Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Element Book Review for JJL - Presentation Transcript
Added discussions
by
R. L. Fielding
The Element By Ken Robinson, Ph.D. This book is not just about passion & creativity, but also about diversity & discovery. Joyful Jubilant Learning A Love Affair With Books Book review by Angela Maiers

The Element is the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.

Discussion

1. Everyone is born with tremendous capacities for creativity.
Discussion
This discussion takes place between Robert Leslie Fielding and Beryl Fielding. It is purely hypothetical. Nevertheless, it is an attempt to make sense of the statement above – that everyone is born with tremendous capacities for creativity.

Robert Leslie Fielding: We know that the human brain is not constructed as a set of compartments, each one separate from the other, but rather that all are interconnected. From birth, the baby surely uses every part of its brain to make some sense of the new world it finds itself in.

Beryl Fielding: You could say that a person’s education starts the instant he or she leaves the womb. The baby knows no language, knows nothing of our civilization and its various conventions. The newly born child is forced to use the various means at its disposal to learn.

RLF: Yes, one might say that the newly born child represents a human being at its most creative stage in life. As the child learns to speak, by a process of imitation and language acquisition, something in that child is made redundant, or at least relatively redundant. Being able to find out information by asking a question and receiving a reply, rather than deducing by other means, whatever those means are, will mean that those faculties that are used less now that the child has language, will grow idle – will not be used, and as such will, through lack of use, lose something of their abilities to aid the child in its quest for information.

BF: That is surely right, but since we are not able to ask a baby anything without language, how are we to determine that what we have both said is true? Thinking of that order comes much, much later in the child’s life.

RLF: All we can do is try to deduce what happens in a child’s life at those early stages.

BF: That is not quite true. There are experts in fields that deal with how a child finds its way to understanding the things it sees, touches, hears, feels, smells and tastes. That bundle of senses must convey something to the child, and obviously that child must use the input from its senses to make some sort of sense of the world around it.

RLF: Yes, I think that must be so. Now, would you say that Nature provides the means by which that happens?

BF: Of course. The child learns, and in doing so must use what means it has to learn. One cannot imagine that a child has to wait until it learns the word ‘mother’ – meaning provider of food and warmth, and love, to know that the person giving it sustenance, and providing warmth and giving it love and attention is the one to whom the child looks for all those, even though it cannot know what a mother is.

RLF: I see what you mean. The child displays pleasure when it sees its mother – she smiles and the baby smiles – that smile is an act of creativity since a smile needs a stimulus – it may be that smiling is an act of imitation, but something in the baby’s mind triggers the smile – and in that sense smiling is an original act.

BF: And since any original act represents creativity, then the child is being creative when it first smiles.

RLF: Yes, that seems reasonable. So, in fact, any response the child makes is creative, since there must be a first time for every type of response.

BF: Even when a child cries when in some discomfort? Is that an act of creativity?

RLF: It is an act that occurs, we must think, almost without thinking. Babies cry for all sorts of reasons, don’t they?

BF: They most certainly do.

RLF: And there must be a first time for everything, don’t you think?

BF: Of course.

RLF: Then I wonder if a baby cries, not just because she is hungry, for example, but when some need is felt that is not satisfied.

BF: I am sure you are right.

RLF: Then if a child cries for a variety of reasons, might it not be true that the child is using that means to convey to her mother that she is in need of something – that she is in some kind of distress.

BF: Yes, I think so.

RLF: Then is the baby not being creative in her use of crying to get something – since, as we have agreed, there must have been a first time – a first time the baby was hungry, thirsty, too hot or too cold, or in some other need which made the baby cry to attract her mother’s attention.

BF: Yes, I see where you are going with this – since the child’s needs may come from a variety of sources, from the senses, primarily, then when the child cries, she is doing so because her brain is telling her something is not right.

RLF: Yes, and since each sense is controlled by a different part of the brain, it follows that when she cries, she is using that part of the brain automatically to induce tears.

BF: That means that she is using all of her brain, at least the different parts that control the senses to make her tears fall.

RLF: And if she does that, she is clearly demonstrating her ability to use different parts of her brain to bring about that same behavior – crying.

BF: Well done. That is a beginning – a start in trying to help us to understand where creativity comes from and what it is.

Robert L. Fielding

2. When they are very young, kids aren't particularly worried about being wrong.
Discussion

RLF: Children learn much faster than we think – much faster and much more – and they learn things we never really intend them to learn. They learn how to stay out of trouble – a useful skill to know – though it would be far better if we were clearer about the parameters we should set – should but often do not.

BF: I think you are right. When you were growing up, Robert, me and your father tried to let you know what we didn’t approve of and why we didn't.

RLF: I know that, but you’ll have to remind me – I was just a kid then – remember.

