I listened to an interview on
National Radio with Robert Greene about his book Mastery and felt inspired to acquire his
book.
Developing an education system
premised on developing the talents and gifts of all students has always been my
vision.
Unfortunately schooling has been more about standardisation and conformity –
sorting and grading of students. National Standards with its emphasis on
literacy and numeracy at the expense of other areas of endeavour, is the most
recent iteration of this standardised approach.
The alternative is an emphasis on
personalisation of learning; an education premised on the centrality of
developing student creativity - building on the default way of learning innate in all
learners.
Although
there have been individual teachers who have developed creative classrooms most classrooms could be classified as
benign environments where students achieve success by achieving teacher
determined objectives.
Robert Greene’s fascinating book, by using examples of masters past
and present, illustrates vital lessons
about how teachers could develop their classrooms as true creative learning
communities. The power he outlines
is the process that leads to mastery
– one that is available to all of us.
Essentially in whenever we are
learning something new at the beginning we are outsiders and the process of
achieving mastery seems confusing as we realise how much there is to learn. Many people,
living in a world of instant gratification, give up at this point.
If we get past such feelings, and by following the lead of
others, by observing, by practice and effort we gain basic skills and in turn gain some success and gain in
confidence. As time goes by mastery is developed.
There are three stages in this
process. The first is apprenticeship where we
are outsiders, watching and learning. The
second stage, through much practice and immersion we gain a more
comprehensive understanding and in the
third we internalise what has been learnt and can apply ourselves
intuitively. We have moved from novice
to relative expertise.
We all had this intuitive spontaneous
way of learning when we were young but it is generally drummed out of us by an overload of information, by a
conformist education system, and by the belief that only a few geniuses achieve
mastery and that these people have ‘natural talent’ not available to the rest
of us
Greene’s thesis is that mastery is a
latent power in all of us and that we can reverse bad learning habits and recover from
misconceptions about our ability to learn.
Greene shares fascinating insights
from a number of ‘talented’ people to show that their success was down to a
process we can all access. The beginning
of success is an early identification of areas of interest, an interest that allows them to
stand the pain of practice. Successful people rely on desire, persistence and
practice rather than reasoning power.
Too many of us simply don’t try. The less we attempt the less chance
of failure. It is important to understand that other people’s success is due to
their actions not genetics and privilege.
As teachers we need to focus on what
it is that individual students are interested in. It was an interest in nature that
drove Darwin, an obsession with observing that drove Leonardo da Vinci and an
interest in magnetic force as a five year old that drove Einstein – Darwin ,
Einstein and da Vinci became obsessed
with the search and the process of creating. The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum echoes
this process by saying every student should ‘seek, use and create their own
knowledge’.
Teachers need to reconnect their
students with their inclinations - we need, it seems, ‘learning recovery’ and do everything to help students to develop areas of
personal interests to contribute to ensuring purpose in their lives.
Teachers need to provide a varied
diet of experiences to provide opportunities to attract and engage student’s
attention. Creative
teachers know this. Real curriculums emerge through shared inquiry not
delivered by outside experts.
Once students involve themselves in
their own learning they need to value their strengths not their limitations and
to value the importance of effort and practice. Stickablity. Many examples of those referred
to in the book who have achieved mastery did so by ignoring their limitations
and by building on their strengths. It would seem important for teachers to
assist their students achieve a sense of mastery by doing fewer things well and
to allow their students to dig deeply into areas of personal concern so as to
produce results of personal excellence.
‘Hardwiring of creative power’ cannot
occur in classrooms where students are constantly distracted moving from one
task or class to another. Once an action becomes automatic, through experience and practice,
students gain the mental space to reflect on their action – to work on areas
needing improvement – which in turn brings greater skills and more pleasure.
There is research that shows that
anyone who achieves a high level of skill have put in over 10000 hours of
focussed practice
and this applies to composers, chess players, writers and athletes.
And once skill and confidence is
achieved through time and practice then it is possible to move to experimentation
and true creativity
– learning has become second nature.
Unfortunately schools, as they are
currently arranged, values reasoning with word and numbers above making and
building. Academic
success is valued above practical hands on exploring. Creativity is limited to superficial decorative ideas. As a result
many creative students have little opportunity to value their talents and worse
still feel disengaged from learning and leave feeling failures.
Greene’s book writes about the
importance of mentors in the lives of creative people. A good mentor (or teacher) does not
shortcut the learning process but streamlines it. They observe and give real
time feedback making practice time more efficient. Ideally, if you are creative
teacher practicing in creative activities yourself students absorb from you the
essence of creativity. Mentors provide
support, confidence and allow students time and space to discover things for
themselves. This is in conflict with the deterministic and formulaic
teaching models most schools seem to base their programmes on. Mentors also practice ‘tough love’ by providing constructive criticism. Students while needing to be
receptive to their mentor’s ideas must also avoid falling under their spell. Students
need to cultivate some distance to develop their own unique ideas. A look around many schools shows an
unsettling conformity of student learning – even in such a creative subject
as art.
Greene’s book explores the full range
of human talents including social intelligence writing that empathetic skills
are as important as reasoning ones – it is notable that such vital skills are ignored by the
National Standards which limit their judgments to success in literacy and
numeracy. Those who show empathy mastery
are able to immerse their minds in the world of others. An acceptance of every
learner’s backgrounds and cultures is a vital skill for teachers.
