Category: Education

My job is to kill creativity

University professors… are curious forms of life. …They think of their bodies as transport for their heads.

We educate children only from the waist up, focusing on their brain, and that too, only one side of it.

Jillian isn’t sick: She’s a dancer.

If all insects were to disappear from the planet, life on Earth would vanish in 50 years. If all humans were to disappear from the planet, all forms of life would flourish.

These are a few quotes that stood out to me in this brilliant TED talk about education, given by Sir Ken Robinson. If you’re an educator, you owe it to yourself and your students to spend 15 minutes to watch it:

Hello, my name is Mihaela. My job IS to kill creativity.

Here’s how I try to try not to:

I’m very, very cautious, I try to treat it like a fragile and precious rare flower.:

  • I try, as much as I can, knowing I will always fail, to remove fear out of the classroom. But I still have to give grades, so it’s impossible to do away with fear. If you read my blog before, you know fear in education is one important theme on PR Connections.
  • I try to encourage students. I ask them to give themselves a break, not be harsh on themselves. I compliment them a lot. Yesterday I taught strategy. I asked students to create strategies for some case studies. They were hesitant to share, afraid they were wrong. I kept telling them it’s the first ever time they’re doing it, and they only had 20 seconds to think about it. It’s OK if your strategies suck. Guess what, they didn’t. But how many times do we grade students on their first attempt at something? 90%, I’m guessing.
  • I remove students, as much as possible, from modes of writing (research papers) that have conditioned their minds to be numb. I ask them to email or blog assignments instead of writing APA style papers. I ask them to create videos, dance, or perform, their final project. I will be (and I am) a persona non grata in my department for stating this publicly (we live for APA papers, and we do exactly what Sir Ken Robinson says: try to make them all university professors).

But here’s what I think: If you change the medium, you change the way they think. Ask them to write in a new medium, one that they haven’t been conditioned to fear and be constipated about and write like a mindless robot (see Richard Landham on the need to un-teach students how to write) – and guess what: Students’ writing comes to life, you all of a sudden see ideas, thoughtfulness, soul!But many times they choose to write APA style papers. Because it’s too late, because they’re scared to do otherwise, because they can’t think of anything else. So sad.

So, if you’re a teacher or a professor, what do you do to (not) kill creativity?

If you’re a subject of education (and we all were students at some point), teach me: What can I do to protect your creativity, or maybe even encourage it to grow?

[Found video via PROpenMic, thanks to Paul Loop. This post is inspired by the comments I posted on Paul’s post.]

Profs on twitter

I just thought of creating a list of academics with twitter accounts, so, if you are one and would like to be on the list, post a comment here including your twitter user name and your area (i.e.: Communication, Public Relations) as well as any other information you’d like to list.

Here, I’ll start:

@prprof_mv
Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu
Communication Studies: Public Relations, Emerging communication technologies
Clemson University, Department of Communication Studies
http://www.prconnections.net
http://prprofmv.wordpress.com

I’ll disseminate the list on PROpenMic and here.

WHY? So we can learn together about twitter in higher education.

[update: Barbara Nixon has already started a list of PR profs on twitter. Might as well put your name in both places if you teach PR. This list is for all subjects, from PR & Communication to… Mechanical Engineering.]

WHY do we have to learn this…?!

…is the question many students ask themselves and few professors answer (well).

Via Kaye Sweetser’s blog, this NYU student asks the same, and more.

I’m posting below my comment on Kaye’s blog, which turned out to be long enough for a post:

I’m a bit late to this conversation, but can’t help but jump in.

The critical theorist in me is happy this is happening. Alana’s post is an example of tearing down the Golden Wall I wrote about some time back. It’s good that students have a voice. Education is by definition a power imbalance, where students pay to subject themselves to our authority and power. In theory, I say, bring it on!

The professor in me smiles a sad smile: I was once (not very long ago) young and arrogant and thought I knew it all. I hated classes that didn’t teach me real skills for the real world.

It took me years to get over myself and understand that the best classes are not the ones that teach me skills that will be dated in 2-3 years (though you need those, too, to get a job next year) but those that teach me how to think.

