Imagination – By's Musings

As I noted at the end of Education’s Big Lie, Part I: Introduction, I have learned that we can think without words. However, in much of today’s world, particularly those parts of it touching the education enterprise, communicating without words is much more difficult, if not next to impossible. Although as the following giggleBites cartoon illustrates communicating with words can have its own drawbacks.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Cartoosh, author of the cartoon. Wikimedia has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.This correspondence has been reviewed by an OTRS member and stored in its permission archive.

One thing that the above cartoon brought forcefully to my attention is that the expression “A picture is worth a thousand words” implies “words” are the basis of value. Pictures and ideas are valued in terms of words. Have you ever heard anyone ask how much of a picture does one word equal? In any exchange of objects of value using two different currencies, one of those currencies is considered dominant. The transaction is then conducted in that currency. In education, we tend to try to force the exchange of ideas in the currency of words. We almost never let pictures speak for themselves. We have to “explain them.”

“Let me explain this idea to you.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

If words are our basis for the exchange of ideas, then we must have a storehouse of words to express our ideas. Aphasia is an insidious deficiency in that it steals one’s words, the basis of exchange, but not the ideas, the real objects of value. Ideas are locked inside one’s head with no easy way to communicate them.

I have managed to deal with my aphasia because of the verbal proficiency that I built up over my 60-year love affair with words. The filing cabinets in my head are filled with words. After the TBI’s, I still had a treasure trove of words in my memory which I found I could access intermittently.

Finding the right words. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

However, even with my experience and confidence with words, many times I felt words were playing “Hide and Seek” with me. Can you imagine how difficult it is for children who don’t have the same experience or comfort with words? The ideas are right there in front of the children, but they can’t find the words to express them. It’s like the “Where’s Waldo Game?” Waldo is hidden in plain sight. Let’s play “Where’s Waldo” with the dead leaf mantis in the following picture.

Can you find the bug? Somewhere in this picture is a Dead leaf mantis (Deroplatys desiccata). The picture was taken at Bugworld in the Bristol Zoo, Bristol, England. If this mantis is alarmed it lies motionless on the rainforest floor, disappearing among the real dead leaves. It eats other animals up to the size of small lizards. From the island of Madagascar, Africa. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Arpingstone. This applies worldwide.

Having gone through my trials, I can empathize with children who must be completely bewildered when confronted with what must seem like nonsense to them. For the past eight years, it has been a constant, uphill battle for me to attempt to do the things that were second nature to me prior to the TBI’s. Even putting together these simple essays has been an exhausting task. At times, it has been an almost overwhelming chore. I have to visualize my thoughts. I must then translate those pictures into appropriate words and coherent sentences. The images that I intersperse in my posts represent the starting points of where I begin my thinking. Since I am retired, living on a fixed income, my drawing ability leaves much to be desired, I must find public domain or royalty free pictures which mirror the figures that I am seeing in my mind. I must then struggle to translate those images into words.

Where did our classrooms and education go astray? If we want to measure a child’s creativity, imagination, intelligence, curiosity, ingenuity, reasoning, and problem-solving I propose we go back and watch children play. The first picture that comes to my mind is the baby in a medical insurance television advertisement that rolls over from his back to his stomach. The baby then reaches for and grabs a soft, cloth ball. The baby then plays with the ball, feeling it, squeezing it and trying to taste it. The baby has no words to describe what he is doing. No words are spoken about what the baby is doing, but curiosity is clearly visible in the baby’s eyes and actions.

Give a one-year-old child a few crayons and the back of a paper placemat in a restaurant and watch creativity and imagination come to the fore. Give five-year-old children a new toy like a little red wagon and watch them play out interactive stories. Give six-year-old children a set of Legos and watch them build houses and monsters. Give seven-year-old children jigsaw puzzles and watch them develop problem-solving skills. In most of these situations, words are seldom to be found.

