I’m keenly interested in this whole creativity, inspiration, and idea generation thing. I like the idea of turning my (and your) cognitive surplus into something good. You can probably tell this from my recent postings about Maslow’s hierarchy, including esteem and self-actualization, as well as Creative Infrastructure 2.0.
I’ve been scouring the Web for resources to learn more about the creative process, so I figured I should share them with you.
The main (and highly subjective) criteria that I used to evaluate these blogs are:
- They were obviously about creativity and idea development
- They’ve had new posts within the past month
- I liked what they had to say
So here they are:
Typical Choices (creativity and design blogs)
Improved Lives –This post in particular has a great link to a NY Times article about the creative process – The Creative Process Demystified.
Creative Something – Subscriber only, but great short articles. Kind of hard to give you a meaningful deep link, but we did cover them recently.
Creative Creativity – This blog bills itself as a daily guide to creativity and new ideas. I really enjoyed their article featuring Douglas Adams (the man who created The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy) quotes: Douglas Adams on Creativity and Inspiration.
Abundance Blog at MareLisa Online – Just starting to explore this one, but it looks like a fun combo of creativity and productivity. Sample post: Creative Thinking Techniques – The “Playful” Edition.
Accidental Creative – Accidental Creative is a consulting company that provides services to creative professionals. Although it’s not really focused on the amateur, there’s still good material there for anyone. Blog and podcast. Recommended post: The Straw-Man and the Burn Draft.
Lateral Action – Brian Clark, Mark McGuinness and contributors – great new blog for creative entrepreneurs – I highly recommend that you check out the Creative Rock Stars series.
Wishful Thinking – Mark McGuinness’s own blog about “inspiring creative professionals” – this article talks about motivating creative people.
Creative Sage Arts Blog – The artist blog of Catherine Hrudika of Creative Sage. I particularly enjoyed this article: Rotating Creative Crops.
LifeDev - This blog’s tagline is Empowering Creative People. Good article about mindmapping. They also have interviews with people about creativity that are worth checking out.
Productive Flourishing – this blog bills itself as productivity for creative people. I particularly like the Do You Have An Idea Garden post because it’s very similar to the Fields of Awe concept that I’ve been thinking about for months.
Creative Generalist – Broad thinking leads to brilliant ideas – you’ll get a wide variety of quotes, anecdotes, links, and more from this intriguing blog. You’re bound to find something to stimulate your thinking. I liked this short post in particular: Respect.
TED – “TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.” I haven’t watched many of the short videos that have helped make TED famous, but the ones that I’ve seen have been great. TED videos are a great place to find inspiration and ideas. Here, you can see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi speak about his famous “flow” concept.
Info Aesthetics – where form follows data. Big emphasis on design here. This article about lifeflow is great.
Smashing Magazine – I think Web designers, coders, etc. are often fans of this website. I’m not that familiar with the website, but the comic book geek in me was impressed with Showcase of Brilliant Comic Book Cover Art.
Get Fresh Minds – Ideas so fresh, they should be slapped (seriously, this is the blog’s tagline) – interesting review of Conversational Capital.
Greg Fraley, Author of Jack’s Notebook- Take a look at Creativity Gone Sour: Motrin, Mothers, and Twitter.
Atypical Choices (blogs about more than creativity)
These blogs and articles aren’t specifically about creativity and inspiration, but they often make me think differently. You can do searches within these blogs on ideas, creativity, and more:
Seth Godin’s blog – business, marketing, making change, you know?
Illuminated Mind – this is a personal development blog and it has some interesting ideas about creativity Embracing Creative ADD and Thinking Inside The Circle.
Write To Done – Great posts about writing. They have several posts about inspiration and idea generation.
Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog – Personal Development for Smart People (and a whole lot besides that) blog and forums.
How To Be a Better Improviser – the techniques in this article are worth checking out.
GapingVoid.com – Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards. From Hugh MacLeod, the man who wrote How to be Creative: creative (and often humorous) cartoons and blog posts.
Hopefully the blogs that I linked to in this post will help inspire you to do bigger and better things. Do you have any favorites that you’d like to share with the rest of us?
PS: here’s a new blog that you should also check out: Thoughtwrestling. It’s a new one that I started with some friends and it’s destined for greatness.
Lateral Action and Wishful Thinking are two top-quality blogs. I read those and just soak it all up. Good stuff!
And they both involve the same guy? Hm….
I like it! (Pressing that button on SU toolbar)
if only I could grab the RSS feed or OPML of the whole thing at once… Am I asking too much?
I found a few new blogs I haven't been following sothanks.
Sure, let me look into that. I'd like to see if we get any other recommendations, too.
Hi Mark!
Definitively an inspirational post to explore all this interesting blogs!
I'll need extra time, some of them are new for me….
A great thumb up and dugg too
Gera .:. sweetsfoods
Hi and thanks!
Very useful.
Another good, reasonably-recent post on creativity was this one by Liz Strauss.
Oh, good call, gotta check Liz's post out.
She's got several good posts on creativity, but that was one that was fairly recent and which stuck in my brain, what with the whole Cziksentmihaly reference and all.
Hi Mark: Thank you for the link. I''d never heard of the Lateral Action or Wishful Thinking blogs; I'm on my way to check them out now
You're welcome and cheers!
Cool! I know a couple, but many of those are new to me–I look forward to checking them out.
Mark,
Thank you for mentioning my Creative Sage Arts blog in this fine group of 22. I'm honored to be included among them. As you probably know, I have two other business blog sites that branch off of my main home page at http://www.CreativeSage.com, in addition to my artist blog. Some of your readers may also enjoy “What's Innovation Got to Do with It?”, a blog that is more about creativity and innovation in business, or my “PR, Social Media and Marketing Mentor” blog. I discuss creativity and innovation on all three blogs, in one way or another. Thanks again, and I'll be back here to read your blog again, too.:-)
excellent
Very good and thanks for the additional info
Thanks for mentioning Accidental Creative. Mark. I'm glad you enjoy the site, and it's an honor to be included on such a list.
You're most welcome.
Just finished a new site for our new book NEW WORLD KIDS: THE PARENT'S GUIDE TO CREATIVE THINKING — http://www.newworldkids.org — for those looking for ways to encourage and nurture children's creativity. They surely aren't getting it in “back to basics” test-driven systems. Hope you'll check out the site.
The creative process is the last bastion of individuality, since most other character traits have either been copied, cloned or made into a clique.
As a force of the mind, its is both intangible and ephemeral, but always utterly unique…
Love Lateral Action! And it's great to be introduced to other creativity bloggers. Thanks for the list!
Did you intend to rhyme?
You are welcome and thanks for stopping by.
This is petty, but I wish he'd abbreviate his name, life would be simpler. Or at least abbreviate it to Czik.
Thanks Mark, a great list with some of my personal favourites and some new things to explore. And I'm honoured to make the cut twice. Much appreciated.
You are welcome!
[...] came across this blog posting about 22 blogs on how to stimulate your creativity. Looks cool! I haven’t had [...]
These are real good blogs
Awesome post.
Mark:
Thanks for the creativity list. I am also interested in this whole creativity thing!
[...] of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider Social media blog post ideas for desparate people (82) 22 Ultra Inspiring Blogs About Creativity and Idea Generation 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content Stop Planning: 50 Ways to Improve Your Finances Today 22 [...]