One feature of creative individuals
Greene mentions is what the poet John Keats called ‘negative capability’ – the
ability to live through uncertainty and doubts. Current pre-determined school
programmes are in conflict with this acceptance of uncertainty. The human mind is naturally creative, it
wants to explore but it is easily killed when we grow afraid of making mistakes.
But it is equally true that we all
possess the potential to recover the potential to be creative which ought to
give hope to all teachers.
The secret is to widen the view of
creativity and to get learners to appreciate the importance of time and effort. Students need to learn to face up
positively to the inevitable failures and setbacks that are part of learning,
to learn to cope with uncertainty, and most of all not to give up. Students
also need to choose realistic tasks, ones which they have the requisite skills
in place, and then to let go of the stifling need for certainty and security. Teachers can do much to encourage such
attitudes.
The creative process goes through
several stages that students to appreciate. The first is
thing is to let the mind absorb ideas without judgement. This is Keats’s
negative capability – the need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind
faces.
It is interesting to learn that many
profound discoveries occur when the mind is not directly concentrating on the
problem. At such moments
ideas unexpectedly enter the mind. Such
chance associations are known as serendipity but this only occurs after
information has been entered into the brain. Chance favours the prepared mind.
Many creative masters find it valuable to go for walks, listen or play music
but when a new idea enters consciousness
then it is time for full attention. As Greene writes discoveries are, ‘like seeds
floating in space, require the soil of a highly prepared mind and an open mind
to take root and sprout into a meaningful idea’.
In many classrooms, particularly
teachers trying to get students to understand maths, we push understanding onto
our students that make little sense to them. Students need teachers who listen to them, who
understand what they are thinking and feeling, and who see the importance of
more fun, less abstract, experiences to feed the minds need for connection. Most importantly such learners need to be
given a new perspective about maths to allow them to enjoy and learn.
Unfortunately students are taught by teachers whose approach to maths (and
other learning areas) is negatively coloured by their own previous experiences.
There is a pattern in the lives of
creative people. First there is the initial excitement
coming from personal involvement. Then
they gather all sorts of information followed by a shaping and narrowing of
possibilities but such individuals are not easily satisfied with what they
are doing, they entertain doubts but they plow forward. They might take a break and temporarily
work on something else. It seems that temporarily losing the initial
excitement provides motivation to look at our work objectively and not to
settle too early on an easy solution.
Greene suggests that the key is to be
aware of this process, to live with doubts and to work towards solutions. If students think that learning is
a simple linear process they will not succeed if they come across difficulty. Time is required, going slow is a virtue
but so it seems are deadlines – with deadlines the mind rises to the
occasion.
The premise Greene puts forward that
if we can get our students creativity involved in learning that they are
interested in they will not be so attracted by drugs alcohol and other
dangerous activities.
If this were the case our schools suffer from an ‘opportunity ‘rather than an
‘achievement gap’.
To become creative schools need
to focus on identifying students’
talents and gifts , to value their ‘voices’, and to ensure all students retain
their innate learning identities. To ensure at all costs learners love learning for its own
sake, to have open minds, to start out in unstructured manner and then to
search and dig deeply about what attracts them.
In all areas of life, Greene writes,
‘we suffer from dead forms and conventions’ that detract from creativity.
Schools, as currently structured, come to mind.
‘When you look at the creative work of
Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the
hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured’.
Creativity is not the step by step
rational evidence based learning schools often follow; the achievements of the Masters
cannot be reduced to a formula but the process they go through is accessible to
us all. The amazing abilities of the
Masters has been achieved, it has been shown, by minds altered after
approximately 10000 hours of practice and hard work. At this point they are able to act intuitively.
For students to achieve such high
levels of mastery they need to be provided with qualitatively rich learning
experiences where students are inspired to be engaged and where they are able
to see personal connections – difficult in current traditional
fragmented school programmes where they are exposed to simplified ideas of
reality and conventional ways of thinking. ‘Why’, writes Greene, ‘should any
individual stop at poetry, or find art unrelated to science, or narrow his or
her intellectual interests? The mind was
designed to connect things, like a loom that knits together all of the threads
of a fabric’
Greene writes that the
greatest example is the Renaissance where the ideal was to connect all branches
of learning and where there was no division between the arts and the sciences.
‘Perhaps today’, he writes, ‘we
are witnessing the early signs of a return to reality, a Renaissance in modern
form’ with ‘the artificial barriers between the arts and the sciences will
melt away’.
Imagine if students
were immersed in a creative personalised culture at school rather than the increasingly
standardised experience we have today?
Mastery’, Greene
writes, ‘is not a question of genetics or luck, but by following your natural
inclinations and the deep desire that stirs from within. Everyone has such
inclinations…something (that) marked you from birth as unique.’
Imagine if schools were
premised on the need to develop the gifts and talents of all learners.
‘Dewey’s point is clear even if the writing is dense:
so-called analysis of things into bits for the purpose of learning the whole
has no basis in cognitive psychology or epistemology. Indeed, as he says just
after, it is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Distinctions are made
when we need them in the service of understanding. Learning an endless array of
distinctions and their names prior to encountering the whole and interesting
problems that require analysis yields no meaning and merely verbal knowledge.’
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