BF: We did it by surrounding you with our attention and our love.

RLF: But that sounds like smothering a kid.

BF: It does, but it wasn’t done like that. We both took an interest in what you and your sister were doing – and we never gave up on you. Sometimes you tried our patience, but we never let our attention or our love for you slip.

RLF: Yes, I remember – or rather I don’t ever remember any time when you weren’t interested in us. It came over as never being able to get away with anything bad – and sometimes we didn’t like it – which kid does – kids want their own way, but I think giving in to them is spoiling them – in ways that are not often realized.

BF: What do you mean?

RLF: Well, when we were little, we saw that our friends were allowed to do things that we weren’t. Some of our pals could stay out until late, when we had to be in the house before 7.30pm – that hurt and annoyed me, I remember, but now, years later, I think about kids roaming the wet, cold, windy streets late in the evening and I think of kids having supper, talking about their day to their parents and their siblings, and going to a warm bed, and sleeping the second their heads hit the pillow. That’s the kind of things I have always been thankful for, though perhaps I didn’t know it or was fully aware of the reasoning behind it.

BF: Being a parent is a huge responsibility, and children often know instinctively when their parents are passing the buck.

RLF: Good, now let’s get back to the topic. When they are very young, kids aren't particularly worried about being wrong. Why do you think that is true, if you agree with it?

BF: For the simple reason that if children are brought up in the ways we have just described, knowing the difference between right and wrong, living within those parameters we talked about, then being wrong in other ways – is part of growing up. We expect our children to be wrong – most of the time – we allow it, forgive it, probably hopefully encourage it.

RLF: Encourage it! Why?

BF: Because that’s what we did when we were that age. We didn’t know everything, though at times we thought we did, just as kids do now. We said things that were wrong – wrong, not in a moral sense of the word, but wrong in a sort of logical sense.

You were always trying to tell us jokes when you were little, and some were funny – the ones you got right, and some weren’t so funny – the ones you tried to make up yourself. Do you remember?

RLF: Not really.

BF: Well, you’d hear something funny and then you’d try to say something equally funny, except you were too young then to know why a joke was funny, so some of your jokes came out wrong – and that was funny too.

RLF: And I still tried telling jokes even though I couldn’t easily get the hang of it?

BF: That’s right, and that’s what I mean; children shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes – they should be encouraged not to be afraid, or at least not punished for making mistakes – not those kinds of mistakes. The way I see it, many parents don’t want their kids to take their attention away from TV or gossip or something. Children need attention, and they need space and room to make mistakes and learn from them – which they will do. Don’t smother children or wrap them up in cotton wool – kids need roots but they also need wings too.

RLF: That is certainly right. I think we’ve moved that debate on a little.

BF: Yes, I think so too. I also think that the purpose of these discussions is to get readers to come up with their own opinions and thoughts. Maybe they’ll get things wrong – but getting things wrong – and then learning from them is much better than not getting them at all.
Robert Leslie Fielding


3. We are all born with tremendous natural capacities and we lose touch with many of them as we this world.
Discussion

RLF: As Ken Robinson and others have said, we are educated out of our creativity, and for a very good reason.

BF: What is that?

RLF: General education was constructed, first in the 1800s in England, not just out of a desire to lift people out of the gutter, although that was probably a large part of the rationale, particularly by liberal minded leaders, but also to train people to become part of a workforce.

BF: A workforce for who – where?

RLF: As the industrial revolution took hold in England, the nature of work began to change – not just the methods, but the organization of work and working people’s lives.

BF: To what purpose?

RLF: To accommodate the dictates of mercantilism in general and the factory system in particular. As factories sprang up, the first ones belonging to men like Richard Arkwright and others, it was seen that workers would have to be both literate and numerate – machines demanded it, and the factories also required people to need to work.

BF: Oh, I see. Gone were the days of just working long enough to fill one’s bowl, and then laying down one’s tools to play.

RLF: Exactly. What use would factory owners have for workers who only appeared as and when they felt the need. Those workers were required – needed to man those machines that ran day and night, week in week out right round the year.

BF: I suppose that people like Arkwright, having invested heavily in his mills, would need to see immediate and steady returns on his investment.

RLF: Yes, and that would mean having men, women and children controlled, not by an army carrying weapons, which would have been far too costly and counter-productive in any case, but controlled rather more effectively by their being the authors of their own control.

BF: So even then, people were encouraged to want things to be better than they had been.

RLF: Yes, and we call that progress – to want and want – it’s the engine of economic growth.

BF: Which is killing the Earth.

RLF: Yes, but possibly more of that later. Once you educate a people, their tastes change – some become what we term more sophisticated, and so we get the rise of the arts, literature and music, while those that do not want those things want only food and drink and creature comforts to keep them satisfied.