[...] try to share stuff that’s worth sharing, either my own or other people’s stuff. If there’s a common theme here (and I do wonder how well I do at sticking to a theme), [...]
Hi Mark: im jack thank you for the link and it is useful sites . thanks you very much.
Thank you for this thorough list. I’ve started a blog for doctors who write and was hoping to find some blogs about creativity to follow. This helped. (I’m following yours too.)
Leigh Ann Otte´s last blog ..Should medical experts write for free? The pros and cons.
Nice post. I’m going to refer to it in a post on my site. I follow many of the same blogs, Mark. Best, Ted.
[...] Dykeman did a very good job in this post of “scouring the Web” based upon three criteria: the sites addressed creativity, they [...]
So I’m sitting here under the stars in Ajijic Mexico, I’ve been traveling a long time from my thatched hut in a Nahua Indian village to San Miguel, to here…and I’m lonesome, and I found this site, and so there you go. I can relate. I wrote a book about creativity, it’s called The Secrets of the 100 Golden Keys: Unlock the Power of Your Creativity and Set Your Life on Fire! Problem is, I set my own life on fire and now I’m writing to you from another country, wishing I had just one witty New Yorker or Californian to make me laugh about how funny it all is; I had to read my own book last night to remember what it was I thought I knew about life! But then just when it gets rough, my big white lab comes and lays his head on my lap, and it I realize he speaks English, and I talk to him. Write me some time, my blog is http://blog.miapratt.com and you can say hi at http://www.100goldenkeys.com. I guess the point is, the journey is never over, until we realize all that matters is exactly where we are, right this minute. The rest is a great big hologram we’re projecting onto the future or the past, and happiness can only be made out of what we have available to us right now. Right now I have a bottle of Chilean wine, some big red grapes and a slice of cheese – and a giant sky filled with stars, crickets chirping, and a warm Mexican breeze blowing in from the lake. I feel homesick sometimes, but I’m never sure which exact place I’m homesick for – my thatched hut on the beach one day, my little studio in San Miguel another, and my old house in Scottsdale on those days when I’m washing clothes by hand and hanging them out to dry amongst the chickens and the flies. What a wonderful life, what a wonderful world, nitey nite – nitey nite!
[...] did a review of 22 Ultra Inspiring Blogs About Creativity and Idea Generation on Broadcasting Brain some time ago. You can click on that link to check those [...]
I have just completed an inspirational Web site that is meant to inspire the mind, heart and soul through my music, art and verse. After many years of creative input, I would love to have visitors to share it all with. The music is jazz-inspired; the art is eclectic; the book is inspirational and free to read on the site. I even teach visitors how to create some of the art pieces.
I am excited to announce the official launch of http://www.bobbivandervort.com. The heart of the site is my book, “Through My Eyes,” a series of essays celebrating creativity and the creative spirit. Each chapter borrows its theme from one of my songs, which you will hear when the chapter is selected. (I am a professional singer.) Ideally, if you listen to the song before reading, the experience will be deepened. Each chapter is also introduced by an art piece.
Enjoy!
Bobbi Vandervort
Creative –Constructive- Critical Reading, Writing and Thinking: Heroic & Attainable Goals for the 21st Century
Based on: Teaching For Creative Outcomes: Why We Don’t, How We All Can
• And excerpted with author permission from: Manzo/Manzo/Thomas Content Area Literacy: A Framework for Reading-Based Instruction (5th edition) Wiley (2009)
URLs: Please consider stepping up to join the effort to speak candidly about where we might be ready to step up with our Best Instructional Practices. There can be no such thing as Teacher Education without a core Curriculum. http://teacherprofessoraccountability.ning.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network and…http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/
Anthony V. Manzo, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus
Prologue
You have probably noticed that war and killing continues to go on at a suicidal pace. Much of it is stirred if not caused by differences in is creed, customs and language. Education in the Twentieth First Century must be based more then ever on teaching our children to be more learned than merely schooled, more creative than just critical, and more aware of our commonalities than of our differences. This will require some serious rethinking of several current goals and objectives, though not in the sense of rejecting them, but in the sense of continuing to evolve from them to beyond them toward their promise. Hence we are not, for example, saying that we need less tolerance for diversity, but perhaps a fuller realization that the modern age is a cultural-linguistic force of its own, and that we should allow it to bring us together in amore homogeneous way. This of course is the greatest fear of all whose control on the presence is based on the cultural-linguistic characteristics of their respective pasts.
There must be much that mitigates against critical-constructive, or creative thinking for relatively little of it seems to occur as a matter of course. Some of the reasons for this appear to be biological, although it is the living brain that provides humans, and apparently some animals with the capacity to do so (more of interest on this ahead). The focus of this chapter is the social conditions that inhibit and facilitate such thinking. It offers some basic, some might say unimaginative ways, to promote constructive-creative thinking. This is followed by some more imaginative and integrative possibilities, including methods for heightening student curiosity and inquiry gambits. Finally, the chapter suggests some innovative telecomputing-based strategies designed to foster a culture of concern for constructive-creative thinking at a systems, or structural, level. The latter are works-in-progress that you will be able to virtually join and influence.
Pyrrhic Victories & Minimally Singed Hands
Occasionally a fresh thought gathers momentum and makes its way downfield to become a proven idea or new form of artistic expression. Rarely however does it become so without meeting defensive lines of resistance. Stories of new ideas most invariably tend to be stories of social isolation, bankruptcy, and even lifetimes spent adrift. It took the Wright Brothers 20 years after their spectacular flight at Kitty Hawk to make an agreeable partnership for the manufacture and sale of airplanes. Vincent Van Gough sold only one picture in his lifetime…and it was to his brother. Gates and Microsoft, Edison and the birth of General Electric are more the exception than the rule. Whenever progress occurs the world is a little better place, but not necessarily for the creator. The bumps and bruises from this gauntlet-like process often are Pyrrhic Victories or minimally singed if not scarred hands. Human beings are social and imitative creatures. We quickly learn from the experiences of others. Understandably most of us then get the message: be cautious about thinking outside the box; fresh ideas can be seen as fresh in the sense of disrespectful, even rude, and potentially isolating, a traditional form of punishment intended to achieve compliance in most all social, tribal situations. Minimally creative thinking takes courage if not a bit of brashness.
Gender Issue and the Grittiness of Idea Making: Schools Owe it to Girls and to All who will Benefit
The inherent grittiness of new idea making has tended to foster something of a gender bias in favor of males. Males tend to be encouraged, through sports and dominance in conversation and social play to be higher-risk takers. Whereas, females have tended to be rewarded more for receptivity, such as doing homework well, and communicating sensitively. These dynamics have tended to work to the detriment of assertiveness, originality, and roughly the entrepreneurial frame of mind necessary for inventive thinking. Accordingly, there has been an unrecognized need in the schools to promote critical-constructive thinking as a gender equity issue. This focus makes sense, since it surely is in everyone’s interests to increase the number of creative and enterprising minds in a society. And yes there is a close tie between being creative and being entrepreneurial: with the exception of a starting a franchise, every new business venture begins without a manual Business often is a box of stuff to be assembled but containing no instructions and just as often no tools. Realistically gathering up the courage to promote such bravado in the schools will require that females, who already influence much of the culture of schooling, will need to reflect on the risks of endorsing a school objective that males appear to come by somewhat more “naturally.” Based on recent records, there should be little risk to giving greater attention to the needs of females to be more critical, constructive and enterprising. When, women are charged, women respond, and traditionally with greater benefits to all. For example, in this most recent generation we have observed women traveling from a level of near non-existence in financial circles to roles as CEO’s of corporations, analysts at financial institutions, and to high visibility as commentators on business cable television. Women now are near majority levels in both Law and Business schools. In other words, this ship has sailed. As educators we will be playing catch-up in regard to issues of business venturing.