Here’s critical theory again: Students expect us to train them to be good employees, servants to the Corporation. They’re lost and disappointed when we teach them how to be free thinkers, free people. That’s called hegemony, I think.

A recent opinion article at Clemson ranked liberal arts courses as the worst, most useless ones. How sadly misguided. [Really, WHY should we have to learn about hegemony?! What a “useless” concept, right?]

Where we profs fail is that we don’t help students understand WHY we do what we do and how it WILL be more useful than teaching button-pushing.

As a prof, I try to teach students not only twitter, but also skills that will be relevant 10-20 years later. They can’t appreciate that now. They need help. They’re too young to think in that time frame. So I take time to explain.

See also my comment on Alana’s post.

[Update, 9/19/2008] Interesting development of NYU story: Professor attempts to ban students from blogging & twittering about class (from MediaShift, via Simon Owens. Excellent blogger relations, Mr. Owens!)

I’m afraid neither party is approaching this problem productively. Both Alana and prof. Quigley have a lot to learn from each other. If they could get over their fears (of each other, of old stuff, of new stuff, of having their egos threatened) and cooperate, the story would have a much happier ending.

This is the comment I posted on the follow-up story [cross-posted]:

This is what I see the big picture of this story to be:

Blogging (and much of social media) bring more transparency, empower the “masses” and threaten authority by bringing down the Golden Wall.

This is happening a lot in business. It’s scary for corporations, and empowering for consumers.

Why shouldn’t it also happen in education?

I am a college prof., I require students to blog and am planning to teach them to live-twitter the class next week.

Yes, I know it’s scary – for me. For the old idea of the “powerful, know-it-all” professor who taught critical thinking and thought it was OK as long as s/he wasn’t the subject of criticism.

I sometimes teach my students critical theory by exposing my own power & authority practices in the classroom.

The world has changed. The education model we use is the same as hundreds of years ago: The professor is the “master.”

Enough is enough. We don’t have to be masters and servants. We can help each other and learn together.

Alana and prof. Quigley have a lot to learn from each other. Why don’t they?

Week’s best, Sept 1-5

[cross-posted from my PRinciples course blog]

Week’s best from Clemson PR students (and one instructor). Make sure to read these posts & learn from them:

The way we are

Wired man

This is an old NY Times article (ancient, in Internet time) but I think it does a scary job of describing many of us super-connected,

multitasking “speed demons:”

These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. — online compulsive disorder.

[…]

Pseudo-ADD: They become frustrated with long-term projects, thrive on the stress of constant fixes of information, and physically crave the bursts of stimulation from checking e-mail or voice mail or answering the phone.

[…]

”It’s like a dopamine squirt to be connected,” said Dr. Ratey, who compares the sensations created by constantly being wired to those of narcotics — a hit of pleasure, stimulation and escape. ”It takes the same pathway as our drugs of abuse and pleasure.”

[…]

”It’s an addiction,” he said, adding that some people cannot deal with down time or quiet moments. ”Without it, we are in withdrawal.”

”Ten years ago, you had to be in the office 12 hours,” said Mr. Mehlman, who said he now spent 10 hours a day at work, giving him more time with his wife and three children, while also making use of his wireless-enabled laptop, BlackBerry and mobile phone.

Do you see the irony? He doesn’t work 12 hours, he works “only” 10, that’s so much more time with his family!

On playing with his son (dogfight with Lego airplanes):

Both love the game, and it has an added benefit for Dad: he can play with one hand while using the other to talk on the phone or check e-mail. […] ”While he rebuilds his plane, I check my e-mail on the BlackBerry,” Mr. Mehlman explained.

Children want and need their parents’ full & undivided attention. I feel so sad for this kid.

But honestly, does this article describe you? I know it does me. I have the urge to check email and twitter at every stop light. I get bored and need some input during that “down time.”

How do you manage your attention? Do you ever give the most precious gift – your full and undivided attention to something or someone? Care to share?

When I teach my students social media, am I contributing to creating an addiction?  Do I also have the responsibility to teach them how to manage their attention? How do I do that? How do you do that?

[image credit: Wired Man, by flickr user Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com]

[Update, 12:33 pm: Should have mentioned that This NYT article was referred to in a Zencast podcast, podcast #170 on Learning to Listen deeply. Also on iTunes.]