The Operating Instructions: Imagination and Intelligence
As an English teacher, I believe one of the most important things that we teach our students is how to hone their imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin states, “Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making. It is not a weapon, though all weapons originate from it, and their use, or non-use, depends on it, as with all tools and their uses.” We constantly tell our students that we are looking for creativity, but the market has taken that word and mutilated it, only using it to say “we need new ways to make money.”
That is not what we are looking for from our students. What we want from our students is an insight into their minds. What do they imagine? What do they want? What do they hope for? By helping guide them and rebuild the imagination that they may have lost in this profit and grade driven world, we help them relearn themselves, and in doing so, build a stronger and more open community and society.
Thinking back to my education and imagination, I found Alexander Chee and I had a similar experience. Chee confessed, “I was a last-semester senior, an English major who had failed at being a studio art major and thus became an English major by default.” I, too, felt like a failure when I realized that I could not sculpt.
It did not matter that my drawing and painting skills are good because if I could not sculpt then how could I teach it? How could I help my students in something that I fail at? It was at this point when I realized that writing essays was something I was consistently good at. Chee discussed how he had writing accomplishments and that he forgot about them and considered them “accidents.” This was something that I realized I do constantly.
Linda Christensen states that “just because students lack skills doesn’t mean they lack intelligence.” Thinking back to my art days, I could use this quote to remind myself that lacking a skill in sculpture did not mean that I was not an artist overall. This lesson is something that I will hold close in my own classroom.
After all, we all come from different backgrounds, educations, and experiences, so we all have something important and unique to bring to the table.
I appreciated Le Guin's piece, and I do agree that not only do we as educators crave to know the inner machinations of our students' minds, it is our duty to cultivate imaginary practices. In our modern political climate I do believe capitalism has poisoned the notion of creativity to make it synonymous with profit, but I believe that the end goal, as you wrote, is to create a better community. Another issue with capitalism in creativity is that it can set up a lack of confidence in people: if my creative work does not grant me profit, I am a failure. This theme is echoed by Chee, who is plagued by self-doubt and ascribing his success as "accidents." I've thought the same way about my work--that anything """good""" I've produced is an accident; it was the right amount of coffee, the right time of day, or the glass of wine that is my companion when I write late at night. But by remaining enthusiastic and continuously writing and honing one's craft, one can discover both the intrinsic value of the craft and the joy it can bring. I think with students, blogging will be a great way to do this because they would be submitting their work to an audience of peers, and that criticism and feedback can improve one's writing and relationship with writing.
ReplyDeleteYour breakdown and analysis of the quote from LeGuin is very eyeopening. I constantly am telling students to be creative, but you make a great point that we need to encourage that creativity by asking questions to spark further interest. I can think of an applicable example for myself. I work at a PreSchool and whenever the students draw a picture, I ask them to tell me everything that they can about it. It usually lends them to telling me an entire story with characters and places that are not even in the picture. I then go on to tell them to add more to their drawings which they happily do so. With drawing being similar to an early stage of writing, I think that these questions are pivotal to inspiring creative minds and encouraging students to think deeper.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your use of quotes from the reading to express your own opinions and identity! I appreciate that you shared how you may have felt like not being able to sculpt or draw would make you a poor art teacher. However, sometimes it is the things we struggle the most with to succeed at that can make you a strong teacher. It gives you a way to relate to the students that are struggling themselves and can help open up different perspectives for you to teach from! You can use what you may consider failures to help better aid you as a teacher. Also keep in mind that the things you write can also make you an artist in a different sense of the word, so while you may have changed your concentration, your work can still be considered art.
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