BF: But of course, that doesn’t work either, and so people turn to drink – the curse of the working classes, as it came to be known.

RLF: So let’s move on to the type of things that were required to be taught to schoolchildren, dictated by those people paying for this universal education – the mill owners and the like.

BF: What would that be?

RLF: Have we not said earlier: numeracy and literacy first and foremost.
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BF: But what of a child’s love for things other than numbers and letters, what of them?

RLF: They would be left out – and people – parents - could easily be made to see that it was in their children’s interests to only learn those skills that would ensure they got paid employment when they left school.

BF: So the mill got its workforce.

RLF: Workers – machine hands – labourers to pull and push, scribes to write out bills of sale and invoices, mathematicians to count and tally what had been made and the time taken to make it.

BF: But the children whose talents were artistic in nature, what of them?

RLF: Nothing – they would become unemployable at best, at worst, any talent they possessed would be drained from them, even beaten out of them until they conformed to the desires and dictates of the mill owners.

To return to the original topic; we do not lose our talents, we are educated out of them. The educational agenda is a hidden one – not very well hidden, I grant you. The unfortunate thing is that it has never changed – from that day to this.

BF: Oh, come on. People can study almost anything if they want to these days, can’t they?

RLF: They can, but by and large they have really got to want to study art to go further with it. The top tiers of all the educational systems of the world are taken by literacy and numeracy.

BF: But that is surely because they are the most important, isn’t it?

RLF: You see, it is impossible to see the way the world organized in any other way than the one organized to benefit people with money – mill owners – bosses.

BF: But what could we do with millions of artists – musicians – painters – sculptors – dancers?

RLF: That’s not the way the world turns, and most likely that’s not the way most of us would wish it to turn.

BF: What then?

RLF: If people were encouraged – taught – to think in different ways – to see the world and all its problems in a different light – to be creative thinkers – bringing to mind more than just one way of thinking to a problem. If education promoted that way of looking – that world of thinking, you would find the world peopled by a happier, more fulfilled population than is the case today.

BF: And would we still get people to fill those positions that involved hard toil?

RLF: If our needs were fewer, in terms of things like material acquisition, then there would be less need for people to work at jobs in which little or no fulfillment could be found.

BF: That sounds like Utopianism to me.

RLF: Maybe it is, but the challenge is to make it work – to bring it about – to save us and our planet from total destruction, which is the way we are heading at the moment, under your present way of educating people and using them without much thought for tomorrow, or for the young people who will walk the Earth after we have gone.
Robert L. Fielding


4. Being in the Element & especially \"in the zone\" doesn't take energy away from you; it gives it to you!

Discussion

RLF: You know, whenever I sit down and start to write – when I get involved in what I am writing – which happens every time I write anything except short email messages – when I write longer pieces about a topic I am interested in and know something about, I find myself in a sort of out-of-body-experience – I know how corny that must sound, but it’s true.

BF: What do you mean? What does it feel like?

RLF: It feels like I am being taken over by the words in my head. I feel invigorated and energized, and I feel intense happiness and joy.

BF: How do you feel after you have finished writing?

RLF: That feeling eventually wears off, but it always leaves me feeling better about life than before I sat down to write.

BF: And do you feel like that each time you write something?

RLF: Yes, like I said, except for writing short notes – that kind of thing. Then writing is just something I need to do to get on with my life – like everybody else, but when I sit down to write something from the heart, then I get energized and feel full of life afterwards.

BF: Do you think other people feel that way when they write?

RLF: That’s difficult to say, but I’m sure that some do – perhaps many do, I don’t know. What I would say is that most probably everybody has something that makes them feel that way – whether it’s painting, singing, working through an algebraic equation – something.

BF: Then why don’t we hear more about it?

RLF: Because it’s an intensely personal moment, which most people think is so personal that it won’t mean anything to someone else if they tell them about it.

BF: And why do you think everybody has something that makes them feel that way – feel energized?

RLF: Why wouldn’t they have something like my writing – I’m nobody special – I haven’t got an extraordinary high I.Q – I’m just an ordinary person, so why shouldn’t we all have something that gives us great joy?

BF: I don’t know. Maybe we do have something but just don’t have the time to exercise it.

RLF: Or, more likely we weren’t ever encouraged when we were kids. I was always encouraged to write when I was a child – at school, by my teachers at Friezland Primary School, and at home, by you and Dad.

BF: Yes, you’re right, we did encourage you, but you really didn’t need much encouragement – you were always writing something, weren’t you?

RLF: Yes, I was, and I still am, but my point here is that unless children are encouraged as well as given the opportunity – as long as children are not derided by anyone for wanting to do something maybe a little out of the ordinary, they will find something they are good at and do it and get joy and energy from doing it.

