Living With Live Wires

Adults and children should collaborate to identify and encourage any creative aspects of ideas that are presented. When suggested ideas don’t seem to have much value, teachers should suggest new approaches, preferably ones that incorporate at least some aspects of the previous ides that seemed in themselves not to have much value.  (Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized)

Gifted children should be praised for generating ideas, regardless of whether some are silly or unrelated, while being encouraged to identify and develop their best ideas into high-quality projects.

Teachers also need to allow mistakes. Buying low and selling high carries a risk. Many ideas are unpopular simply because they are not good.

Although being successful often involves making mistakes along the way, schools are often unforgiving of mistakes. In hundreds of ways and in thousands of instances over the course of a school career, children learn that it is not alright to make mistakes. The result is that they become afraid to risk the independent and the sometimes flawed thinking that leads to creativity.

When children make mistakes, teachers should ask them to analyze and discuss the mistakes. Often, mistakes or weak ideas contain the germ of correct answers or good ideas. In Japan, teachers spend entire class periods asking children to analyze the mistakes in their mathematical thinking. For the teacher who wants to make a difference, exploring mistakes can be an opportunity for learning and growing. (Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized)

Encouraging Idea Generation and Allowing Mistakes can modulate emotional intensity and perfectionistic tendencies. It does not happen immediately, it takes time and practice. With practice, the creative culture of the classroom becomes more open and trusting, the children will respond to that culture with a willingness to take more risks.