Heroic Goals of 21st Century Education
There are two heroic needs that are coming to define the current century and distinguishing it from the past. In the Middle Ages we were satisfied to see knowledge perpetuated through print. It the 19th and early 20th Centuries we hoped to teach critical thinking, or reflective analysis of what we had come to learn. By the mid 29th Century we were optimistically hoping to teach for a sense of re-discovery though essential of what we knew. It was called Discovery Learning but it was intended to teach for deeper conceptual knowledge of what was known. Now we must teach so that our learners may become creators of knowledge as well as mediators of our differences about what it is we think we know. We have reached greater freedom of religion, dogma and culture, now we must achieve a greater degree of freedom from extremes of religions, dogma and culture. The heroic goals of 21 Century education are based on a principle that we all should be doing good while doing well; and that criticism, culture and conflict are primitive almost tribal urges unless coupled to sincere efforts toward constructive and creative thinking and globally workable solutions.
Why We Don’t, How We All Can
Issuing the Charge
Teaching towards critical-constructive outcomes might sound too complex and counter to current school culture for actual practice. It may, however, be a more inviting and achievable objective than first imagined when the developmental story of this admittedly fragile objective is taken to account.
On a conceptual level, the key ingredient in any formula for promoting creative thinking in most any content area is relatively plain and remarkably alike. For the sake of convenience, that ingredient and several related ideas are presented here in the context of promoting higher-order literacy, or reading and writing between and beyond the lines, since this is the writer’s vehicle, and also because most every school subject requires reading, and all subjects would be advanced through more active, critical-constructive, reading, writing, and thinking.
Key Ingredient to Promoting Critical-Constructive Process
The key to opening the door to critical-constructive thinking to occur simply is to “Ask For it.” Even a cursory look at schooling, most anywhere on the globe, reveals that there is hardly lip-service paid to this constructive, or knowledge building, process. The closest that even the professional literature in education comes to valuing this concern is to praise the importance of some related higher-order mental processes such as “transfer of training,” or application, and “critical thinking,” or evaluation of the ideas of others. Even the literature on “discovery learning” approaches, so popular for a while, have tended to fade in importance, perhaps because there was no context to support it. I have yet to review a school curricula guide or a professional organization’s accreditation standards that references constructive thinking as an objective, let alone as something to be practiced, with commensurate methodologies and assessment protocols. This is especially unfortunate, since there is considerable reason to believe that the simple gesture of establishing it as a target, that is, just asking for critical-constructive thinking and outcomes, can bring quick and impressive results from some students, and encouraging results from most all students, even the self-declared “uncreative.”
“Just Ask For It!:” Evidence Mounting, Though Slowly
Great new ideas are interruptive and when they are fresh and growing they tend to also be Disruptive; they can suck all of the oxygen out of a space and remake everything in their image until something strikingly new comes along. Ideally, new ideas should not smother other new ideas but rather teach the lesson that fresh ideas are just a thought away; hence the need for teaching constructive-creative thinking. It is not done merely to get a few new and disruptive ideas on the table but to teach the notion that creation is possible and likely most anytime and anywhere…whatever is being done can probably be done better if we just ask for it. During the Black Plague, about half the population of the earth died. It was said with hindsight that the reason for the Dark Ages that followed for nearly 1000 years was in the fact that a certain critical mass was gone from which new ideas could be expected to spring. However, it didn’t have to last nearly as long had the simple rule of “Just Ask for It!” teaching been established as a principle of education right up there in importance with memorizing and transcribing prior manuscripts. This is not to demonize these practices since they did help to keep much of what was then known safe even if it was behind monastic walls and with few literate enough to read even these works, let alone create new ones.
The Wrecking Crew: Typically a record producer in the 1940s to mid 1960s would say to a band: “Now just follow the charts. Play what is in front of you and let the singer carry the day.” In the late sixties, however, a well known former label owner decided to produce some of his own records. Not knowing any better he would talk to the band that assembled that day about how they felt something could be done. He basically Just Asked for Something perhaps different. Their responses were so creative each time that they came up with multiple sounds. Soon they became a unit known as the Wrecking Crew, and were by all accounts collaborators who helped recording artists as diverse as the Momas and the Papas, John Denver, the Beach Boys, and Simon and Garfunkel, among many others, to create magical numbers that now are classical sounds in pop culture.
Unsurprisingly, there has been relatively little empirical research on critical-constructive thinking, and virtually none on the “just ask for it” hypothesis. However, there are some convincing clinical accounts and field studies that have been published, suggesting that a great dormant force of creative energy may be waiting to transform conventional schooling, if teachers would “just ask for it.” One account, for example, tells of a professor of engineering and of an action research study conducted with his students. Essentially, he gave two randomly drawn groups identical plans to critique individually. However, he told one group of individuals to “critically” critique the plans, and the other to “constructively” critique these. His findings showed that the “constructive” criticism produced better criticisms and several very plausible, even creative, alternative solutions. The “criticisms” group offered weaker, and picky criticisms and virtually no constructive alternatives (in Baker & Schutz, 1972). Apparently, the capacities of the students in the “criticism” group to be constructive-creative simply remained dormant with no trigger to activate it.
Another report also comes from a professor (actually myself) and took place over lunch with three female graduate students (gender being a point already noted for its possible significance). The luncheon discussion turned to the topic of creativity. One student, who was shy, quiet, and by her own impression an “uncreative thinker,” was prodded to solve a problem that she was inclined, for social and dispositional reasons, to ignore. The problem she was urged to face and articulate simply was that despite the fact that she really loved hot and sour soup, she was leaving a fair amount of it for the waiter to carry off due to her perceived difficulty in getting it out of the bowl without tipping, lifting or otherwise looking a bit gauche. Once she fest up to this problem, it was natural to ask for a possible solution. The moment she was asked for a constructive solution, these plausible possibilities poured from this “uncreative mind:” redesign bowls with a portion of the inside raised slightly, or indent the base interior of the bowl to fit a soup spoon (Manzo & Manzo, 1995).
If you are inclined, as frankly I was, to celebrate the wonders and unique capabilities of the human mind from such stories, you may need to consider deleting the words “unique” and “human” after reading this account. Louis Herman, director of a marine mammal laboratory, had taught dolphins to respond to directions communicated through hand gestures. In some way, not explained in the news account, he taught them, or they learned, to comprehend a gesture meaning “creative.” In any case, one day he signaled to two of them to perform in tandem, and to do “something creative.” With only that prompt, the dolphins submerged for a few moments, then swimming in tandem leaped into the air and simultaneously spit out jets of water before plunging back into the pool. On another occasion, given the same command, they performed a synchronized backward swim culminating in a simultaneous wave of the tails (Time, March 22, 1993, p. 54). Of course, almost as amazing as the creative nature of this feat is the wonder about how these sea mammals were able to comprehend the concept of creative, and to communicate intentions to one another for a tandem effort.