The artist was 1 year 10 months when this was drawn. Soft crayon on paper. Uploaded by the child’s parent. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Since our society has dictated that our culture is passed along from generation to generation via the media of books and verbal stories, I realize that language, words, and verbal thinking must eventually come into play in education. However, I do not believe we must necessarily equate the mental characteristics of creativity, imagination, intelligence, curiosity, ingenuity, reasoning, and problem-solving with verbal thinking and verbal proficiency. I would argue that I am not alone in this position.

For more than 200 hundred years, the New York City Harbor was the first port of call for people and goods entering the United States on the east coast. It didn’t matter whether it was a military or civilian ship. It didn’t matter whether it was driven by wind or steam. It didn’t matter whether it was large or small. It headed for New York City first. For almost 1500 years, words have been the first port of call in the generation of ideas.

New York City Harbor from the Brooklyn Bridge 1893. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The image is in public domain because it was published prior to 1923.

In a number of areas outside of education, words are not the first port of call for the devotees of certain pursuits. Additionally, there have been a few brave individuals in areas dominated by words that have taken the very courageous step of coming out of the shadows and admitting that they are visual thinkers. In my next post in this series, Education’s Big Lie, Part III: Visual Thinkers in the Spotlight, I highlight a number of these individuals.

I don’t know how to say it any clearer. I have come to the shocking conclusion that the enterprise of American education is doing society a huge disservice by propagating and perpetuating a big lie. Please do not misinterpret what I am attempting to say in this essay. I am firmly convinced that education is immensely valuable. Paraphrasing a credit card commercial campaign, it is “priceless.” For more than 65 years, my life has revolved around faith, education, and family. I am fully committed to the concept of an appropriate education for everyone. However, I am also very certain that education, as it is currently conceived and generally defined, doesn’t and can’t serve everyone equally well. To paraphrase a television commercial for a particular internet service, “Education that doesn’t serve everyone, doesn’t serve anyone.” The simplest statement of Education’s Big Lie is Procrustes’s aphorism “one size fits all.”

Caricature from 19th century German satirical magazine “Berliner Wespen” (Berlin Wasps) – Title: Procrustes. Caption: Bismarck: As I see, Lady Liberty is somewhat too large – we want to change this immediately to her contention. (He chops away her legs.) – Inscription on bed: Socialist Law. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; in Public Domain

By “one size fits all” I am surprisingly not referring to either standardized testing or the Common Core. Both of these educational fads have their good and bad points. I will explicate my views on each of them in later posts. For this post, I return to a fuller statement of my understanding of the Big Lie plaguing the American educational enterprise. The reality to which I am referring is that the American educational enterprise has pigeon-holed the mental characteristics of creativity, imagination, intelligence, curiosity, ingenuity, reasoning, and problem-solving primarily if not exclusively to the verbal region of the human brain. The Big Lie equates these characteristics with one’s facility with words. Many if not most of the instruments used to measure these mental characteristics are primarily verbally based. To improve their abilities in the areas delineated above, students are instructed to read, write, and speak more.

So many books, so little time! Illustration courtesy of Presenter Media

If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again! Draft; after draft! Illustration courtesy of Presenter Media

Why? Why did the teacher call on me? I don’t know the answer! Image courtesy of Presenter Media

This solution may work for many and possibly the majority of students. However, the problem with this remedy is that for a significant number of students words are more like enemies than friends. Words are at the crux of my argument against education. Ideas are considered the coin of the realm in education. For centuries in education, we have been indoctrinated to believe that ideas are formulated almost exclusively through words. After ideas are formed, we must then use words to express those ideas, either in written or oral form. We are taught that to think properly we must use a process that is based in and undergirded by the use of words. This process is commonly known as verbal thinking. I grew up with that mindset. In this mindset, words are the cornerstone upon which we build our ideas.

Ideas are built upon a foundation of words, phrases, and sentences. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

This was the way I was taught. It is the way most of our American society has been taught for hundreds of years. I am going out on a limb now and say that this is not the only way we think or must think. It took two traumatic brain incidents (TBI’s) in 2009 to convince me that there are other ways to think. The first TBI was the implosion of a benign meningioma due to the explosion of the artery which was feeding it. This TBI left me with a mild case of aphasia. As a verbal thinker, I found it difficult to think when I couldn’t find my beloved words.

