would like you to write a dialogue on buying something in a shop."

Student from mainland China: "But I don't want to buy anything."

Teacher: "Imagine, then."

Student: "Imagine?" He sounded as if nothing more impossible could have been asked of him. "I can't imagine."

End of conversation.

The student in question did not believe it was possible for him to imagine buying something, without actually having the desire to buy something. That was one imaginary leap too far.

It worries me that creativity of even the most basic kind is so difficult for so many young people today. They live in "what is"...and cannot change their thinking, in any way, to create "what is not."

I don't know about you, but it is one of my greater concerns, to see this inability at work, all around me. I will write more on this in future. I just found that conversation sobering enough to have to report.