Nonetheless, these anecdotes and some related empirical findings discussed ahead, seem to give considerable creditability to the proposition that asking for constructive, i.e., creative, production is a solid way to begin to stimulate it. The simple logical explanation for this is the fact that higher levels of thinking tend to be as much a matter of orientation and disposition – or attitude, inclination, and focus, as of aptitude – or innate capacity and skill.
Amy Barnhill, a fellowship holder in our research center, reminded me of the particular significance of this point with respect to the gender gap noted. She points out that women are very constructive problem-solvers, they simply have tended to reserve their creative problem-solving to relationships, classroom and domestic issues. (Amy welcomes a dialogue with those who might wish to provide her with concrete examples of female creative problem-solving, and to think along with her about how to further stimulate such thinking in more visible realms such as school reform, product creation, and public policy. To get on Amy’s “listserv,” contact her by e-mail: amyelizabeth@cctr.umkc.edu.)
What the Classroom Will and Will Not Allow
It must be admitted that while it may be easy to stimulate constructive-creative thinking, it is not clear just what to do with it and how to fuse it to a standard curriculum, and for that matter to daily life practices. There appear to be several of these seemingly slight, though collectively heavy, factors inhibiting teaching for creative outcomes. Here are some others of note:
• There often appear to be social-political consequences, and hence, difficulties in merely trying to define problems in ways that are acceptable for public analysis (e.g., President Clinton’s call for a national dialogue on race and racism, for example, has become a national non-event).
• Schools are set up largely to transmit existing knowledge, not to generate new knowledge.
• Students, by definition, are quasi-ignorant and hence, it doesn’t seem logical to invite them to think critically, let alone creatively about what they don’t yet fully know about or presumably understand.
• As teachers, we have not been educated in a climate conducive to creative thinking ourselves, and hence are understandably unsure of how to encourage or even to allow it.
• Most current academic tests reward convergent, or within the box, thinking, often to the exclusion of divergent, or outside of the box thinking.
• The addition of constructive thinking to in the equation defining academic success changes the existing social star system of the classroom (Ratanakarn, 1992), and potentially of society.
These factors not withstanding, there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of teaching for creative outcomes. Consider the new emphasis on performance-based, or integrated and authentic, assessment. This emphasis amounts to a raised level of concern for transfer of training, or application of what is learned, and clearly provides a new incentive for constructive thinking and problem-solving, or the combining of prior knowledge and experience to textbook and classroom learnings.
An example of this paradigm shift in assessment is the Informal Reading-Thinking Inventory (Manzo, Manzo & McKenna, 1995a, b). This individually administered inventory, takes a seventy-five year old formula for informally assessing “reading,” that has relied exclusively on word recognition and literal comprehension, and respectfully tweaks it by adding a new level of attention to progress in the higher-order aspects of comprehension; e.g., metacognitive functioning, and “beyond the lines” thinking. The hope, nested in this instrument and in the performance-based movement, essentially is that assessment can serve as a way for teachers, more so even than students, to have real-life experiences with asking and hearing responses to more penetrating and open-ended questions then now is the case. This, it is reasoned, would serve as a heuristic, or means of stimulating self-discoveries of the reasons and ways to do so again in classroom teaching as well as curriculum design. Be advised that there are problems associated with doing this. Open-ended discussions tend to meander into realms of personal values and religious differences. Teachers will need to step cautiously, and be ready to coach parents on the fact that youngsters are better served by exploring divergent even exotic ideas in the admittedly imperfect classroom climate more so than in situations and over media that may seek to titillate, or biasly persuade. Ironically, one of the reasons such discussions can be so tensing, is due to the absences of the critical-constructive mind set we mean to advance. To overcome this chicken-egg paradox, consider the next proposition.
Let’s Do It Awkwardly, ‘Til We Can Do It Smoothly
Ideally critical-constructive thinking should take place as a seamless part of the curriculum. In fact, however, it has no presences for the reasons mentioned, but also because its value in advancing more basic skills, simply is not appreciated although, it is well documented (Collins-Block, 1995; Cooter & Flynt, 1986; Haggard, 1976). In Haggard’s (1976) seminal study, for example, remedial level readers exposed to a few minutes of isolated “creative thinking” exercises made significantly greater gains in reading than did a control group that played fun word games during that same time of this otherwise comparable remedial instruction period. For such reasons it seems best, at this developmental stage in our progress toward promoting constructive-creative thinking to not be so shy about teaching toward this objective in whatever way that we can get ourselves and our pupils to do so. That is, to “just do it,” even if it appears to be in a relatively non-integrated, even awkward way. Here now are some largely non-integrative suggestions and ideas for promoting greater constructive-creative thinking. Note how easily many of these can be integrated if there were more willingness to do so.
Creative Thinking-Primers (CTP’s)
Sample CTP Activities
These largely stand-alone activities can establish a climate and a schema for constructive-creative thinking in most any classroom. Initially, they might be done on a fixed basis, say for the first 20 minutes of class on “Thinking Thursdays.” It is especially generative to explain to youngsters why such activities are being undertaken. To do so tends to ignite pupil interest and contributions to the overall process as well as the given activity.
Word Creation. Language is constantly changing. To help students to be participants in our living language, provide occasional exercises such as the following:
• Define the made-up word “squallizmotex” – explain how your definition fits the word.
• If dried grapes are called raisins, and dried beef is called jerky, what would you call these items if they were dried: lemons, pineapple, watermelon, chicken.
(Provided by a favorite teacher, Maria Manzo Wiesner)
Unusual Uses. Have students try to think of as many unusual uses as they can for common objects. Objects may vary from a “red brick” to “used toys.” Ask students to identify objects that challenge inventive thinking. Here are a few that students have suggested, or brought to class:
• old tennis balls, handballs, racquetballs
• soda water bottles
• old 8-track cassette tapes
This activity could be easily tied to units on recycling and current events. Newspapers and magazines often carry stories of the cleaver ways in which some things are being recycled. For example, one such article told the fascinating story of how the tons of rubber from old tires was being used in the mix to make the very asphalt road beds that ate them up in the first place. Another, more recent story, told of a problem with this solution. Can you guess what that might be? It appears that as the rubberized road beds deteriorate from use, they put more floating rubber molecules into the air, already overloaded with such from normal tire wear.
The “What If’s,” or Circumstances and Consequences. “What if” type statements build “extant comprehension,” or understandings of the physical world and the social order about us. This activity, and several ahead, essentially tap into a key cognitive factor on the widely used Weschler IQ tests. Insights and understanding are gained merely from asking, What if . . . :
• school was on weekends and not during the week?
• people were allowed to tell one lie a day?
• all babies looked alike at birth?
• there were no colors?
This type of activity can be made more academically sophisticated and integrative by upping the caliber of the “ifs” to things like:
• we all had identical genetic makeup
• everyone would vote on every issue that now is decided by representatives to Congress.
Rational Problem Solving. These are questions and problems to which youngsters often can deduce positions, though not necessarily answers, using their current levels of knowledge and experience. Examples of starter problems or questions that can be considered by rational thinking are as follows:
• Is it possible for someone to fly the way Superman does?