The second TBI was a series of four tonic-clonic seizures within 30 minutes that left me in a coma for three days. When I woke up, I knew immediately something was different. I found myself no longer going directly to words to make sense of what was going on around me. I saw pictures. At first, I wasn’t certain what had happened. As I reflected on what was happening, I remember several articles that I had read that were written by stroke survivors. I was having the same experiences that they had encountered. I had become a visual thinker.

After 60 years of being a poster child for verbal thinking, words were now my second thought language, Although I was thinking in terms of pictures, I found that it was necessary for me to use words to communicate my ideas. This was extremely frustrating at times. I attempted to describe my feelings in a 2010 blog posting entitled Words Are More Like Cats Than Dogs.

Sometimes corraling words can be harder than herding cats. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

Where am I going with this argument? For centuries in educational circles, words have been king.

I am WORD! I have the final say. You must listen to me! Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

A recent Google+ posting The Importance of Imagination by Elaine Roberts, a former colleague, induced me to write this series of posts. In her posting, Roberts described a situation that led her to an epiphany and two points of clarity. The situation grew out of an attempt by a teacher to test or evaluate the creativity of a class of sixth graders. This teachers’ attempt was not a standardized test. It was a writing assignment. Most educators would label this assignment as an authentic assessment instrument. The teacher gave the children the following set of instructions:

Okay. Students, your assignment is very simple. Just write me a story about anything. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

What do I imagine some of the students heard? “Blah, Blah, Blah!”

Blah, Blah,Blah. I don’t understand what this teacher wants us to do. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

Even though they had previously been given a template to use in writing stories, what were the first thoughts of some students about constructing a story? I think they probably drew a blank.

“The teacher wants us to write a story. What am I going to do? How can I write a story? I don’t know what to write about.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Taking literary license with this scenario, what did I imagine this student wanted to turn into the teacher? Simply, a blank piece of paper.

How can I write anything, if I don’t know what I should be writing about? Image courtesy of Presenter Media

What do I think the teacher’s response to a blank piece of paper woul be? Most likely, he would have said to himself, “What is wrong with this student? The wiring in his head must be all tangled up.” Now the shoe is on the other foot. The teacher doesn’t know what the student is trying to say.

“What’s up with this mixed up student? The instructions were so easy. How could not understand them? How could you turn in a blank piece of paper?” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

With respect to the spread of the Big Lie, I readily admit that my hands are not entirely clean. Prior to 2009, as I noted above, I could have been considered a poster child for verbal thinking and verbal learning. In all of my recollections of my earliest childhood, I was constantly immersed in books and words. At the age of five, I won a Sunday School contest for being the first primary student (Grades K through 6) during the new church year to recite 100 selected verses by memory.

Yipee! I did it. I was the first to recite all 100 verses by memory.

As an academic professional, I made my living off words. Even as a mathematician, my training, and education were dominated by words. As an instructor, I constantly fed my students words.

“Okay class, who can explain Zorn’s Lemma and what is it’s relationship to the Well-Ordering Principle?” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

As an administrator, I used words to defend positions and try to persuade colleagues to follow my lead.

Colleagues, I know the message I bring to you today at this faculty meeting will not be pleasant to hear. I want you to know that it is hard for me to have to deliver it to you. However, we are facing a huge budget deficit. I have two proposed solutions. Neither of them will be without pain. But I am bringing them to you today, to get your reactions and suggestions.” Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

With what I have written so far, I should probably call it quits for this first post in this series. If I haven’t done enough to damage my image and credibility within the higher education community, I invite you to stay tuned for additional posts. Although it has been difficult at times, I have learned that we can think without words. In fact, I have subtitled Part II of the series Education’s Big Lie, “We Can Think without Words.” Even though we give lip service to the idea that “A picture is worth a thousand words”, in much of today’s world, particularly those parts of it touching the education enterprise, the most difficult aspect of working with thoughts and ideas is trying to communicate them without words.