Do you think we take toys seriously enough?
Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, points out that artists regularly need to get themselves toys. Creativity can be sparked by a new paint brush; a red coffee cup to drink out of; an especially creamy, thick pad of writing paper. It seems indulgent, and maybe it is.
But when we spend so much time typing things on machines and looking at screens that shape shift into editing rooms, chat rooms, dark rooms and light rooms, it’s nice to own something dependable.
I like a #1 grade soft pencil that lays down a thick blur, and a fountain pen that makes me write more slowly than I can think. I like a small pocket slate to write down scenes and show them to the camera before we roll.
My old friend Frank R. Wilson is working on an eBook version of his book, The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture. Frank explains brilliantly how using our hands is a primary way we acquire language and become creative, and the information transmitted by the hands to the brain has contributed mightily to the development of human intelligence. Recently, Matthew Crawford has looked at how working with your hands tends to generate happiness and satisfaction. Elliot Washor, co-founder of Big Picture Learning, has written:
What do Legos, Etch-A-Sketch, the balloons in balloons you get at the zoo, and dare I say, The Shrinky Dink have in common? Famous scientists and inventors cited them all as the direct inspiration for their major scientific breakthroughs and discoveries. The manipulative quality and simplicity of these toys allowed scientists to feel the world and ground them in it.
We get smart in so many ways, only a few of which are measured by I.Q. tests. In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers he explains why Asian children can do addition in their heads more easily than American kids. As Gladwell has it, you ask an English-speaking kid to add 37 plus 22 in her head and she has to convert the words to numbers. Then it’s 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, and that adds up to 59. But because of the way their language is structured, an Asian child solves it this way: Add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two and the answer is five-tens-nine. “The necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence,” Gladwell writes.
Though it’s a bit of a jump to consider that I was never good at math because I didn’t learn it in Chinese, I have found that you can source creativity and intelligence in surprising ways. It’s embedded in your language. It comes from an old fountain pen or a red coffee cup.
Rhodia has a line of orange covered gridline pads. I may be only writing a mundane to-do list, but that pad makes me feel like a lofty-minded engineer designing a new society. I think I might have to get it.
An example of fractal geometry in nature
500 Words on Thursday | by Lee Schneider
I was in a room with people cheering about fractal geometry. Not a small room and not a few people — a couple hundred of them. Later, I was in another room to hear a doctor speak about female menopause and I stayed for the whole talk. Yes, the speaker covered prostate screening also and I was working, covering the event for the Huffington Post, but the speaker was that good. I looked around the room during both talks. Lots of everyday people. All ages. Hip and unhip. No Phi Beta Kappa keys in evidence, though one of the talks, the fractal geometry one, got technical as it delved into Mandelbrot Sets. There are times that I’d rather drive into oncoming traffic than try to understand what a Mandelbrot Set is, but the speaker was so good we were all on board.
It was science for the people.
The event was the I Can Do It conference in San Diego and it covered topics like integrative medicine, how to live in a state of happiness, (“Would Vermont work for that?”) and some fringy stuff, at least for me, like past life regression. (Why in their past life was everyone a king or a queen? Wasn’t anybody a garbage man in the Middle Ages?)
How do you get people to cheer for fractals? Science education is top-of-the-list for a lot of people. Educators worry that kids are turning away from careers in science. American Idol seems the shorter route to fame and fortune, and you don’t even need to know how to sing.
Elliot Washor
Elliot Washor is one of the people who’s thinking hard about how to fix this. In the US, one student drops out of school every 12 seconds. Elliot is co-founder and co-director (along with Dennis Littky) of Big Picture Learning. Big Picture has started new schools and changed existing schools. They’re willing to get their hands dirty – literally. Elliot wrote recently about a welding simulator that he thought was really cool. It empowered the operator to learn a real-world skill and some math, too. Michael B. Crawford, author of “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” has written compellingly about how people who work with their hands might be happier than people who push ideas around on computer screens.
Dr. Bruce Lipton
If you take the body out of learning – well, it’s just a lot less interesting to learn things. Why not keep it in? Include the tactile and physical part of learning and learning stays relevant. Why did those speakers I heard have people cheering? The answer is also about the body. The speakers were Dr. Bruce Lipton and Dr. Christiane Northrup, and they both had everyone’s attention for one reason. They were giving us vital information about our wellness, and everybody’s interested in that kind of science.
Science for the people reaches out to include persons of every age and gender. I might even go to another menopause talk if Dr. Northrup is speaking.
Dr. Christiane Northrup