• Why do scientists say that it probably isn’t possible to go faster than the speed of light?
• Why is it unlikely that there are aliens on earth right now?
Similar questions can be raised to urge further study. Also, urge youngsters to look in on internet chat groups and specialized websites.
Product Improvements. Generating these questions requires considerable imagination in itself. Seek questions that set the stage for other activities that basically ask, “What is broken?,” the theme of several of the exercises that follow. Here are some sample product-improvement oriented questions:
• How might school desks be improved?
• How might living room furniture be improved to provide better storage and even an option to exercise while watching television?
• How might we take further advantage of all the unused space between walls, ceilings, and in attics and basements?
• How can book-carrying bags be better equipped to handle lunches and other personal needs?
Problem Identification. What’s the problem? What doesn’t work? What’s needed? These questions almost always lead to constructive-creative thinking. When asked to generate these challenging questions, students have identified problems that included the following:
• Some way to deal with the loss of water pressure when the faucet is turned on and someone is in the shower.
• A place to quickly and easily put toys and stuff in your house.
• A quick way to check a spelling when you’re writing, or shouldn’t you bother just yet?
• What can be done with or to wet wash clothes and mops to aid drying and storage?
• How can parents get kids to help around the house?
Systems and Social Improvements. As previously alluded to, breakthroughs in world order, peace and sanity, often are the result of the creative vision of a few individuals who have pictured innovative social and systems changes (e.g., bicameral government, legally binding marriage, democracy, the post office). To encourage such thinking, pose problems and reward plausible solutions to questions such as:
• What might be a way for every student and parent to know what homework is due?
• How can we get ourselves to be courteous to everyone, including those we may tend to ignore?
• How can we help people who are not very bright, or are less able due to aging, or infirmity, to meet the complex obligations of modern life? (Provide some examples by category, such as owning a car which requires; renewing a driver’s license, getting the proper insurance coverage, getting license plates, safety inspections, etc.)
• How can schools be made more fun without hurting expected learning outcomes?
• Do some constructive whining by listing some “pet peeves,” then use these to think about other social, or people, problems that might need attention.
What’s Good About. This activity is especially useful for establishing a constructive orientation and for helping students to build a mental menu of ideas that are workable.
• What’s good about bureaucracies?
• What’s so good about compulsory education?
• If language usage pretty much defines how language is used, why do we need books and study in grammar and standard usage?
Making the Thinking-Curriculum Connection a Habit
Four steps have been suggested by Haggard (1976) for further fusing critical-constructive thinking to the standard school curriculum. Consider this as a more detailed way to “Just ask for it.”
1. Pose a stimulating question . In other words, ask for critical-constructive thought.
2. Brainstorm. Initial responses can be generated in small groups, following standard brainstorming ground rules: all responses are permitted, without criticism; as many ideas as possible are listed; unusual, even “wild” ideas are not discouraged; and new ideas can and should be formed by combining ideas already mentioned.
3. Compare ideas. After brainstorming, each small group should share their ideas with the class for review and evaluation. Students may wish to choose the “funniest” or the “wildest” response generated by each small group. At this point also, ideas are assessed for “reasonableness,” or practicality. It is important to point out that all creative solutions are at best just “possibles” until tried and proven.
4. Fuse to Curriculum. The whole point of a thinking curriculum is to transfer new knowledge and power to personal problem-solving. This is more likely to occur when real problems are allowed to surface and drive reading, learning, and thinking. Here are some examples that would apply from fourth to tenth grades:
• Maggie Magpie was determined to never read or write in cursive. We know that she eventually came to like it, but what might the teacher have done to help her sooner?
• Before we find out how Huck saved Jim, think of some possible ways for him to do so?
• What new invention (or system) could you come up with that would change the end of this story?
• After reading Liange and the Magic Paintbrush: “What would you paint if you had a magic paintbrush and whatever you painted would then come to life?” (Gross, 1990)
• What might not work properly today if pi(p) had not been properly calculated?
There are several other transfer activities that are especially suitable for typical reading or viewing assignments. Collins-Block (1991) offers seven questions to guide such fusion:
1. Could you give me an example?
2. What do you mean by ?
3. What is not an example, but similar to the idea that you are describing?
4. Is this what you mean: ?
5. Would you say more about ?
6. Why do you believe (feel or think) that ?
7. What is the main point?
Collins-Block provided a context for these questions by asking students to first report times in their lives when they benefited from asking clarifying questions. It also is provocative of good discussion to ask students to tell when they got into problems for failing to ask a clarifying question. It is best to urge students to practice using these fusion type questions with one another such as in cooperative learning groups. See called Enabling Questions ahead for a related technique. But first, consider how writing activities can be used to promote constructive-creative thinking.
Creative Thinking-Writing Activities
Writing can be as powerful a tool as reading and discussion for building constructive/creative thinking. Here are some examples of Creative Thinking-Writing Activities.
Writing About Everyday Life: Write a good or funny excuse for the following:
• Why are you so late in getting home from school?
• Why is there spaghetti on your math paper?
Writing About What Might Happen: What happens next?
• When the spaceship landed …
• As the door slowly opened …
Writing About Problem Situations: If this happened to you, how would you solve the problem?
• Your dog does not come when you call. You have not seen him since this morning. It is getting dark now.
• You are riding your bicycle home from a friend’s house. The chain breaks and you are losing speed.
(from a ditto master program by Drake, 1982).
The objective of such exercises is to have youngsters use their imaginations freely, without prompts even such as these. To further this objective, ask pupils to come up with their own “starters” in each of the categories above. As an incentive to do so, have a revolving group of students designated to give out certificates each week for “Great Writing Ideas.” Certificates are easily created now with most desktop software. The next idea has built-in incentives.
Books and Projects on Creativity and Invention
In planning to heighten creative output, don’t overlook one traditional means of doing anything in school, namely, to study a bit about it. There are wonderful books and computer software that can be used to study about topics like invention. Here are some especially interesting ones:
Books and Magazines
Discover Magazine (Walt Disney Magazine Publishing Group Inc.), (1-800 – 829 – 9132).
Konigsburg, E.L. Samuel Todd’s Book of Great Inventions, Atheneum, 1991. Grades K-2.
Lasson, K. Mousetraps and Muffling Cups: One Hundred Brilliant and Bizarre United States Patents. Arbor, 1966. Grades 3-12.
Olsen, F. H. Inventors Who Left Their Brands on America. Bantam Books, 1991. Grades 5-9.
Provensen, A. & Provensen, M. Leonardo da Vinci: The Artist, Inventor, Scientist in Three-Dimensional Movable Pictures. Viking, 1984. Grades k-6.
Software and Websites
Inventive Convention (Website addresses: )
LogoWriter. LCSI. (AppleII, Macintosh, IBM). Grade Levels K-12.
Kid Pix. Borderbound. (Macintosh, IBM). All ages/grades.
(more ahead)
For a more project-oriented approach, consider having youngsters check libraries and possible websites, especially of state agencies, to try to discover who in their own areas or states have invented things of note. Illinois is a leader in this area.
While creative thinking and writing activities of the types described are valuable, there still is a need for teaching methods with built-in reminders, or heuristics, to remind us as teachers to create a climate conducive to inventive thinking. Here now are some lively and interesting methods for promoting focused curiosity and inquiry, a respected pre-condition to critical-constructive thinking.
