Neuroscience and Creativity

"In order to think creatively, you must develop new neural pathways and break out of the cycle of experience-dependent categorization. As Mark Twain said, 'Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.' For most people, this does not come naturally. Often, the harder you try to think differently, the more rigid the categories become." -- GREGORY BERNS

I am currently enrolled in another MOOC which is exploring Innovation. After discussing Individual constraints to innovation, the professor included a link to an article from the Fast Company on what neuroscience reveals about creativity. (http://www.fastcompany.com/1007044/neuroscience-sheds-new-light-creativity)

The take away from the article is people will always see the familiar and always solve a problem the same way unless their brains are put into a situation that is novel. Our brains are lazy. Once they solve a problem the same way a few times, they soon make a routine that short cuts any new thinking and simply inserts the same answer. They stop seeing the differences in new situations and reduce the world to iconography.

Welcome to the world of the Common Core standards! Teachers are flipping out about the change that is coming. We can't possibly think about changing how we do school because the common core is coming! And the hilarious thing is people are all saying, "I used to do this years ago. We're just going back to what we did before." Really? Reach back into our brains and find the same solutions we had in the past and presto! No thinking required.

While I don't personally find the Common Core to be all that revolutionary, the shift is creating space in which to have conversations and change the way we do school. If we are smart about this, we will use this opportunity to challenge what we have been doing in education and radically change to meet the needs of 21st century children. Which will require more change than the Common Core calls for.

It will require us to get uncomfortable and put our brains in novel situations in order to generate new ideas. We have to get out of the herding mentality and quit using old solutions over and over again.

We have to pay attention to what is happening. Be present. Be aware. This is a very difficult thing for us to do because our brains have a tendency to be lazy. The following video illustrates just how inattentive our brains can be!

And an even longer example of change blindness from Dateline NBC.