Many of us are now familiar with the concept behind Carol Dweck’s growth mindset
and the power of “yet.” We have repeatedly preached to the young people in our classes that they shouldn’t be afraid to fail or to make mistakes and that the value is in the process and not the product. These are all important concepts for our young people to understand if they are to grow as learners. However, I believe we are leaving out another important and very powerful piece of a growth mindset if we do not also include the proliferation of options in the conversation.
The rapid increase (proliferation of options) to which I am referring is the ability to
come up with a number of different alternatives for a given situation or problem. Too often in schools we inadvertently cull a young person’s thinking when we accept the first idea they provide and we do not encourage them to provide an alternative. By not encouraging young people to think deeper and come up with multiple options we send the message that it is about the product rather than the process. Leonardo da Vinci would persistently distrust his first solution to any problem-suspicious that it was the result of overlearned routine- and dig around for something better. (Gelb, 2000) We should encourage this same approach in our own classrooms. “It’s a good habit not to commit to the first solution” (Brandt & Eagleman, 2017,p.184) and important to remember that “innovation requires a number of dead ends” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.160). It is the thought of these dead ends that often paralyze some of our young people when trying to get started on a problem. In order to help our young people to get past this road block and to nurture their ability to promote a proliferation of options or ideas, we need to help them to bend, break, or blend what they already know.
In their book titled The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the
World, Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman explain, “Human creativity does not emerge from a vacuum. We draw on our experience and the raw materials around us to refashion the world” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.38). We can refashion what we know by
Bending
This is taking what you know and changing it in one way or another to see it in a different
light. A caricature is one simple way of explaining how bending might look. For example, President Obama’s caricature has big ears while President Trump’s has big hair. The artists take something we know and exaggerate or bend it to provide a different perspective. However, bending is not limited to art. It can be applied to math, science, writing, or any idea in general.
Breaking
This concept is taking something whole, breaking it apart, and then putting it together in a different way. Art, again, would be a good way to “see” breaking take place (think Picasso). However, this can be applied to anything including technology. Modern cell phone communication was developed from trying to overcome the challenges of transmitting multiple calls. Early on, mobile communication worked like radio in which one frequency was produced from a single tower over a wide area. As you might guess, this limited the number of frequencies and therefore the number of cell phones that could be used at once. The solution was to break apart the large area that one tower provided and instead use many towers with smaller areas. “The great advantage of this system was that it enabled the same broadcast frequency to be reused in different neighborhoods, so more people could be on their phones at the same time” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.77). They literally broke the whole and put it together differently to create something new. In this case, it was our modern cell phone communication system..
Blending
“In blending, the brain combines two or more sources in novel ways” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.91). Genetically modified foods come to mind here with DNA from various organisms being blended to create a new organism. We often are also entertained by blending ideas such as the past and present blending together in the movie Back to the Future. Some of the more creative or thought provoking ideas come from just thinking how two or more ideas could be combined in a new way. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was developed in such a manner.
The point here is that we, as educators, have the opportunity to nurture our young people’s creative roots through bending, breaking, and blending. However, if we are not careful we can stifle that same creativity by insisting on one solution or not insisting on a proliferation of options from our young people. If we want to continue to promote a growth mindset in our young people, we must remember it goes deeper than not being afraid to fail. It is promoting the expectation to fail through a proliferation of options, many of which will fail, but some of which will be creative, innovative, and perhaps even profound.
References
Brandt, Anthony & Eagleman, David. (2017). The Runaway Species: How Human
Creativity Remakes the World. New York, NY. Catapult
Gelb, Michael J. (2000). How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci. New York, NY. Dell
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