Methods for Heightening Curiosity and Inquiry
Stimulating curiosity and inquiry are a natural ways to help create an environment conducive to constructive-creative processes. Collectively, the methods described here are based on the proposition that all school learning and problem-solving is built implicitly on organizing questions, that is, pivotal questions that each field is conceptually built around. Knowing these questions increases the probability that students will see connections, and interlocking ideas. There are several ways for imparting a sense of the organizing questions that are the undergirth, or superstructure of each field.
Three methods are developed here. These methods have the benefit of serving as heuristics, or hands on experiences that lead teachers to self-discover better means of asking thought evocative questions, and of encouraging students to do so as well.
ReQuest Procedure. The ReQuest, or Reciprocal Questioning, Procedure (Manzo, 1969; Manzo & Manzo, 1997) pioneered the use of cognitive modeling and teaching for strategy acquisition more so than for more skills acquisition.
The ReQuest Procedure has students and teachers reciprocally questioning one another over the first few lines of a selection to be read until a purpose question or reason has been stated to guide subsequent silent reading. This back and forth activity is the way ReQuest externalizes internal thinking and helps students to learn how to self-evolve a guiding purpose for reading and learning. This method became the cornerstone for a larger movement that you may recognize as Reciprocal Teaching (Palinson & Brown, 1984). See Box 1 for details on ReQuest.
Box 1
Steps in ReQuest Procedure
1. Teacher and students should have copies of the selection to be read before them. The teacher states the basic goal: “Our intent in this lesson is to improve your ability to set a logical purpose for which to read.”
2. The teacher guides the students through as many sentences (or, in time, short paragraphs) of the selection as seem necessary to formulate a logical purpose to continue reading silently. This is achieved in the following way:
a. Students and teacher silently survey the selection and then read the title and first sentence. Students are first permitted to ask the teacher as many questions as they wish about the title and first sentence only. Students are told that they should try to ask the kinds of questions the teacher might ask and in much the way the teacher might ask it.
b. The teacher answers each question as fully as possible without intentionally withholding information, asking questions back, or elaborating unnecessarily.
c. Once students have asked all their questions, the teacher asks as many questions as seem appropriate to focus attention on the purpose for which the selection was written or the key question that it answers.
d. When students encounter a teacher-generated question that they feel they cannot answer, the teacher encourages them to explain why they cannot do so.
e. The pattern used to review the first sentence–silent reading, followed by student questions, followed by teacher questions–is continued through the second and subsequent sentences of the first paragraph(s).
f. Beginning with the second or third sentence, the teacher, mindful of serving as a model of questioning behavior, begins to ask questions that require integration of units from the earlier sentence(s), for example, “Judging from the first two sentences, why do you suppose this selection about the history of architecture has been titled ‘The Arches versus the Domes’?” (see Figure 5.5).
g. Throughout the interaction, students are reinforced for imitating the teacher’s questioning behavior. Reinforcement can be direct or indirect: a socially approving comment (“That’s a good question”) or an empathetic and complete answer to the question–a natural, powerful, and often overlooked means of reward.
3. The ReQuest procedure should continue until students can:
a. Decode and derive proper meanings for all the words in the initial paragraph(s).
b. Demonstrate a thorough understanding of the sentences read.
c. Formulate a reasonable “purpose,” preferably stated as a question, for silently reading the remainder of the selection. The teacher can help with this process by first urging students to frame thoughts and speculations, or hypotheses into questions (“What question do you suppose this article will answer regarding the relationship between arches and domes?”). Then the teacher can guide students into reading by saying, “Now please read the remainder of this selection silently, and see if we have identified a good purpose for reading.” (Note: On some occasions, more than one legitimate purpose for reading may evolve. Depending on the group’s ability level, all may be asked to test both purposes, or the class can be divided such that different groups of students check the correctness of each prediction.)
4. Following silent reading, importantly, the teacher’s first question should be “Did we identify the best purpose for reading this selection?” The next question should be the actual “purpose” question that was to guide silent reading (Manzo, 1985).
(from Manzo & Manzo, 1997, pp 85-89)
This next method has not yet been empirically tested, but it has strong face validity. Essentially, it is a flexible set of questions that students are taught to raise in lecture-discussion situations.
Enabling Questions
Enabling Questions is a prepared set of questions that students can use to “tune in” and reduce self-distraction during the lecture portion of a lesson. Enabling Questions puts the listener into an active, evaluative thinking mode and invites the teacher or speaker to talk a little less and welcome more interaction. Students should be urged to translate these questions into their own words. See Box 2 for some suggested Enabling Questions.
Box 2
Enabling Questions
Set 1: Questions that Help the Listener Organize and Clarify Information
1. What is/are the main question(s) you are answering by your lecture (or lesson) today?
2. Which key terms and concepts are most important for us to remember from what you have said (or will say) today?
3. What is most often misunderstood or confusing about the information or position you are presenting today?
Set 2: Questions that Help the Listener Get a Mental Breather
1. Could you please restate that last point in some other words?
2. Would you please spell —- and —- for us?
3. Would you please say which points you especially want us to note at this time?
Set 3: Questions that Invite Give-and-Take with the Speaker
1. How does what you have said compare with positions others have taken, and who might these others be?
2. Is there convincing evidence to support your position that you can share with us?
3. What do you think is the weakest part of the position you have taken?
4. How do you think this position (or new information) affects previously held beliefs?
5. What do you suppose would happen if you extended this point another step or two?
6. Would you mind pausing for a moment to see if there are other views on this in the class/audience? This would help us better understand and follow your points.
(Manzo, & Manzo, 1990, 1997, pp —)
One way to help students to self-discover the value of Enabling Questions is to write these on index cards and to urge them to try to use the them intelligently in the next class period or two. Then, schedule a day to discuss what happened when the questions were used, including what they learned and what might need to be modified to make the Enabling Questions even more enabling. The next activity emerged from a study of kindergartners seeking to discover where curiosity was being snuffed out in school (Manzo & Legenza, 1975).
Question-Only
Clearly thought flourishes as questions are understood, more so than as “answers” alone are given. The problem, as previously noted, is that students often don’t know what the question is, and hence cannot read or listen actively. Even when they have some level of awareness of an important organizing question, students tend to be inexperienced in framing their own questions in such a way as to allow focused reading, or to invite appropriate help from a speaker/teacher. In due course, natural curiosity begins to suffer and soon most epistemological inquiry grinds to a halt. The Question-Only procedure, see Box 3, can reverse this tendency in the space of one inverted lessons period.
Box 3
Steps in the Question-Only Inverted Lesson
1. The teacher announces a topic to the class and explains that they must learn about it solely through their questions and will be tested on the topic. The test will cover all the information the teacher considers important, whether or not the students actually extract the information with their questions.
2. The class questions and the teacher answers fully, but without telling more than anyone logically would need to know and at the same time taking care not to miss a teachable moment for telling all that the question logically entails.
3. The teacher gives the test.
4. Class discussion follows. Here teacher and students note which questions were raised and which should have been raised.
5. Students are directed to read their texts carefully or listen to a short lecture to discover what they failed to learn through their initial questions.
Example
Teacher: The topic today is the Jura. Any questions?
Student: You said the–does that mean Jura is a thing?
Teacher: Yes.
