The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience
Andrea Kuszewski
2011-07-10 00:00:00
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Looking back on my childhood, the times I remember most fondly were spent with my father, learning how to be a scientist. He’s not a scientist himself, though—but an artist. He’s one of those people who knows a little bit about everything, quite a bit about most things, and loves sharing those bits of insight with anyone who will listen. He is a perpetual observer, a noticer of peculiarities, a collector of knowledge.

Being a relentlessly curious child, I saw my father as my walking encyclopedia. My afternoon routine consisted of perching myself on a stool in his workshop, peppering him with random questions as he worked.

Why do chameleons change color? Can lightning follow a trail of water? Why do we go in the basement during a tornado? How do those guys karate-chop planks of wood without breaking their hand? (Because I had tried this myself and believe me, it wasn’t pretty.)

No matter how silly or trivial the question, he always had a generously detailed answer for me, thick with scientific evidence. I was perfectly content with this symbiosis until one afternoon—I must have been about 7 or 8 years old—when everything changed.

The Irresistible Taste of Color


There was a question that had been plaguing me for days, and I wanted my dad’s full attention.

He was working on a new project, so I bided my time, respecting his need for silence during his creative flow. I loved watching his process, trying to imagine what was going on behind his eyes right before his pencil struck surface. His arm moved swiftly across a large sheet of paper, effortlessly laying out a composition in a series of graceful sweeps and snaps of the wrist, a conductor creating life in a symphony of strokes, dancing and multiplying before me. The intensity of his concentration was clear in his grimace.

I held my breath. A minute or two of heavy staring at the page, a few more swipes at the paper, and he stepped back, smiling to himself. That was my moment.

“Dad?”

“Mmm hmm.”

"What are black holes? I mean, how do they work?"

He turned to me and laughed a little. I had managed to shock him with my latest inquiry.

“What specifically do you have a question about?” he asked. He was probably regretting buying that set of World Book Encyclopedias, which I had since claimed as my own.

“Well, where does all the stuff go after it gets sucked inside? I thought matter couldn’t be created or destroyed? It has to go somewhere, right? So—where does it go?” 

“I’m not sure,” he responded. “I don’t think it follows the same rules.” 

I was stunned. He didn’t know? How? Why?

In my young schema of the world, my father knew everything there was to know. I looked to him to be The Teacher of All Things Important in Life, and I was watching my reality crumble away in one unanswerable question. Realizing for the first time that my father was not a god was life-altering enough, but my world changed in an even more profound and quite unexpected way: in that uncomfortable moment of dissonance, when my thirst for knowledge went unsatisfied—I was exhilarated. There was a scientific mystery, and neither one of us knew the answer. It was ridiculously exciting, and I didn’t quite know why, but I was drunk with wonder.

We spent the rest of that afternoon discussing black holes—looking through books, making little diagrams, trying to make some sense of theoretical physics—together.

My mind awakened that day. I fell in love with not just knowing things, but in solving mysteries. No longer content to just get an answer, I went seeking answers, pleased with my newly discovered investigative prowess. And when I came upon something interesting, I shared it with my Dad, and we discussed it like colleagues, sorting out the little pieces of the puzzle together—not always succeeding, but having a splendid time trying.

It was as if a whole new color was added to the world’s palette that my eyes had never noticed before. More and more hues revealed themselves in time. Life became deeper. Things moved slower, had more parts. There was so much I didn’t know, and so much I wanted to find out, layers upon saturated layers of discoveries waiting for me to uncover. I was hooked. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was when I first became a scientist.

The Pain of Withdrawal


I wish I could say that was the happy ending of my childhood story. Instead, it was the beginning of a rather torturous developmental period.

kidsMy new outlook on life, which could be summarized as “Don’t tell me—I want to figure it out myself!” was not an attitude that went over too well in school. For many years I struggled with wanting to please my teachers—listening to directions and following the rules—but feeling creatively unfulfilled and unchallenged. At times I had an instinct to speak up and offer an alternate explanation, or an urge to try something a different way, but I quickly learned that only "undisciplined and obnoxious" children challenged authority and caused disruption. These were not the kinds of students whom teachers favored. I learned to ignore the pangs of my creative spirit, which only seemed to bring me misery when answered.

As much as I loved learning, school was uninspiring and left me hollow. I saw school as a necessary time commitment, but not much else. I ended up doing most of my learning and exploration on my own with whatever tools I had at my disposal—books, observation, watching people, and of course—my imagination.

Obviously my love for science and learning was not completely destroyed by my early school experience, or I wouldn’t be where I am today. But I certainly bear some scars. Now that I know a lot more about neuroscience and psychology, I wonder:

What effects did the discouragement of creativity and independence have on my developing brain, and how much of it was permanent? How much of a role did the inflexible, rule-dependent nature of school play in my cognitive development, versus my own independent or experiential learning?

Even bigger question: Was school helping or hurting my intellectual growth?

Before I answer those questions, let’s take a look at this from the other side first—how creativity and exploratory behavior is diminished by traditional teaching models—then I’ll explain how that relates to intellectual development overall...

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