Student: This is geography, so is it a country?
Teacher: No.
Student: A river?
Teacher: No.
Student: Mountains?
Teacher: Yes.
Student: It sounds foreign. Is it in India?
Teacher: No.
Student: South America?
Teacher: No.
Student: Eastern Europe?
Teacher: No, but close.
Student: Western Europe?
Teacher: Yes.
Ten minutes later, students will have deduced facts such as that the Jura is between Switzerland and France and its highest peak is 6,000 feet. The quiz that follows should teach the class more about the topic, but also more about how to inquire.
Quiz Questions:
1. Does the Jura serve as a natural boundary?
2. What does it divide?
3. What happened to the valuable forests that once covered the mountainsides?
4. What do you suppose is the relationship between mountains and rivers?
Check your text now for answers to those questions you didn’t anticipate.
Question-Only Options
1. The teacher can add a five-minute period of “comments-only,” encouraging students to say what they feel they learned about the topic and/or about asking questions from the Question-Only format.
2. The teacher can have students use the Question-Only strategy to “interrogate” other students on a report or term paper previously prepared as a class requirements.
(Manzo, 1985, Manzo & Manzo, 1997, pp. )
Research and field experience have revealed that Question-Only helps students from the kindergarten through medical school levels to raise incisive and systematic questions on difficult and mundane topics (Manzo & Legenza, 1975; Legenza, 1978). The enthusiasm students have shown for this inverted inquiry method probably arises from the fact that it offers them an assertive though nonbelligerent means of “poking back,” or reciprocally influencing, lesson activity. Understandably, it helps students, especially females, to incidentally discover and provide for their conceptual needs in an upbeat and socially-protective atmosphere.
Ironically, the only time this highly analytical activity may go stale is when the teacher becomes overwhelmed by the rapid pace with which material is covered. The teacher may react by slowing down the lesson and, in the process, taking the winds of enthusiasm out of students’ sails; therefore, be prepared to cover a good deal of information quickly and in considerable depth (Manzo & Manzo, 1997).
Evolving Systems-based Approaches to Critical-Constructive Thinking
Consider now some developing systems-based approaches for integrating and promoting constructive-creative thinking. These are largely formulations and efforts of the Center for Studies in Higher-Order Literacy and its affiliate, the Foundation for Better Ideas, a non-profit organization, both of which the writer shepherds. The first method is based on a now traditional means of teaching students the variety of ways that they might cognitively and effectively respond to textual material.
Read-Encode-Annotate-Ponder: The REAP Strategy
REAP (Eanet & Manzo, 1976) is a structured method for teaching annotative writing and reader response. The original idea for it arose back when the internet was young (Manzo, 1973). Ideally, REAP needs to include a function allowing readers to read and react to one another’s perspectives on books and selections read. These critiques and cross-exchanges can be kept in loose leaf binders or on index cards and organized by titles. REAP as described here is an infusion, or integrated, approach that improves reading, writing, thinking, content knowledge, and even character development (more on this presently). See Box 4, for Sample Annotative Responses to Text.
Box 4
Sample REAP Responses-to-Text Annotations
“Travelers and the Plain-Tree: A Fable”
Two travelers were walking along a bare and dusty road in the heat of a mid-summer’s day. Coming upon a large shade tree, they happily stopped to shelter themselves from the burning sun in the shade of its spreading branches. While they rested, looking up into the three, one of them said to his companion, “What a useless tree this is! It makes no flowers and bears no fruit. Of what use is it to anyone?” The tree itself replied indignantly, “You ungrateful people! You take shelter under me from the scorching sun, and then, in the very act of enjoying the cool shade of my leaves, you abuse me and call me good for nothing!”
Reconstructive annotations:
1. Summary response
Travelers take shelter from the sun under a large tree. They criticize the tree for not making flowers or fruit. The tree speaks, and tell them that they are ungrateful people for taking shelter under her leaves and then criticizing her.
2. Precise response
Travelers stop for rest and shade under big tree. Travelers say tree is useless. Tree tells them off.
3. Attention-getting response
In this story, a tree talks back to people. The tree says, “You ungrateful people! You come and take shelter under me… and then… abuse me and call me nothing!”
4. Question response
What tales might be told if inanimate objects could talk?
Constructive Annotations
5. Personal view responses
a. We use resources like coal without thinking. Then we criticize the resource for damaging our lungs and dirtying our air.
b. Kids sometimes use their parents the way the travelers used the tree — and then criticize them for letting themselves be used.
6. Critical response
Not every word spoken in criticism is meant that way. The travelers were just a little grumpy from the long hard trip. The tree is being too sensitive.
7. Contrary response
The travelers could be right. There are other trees that could produce something, as well as just providing shade.
8. Intention response
The author wants us to be more sensitive to the people and things we depend on–especially those we see and use most often.
9. Motivation response
It sounds like the author may have felt used, after having a bad experience with friends or family.
10. Discovery response
I wonder how many of us know when we are being “users.” It would be interesting to take an anonymous poll to see how many people secretly feel that they have been used, and how many honestly see themselves as users.
11. Creative response
[Teacher guidance: What are some analogous situations this fable reminds you of?]
a. This fable reminds me of how Dobie Gillis uses and then abuses that nice, but plain girl who always hangs around him.
b. This fable made me think that teachers are sometimes used unfairly. They give us so much, and then we put them down if they make little mistakes. They’re only human!
[Teacher guidance: Having gotten the point of this fable, what should we do?]
c. We should put this fable on the bulletin board where it will remind us not to be ungrateful “users.”
[Teacher guidance: How would you re-title this fable if you were writing it?]
d. I’d call this fable “Travelers in the Dark,” to show that we go through life without appreciating the many small “gifts” that come to us, while we’re busy grumbling about what we don’t have.
(Manzo & Manzo, 1997, pp )
REAP Plus Telecomputing
Writing reflects thinking, hence, writing samples offer an excellent opportunity to make thinking visible and to allow coaching in both effective communications and critical-constructive thinking. There are practical problems, however, with taking advantage of this coaching opportunity in most classrooms. For one, teachers haven’t the time or energy to read and react to students’ multiple efforts to write. Relatedly, when teachers are able to do so, there tends to be a great emphasis placed on the mechanics of writing and spelling, with relatively little attention paid to content accuracy and quality of thinking. This is particularly unfortunate since the content and quality of thought expressed in writing reflect and influence attitudes and behavior, or character development, and other such reflective aspects of the “hidden” curriculum. The logic of this hook-up and of the synergies that can occur when they are fused, was supported in a recent comparative study that showed significant improvements in reading, writing, thinking, and character related factors when the intervention strategy essentially was the peer-based, REAP methodology (Garber, 1995; Manzo, Garber, & Manzo, in progress). The ever present hope has been to ratchet up this reading-writing-thinking exchange procedure into a national/global system by nesting it in a telecomputing environment. Under this design, the system would serve as a source of brief critiques that readers can consult and potentially react to, before, during, or following reading of longer and more challenging thought and literary pieces. Importantly, too, this level of personal, tutorial help, so difficult to come by in school, could be available on a 24 hour basis for all who wish to consult it.
There now are a few telecomputing-based reader exchange systems to serve as partial models for REAP Plus, AMAZON.COM being the most notable. However, these websites are unstructured chat sites intended largely to sell books, more so than to improve writing and thinking. In contrast, the Foundation for Better Ideas is attempting to build a system on its web page ( ) that is tailored to these and other critical-constructive thinking objectives.
Accordingly, the Website becomes an open-circuit means for achieving all of the goals of the ‘writing process’ – drafting, revising, and going public. Writing to a potentially reactive audience, in our judgment, is the most authentic, powerful, and lest used means for instantly encouraging more effective writing and thinking. Through the web, however, users from interested adults to peers, are able to act as audience and reactors. Achieving this can amount to assembling an enlarged corp of volunteer teachers, editors, and scholars who could weigh in with their critiques and personal coachings. To guarantee high-quality reactions and systematic and timely instructional coaching this corp should include some who are paid for doing so. The relative cost for such a writing/thinking tutorial could be very modest since the sponsoring Foundation for Better Ideas is a non-profit organization and most of the persons recruited would tend to be individuals with a great love of reading, writing, and communicating, and hence highly motivated reactors and coaches. The corp likely would include practicing and retired teachers, professors, editors, and other professionals with an interest in volunteerism, a desire to earn a modest supplemental income and/or seeking relief from conventional television offerings.
The benefit-to-cost ratio for such a project to the schools should be considerable, both in terms of dollars and student achievement. Assuming a thousand student middle school, for example, the cost for an average of seven reviews, or personal tutorings, per year, per child would be about equal to the salary of one additional teacher, who under the best of circumstances would not have been able to respond seven times to the one-hundred and fifty students in his or her charge. This systems-solution also could establish a stronger societal respect for effective reading/writing/thinking. Incidentally, this system, due to its volume, could be operated at profitable levels, especially if advertising revenues were allowed. Attractive private sector interests along these lines could be of benefit to kids, teachers, tax payers, since weaving such systems into the fabric of the free enterprise structure would tend to make it competitively priced and a more stable offering.
Registry for Better Ideas
Additional to the REAP reading and writing system, the Foundation operates a Registry for Better Ideas. This systems-solution also could add impetus to critical-creative thinking in classrooms across the globe. Here is the way it would work.
First, and foremost, the Registry creates a place to take fresh ideas and to potentially get feedback on these. Additionally, it allows one to register, and hence protect an idea, by a time date imprint when it arrives at the Foundation. Additionally, using funds being raised from corporations and individual subscribers, dollars can be granted to idea makers to refine an idea, or simply as a reward for having it. Such awards would be particularly suitable for ideas that are not product related, and hence not able to garner royalties or licensing fees.
Truth be told, thus far, this potential incentive system for critical-constructive thinking, frankly has not been a practical success. The reasons for this are several. First, and most simply, it may not be a good idea. More likely, however, is the fact that it has not yet won a sponsor, or dedicated institution to prime it (such as with prize money for “best” idea submissions) and staffing to reach full operational value. Accordingly, the project in-progress has been unable to undertake the sustained level operations necessary to tweak itself into a better idea, or to the level of critical mass needed to become self-sustaining.
The lack of sponsorship and hence of R&D money, however, tends to signal just how foreign such system-improvement ideas still appear. Even in enterprising America, current systems’ reinforcers remain rather narrowly focused on supporting conventionalized ideas, such as “hard work,” perseverance and convergent, more so, than divergent thinking. However, a system that increased financial rewards for divergent thinking could be a real boon to society and to social invention.
Progress is occurring. A similar operation called the Global Idea Bank ( ), out of London, for example, offers 1000 lbs sterling yearly for the best social invention submitted. The Registry for Better Ideas attempts to improve on this idea by offering a place for idea makers to collaborate of formative ideas and for many possible cash awards, from all subscribers. The Foundation for Better Ideas hopes, additionally, to promote legislative reform that would increase support for critical-constructive output.
As example, the Foundation supports a proposal to encourage legislators to expand the definition of whom would be entitled to receive royalties to include social inventors. Currently, if one invents, patents, and then licenses a product for manufacture, there is money and prestige. If one wrote a cute ditty, say the Happy Birthday song, there is copyright protection and royalties (the tune and lyrics sold for eleven million dollars about 10 years ago). If one creates a useful piece of computer software, there can be millions earned from its sale and use. But, there is nothing tangible to be gained by design of a robust teaching method, surgical/medical procedure, or a better system for doing anything. Not surprisingly, attention to the design of health, education, and welfare systems, which essentially are a societies’ operational software, are undernourished and underperforming social assets.
Consider a specific example of the potential impact of simply redefining laws to provide royalties for defined and tested systems and procedures. Currently there approximately is 300 million dollars a year set aside for educational research, a fraction of a fraction of one percent of federal and school operating budgets. Accordingly, there is neither money for educational R & D, nor adequate budgets and means for subsequent dissemination of improved systems and procedures. If, on the other hand, there simply were royalties payable for the use of proprietary and proven teaching methods, the teaching industry would benefit as has the software industry by attracting venture capital funds, and perhaps in the billions of dollars. Schools of Education would flourish because such research and development is not very costly and it could result in very profitable royalties and licensing fees. Companies could not afford not to invest the modest sums required for educational R & D requires. All that is needed is a 1% fee structure to be paid for teaching procedures as licensing fees by the nation’s thousands of educational institutions.
Let’s Get Ready
My sense is that all of this could happen anytime soon; but of course I’ve been thinking such crazy things since the early 70′s. Nonetheless, events such as telecomputing over television sets, and a move toward patent protection for certain procedures and even ideas by the U.S. Patent Office clearly are signs of progress in the way of intellectual properties are being valued and popularized. So, it seems a good idea to begin asking for creative production, and teaching for critical-constructive thinking outcomes in the school whenever and wherever we can do so. Increasing attention to critical-constructive thinking in the schools right now would not be an idle step in any case. It is fairly clear that an authentic, problem-solving orientation raises students’ activity and engagement levels, and hence, produces overall increments to all types of learning. Further, doing so could begin to rectify a gender bias issue that deserves at least as much attention as do issues like the disproportionate numbers of males and minorities in remedial level classes. Finally, and this may be an esoteric though potentially important point, the absences of attention to critical-constructive deficiencies amounts to a lack of attention to critical-constructive deficits and strengths of students, and the role of such in education are theory and practice. This amounts to trying to play cards without all the cards; the game drones on, but it never quite makes much sense.
In this regard, our most recent research, which looks at the possible deficiencies of proficient readers, suggests that several of these apparently academically strong individuals have some unapparent weaknesses in the way they are able to think about, or apprehend, what they otherwise seem to comprehend (Manzo, Barnhill, Lang & Thomas, 1997).
References
Manzo, A.V. & Manzo, U. (1997). Content Area Literacy: Interactive teaching for active learning, 2nd edition. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishers.
Manzo, A.V. & Manzo, U. (1995).
Manzo, A.V.; Manzo, U.; & McKenna, M. (1995a). Informal Reading-Thinking Inventory, Harcourt, Brace, (1995).
Manzo, A.V.; Manzo, U.; & McKenna, M. (1995b). Construction of an Informal Reading-Thinking Inventory. In K. Camperall & B.L. Hayes (Eds.), Linking Literacy: Past, Present & Future. American Reading Forum Yearbook. Logan, UT: Utah State University.
Time, March 22, 1993, p. 54
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