BF: Do you remember that wonderful film, ‘Billy Elliot’? It was the story of a boy who found out, almost by accident, that he liked to dance and so he took up ballet dancing classes in secret. When his family found out – his father and his elder brother fairly skinned him alive and tried to make him stop dancing.

RLF: Yes, I remember – then his father came round to thinking that he should be given the chance to continue.

BF: Then he got a place at a top ballet dancing school in London, and went on to star in world famous productions of things like Swan Lake.

RLF: Billy was clearly affected when he danced – do you remember; when he was asked what it felt like when he danced, he said that he seemed to lose his body, to feel like electricity was coursing through him – that’s when the panel gave him the chance to become a student of dance at their prestigious school – that is when they realized that he had a gift, as we say, a talent for dancing.

BF: Can you identify with Billy?

RLF: Absolutely. I don’t say I feel electricity when I write, but I feel something – the words are piling up in my head, ready to come out onto the page in front of me. Thoughts are being formed, I think, as I write. I write down one idea and the next rushes into my head to be written down.

At times, when I really get going, I almost feel that it isn’t me writing. I feel as though I’m sort of taken over by the words, by the thoughts as they tumble gaily out onto the page.

BF: Have you always felt that way?

RLF: Pretty much, yes. I feel it more now because I write more, and because I use a computer rather than a pen, it seems to come easier.

BF: Why do you think that is?

RLF: Because writing with a pen and paper hurts my fingers these days. I’m getting a bit older and stiffer in my bones, so writing using a pen is something I rarely do.

Using my laptop, on the other hand, is much more comfortable, so I can concentrate on what I am writing rather than the pains in my fingers. I can sit down and type 3,000 words or more at one sitting. All I need is some water to drink and a bit of music to listen to, although the music isn’t absolutely vital.

BF: So, you think that most people have something they can get incredible pleasure from, but that many don’t know what it is, or else have lost it over time?

RLF: Yes, I do. I think that we should encourage our children in whatever they do that is creative, even if we have no particular interest in it.

BF: And probably more importantly, we should encourage them to do things even if we think there is no chance of them ever earning a living by it.

RLF: That is our test as adults – yes! Do you remember me coming home from Saddleworth School one day, full of my teacher’s praise for something I had written in class, only for it to be dismissed by Dad as not meaning anything really.

BF: No, I don’t recall that, and I don’t think your father does either.

RLF: But I still remember it vividly. I was devastated, utterly disappointed – and it has never left me.

BF: I’m sure he didn’t mean it.

RLF: Oh, don’t worry, I’ve forgiven him for it, but I have used that to spur me on to do more from that day to this. I had this sort of intuitive feeling, even then, when I was about 14 years old, that writing was in me – that it was what I wanted to do, and now, 40 years later, I’m still writing –almost every day – and publishing it too – on the internet, in my blogs and on my website.

BF: And you teach people to write too, don’t you? Don’t forget that.

RLF: I won’t. My life is writing, it has become my life and everybody should at least be made to know this; that there is something in you that is essentially you – who you are and what you are, and you should go for it no matter what – don’t worry about not making a living at it – if you keep at it, you will, but, more importantly when you find the thing that you have a talent for, it will transform your life and enrich your experience of life too
Robert L. Fielding.


5. . Too many people never connect with their true talents
Discussion

RLF: Do you think that is true; that too many people never connect with their true talents?

BF: I would say most people never connect with their true talents, or at least if they ever connected with something they were amazingly good at, they were quickly shuffled away, unless that talent happened to be something we might call ‘regular’.

RLF: By ‘regular’, do you mean something like mathematics or English?

BF: Yes, something that looked like it might come in useful when their turn came to find paid employment.

RLF: So, for instance, my pal, who could play the violin before he was eight, never got the chance to develop his talent.

BF: Why was that?

RLF: Because, he told me, his father forbade him to play the thing – stopped him there and then.

BF: But why – why would anyone stop their son from playing the violin?

RLF: Well, first of all, you have to remember that this happened in the 1950s – the boy came from a working class family in Manchester – the boy’s father was a working man – a not well educated one, therefore, but a decent person, nevertheless.

BF: But why did he forbid his son from playing the violin?

RLF: For two reasons, my friend said: first, he didn’t think playing the violin was anything a normal boy should be doing – it wasn’t a thing that boys did back then – it wasn’t regarded as normal – normal for a male, I think; and the second reason was that my pal’s Dad didn’t think playing the violin would help him get a job. He most probably thought it would actually hinder him, rather than help him. And so he told him to stop playing the instrument.

BF: And did he stop playing?

RLF: He has never played it since. As time went by, he said he sort of grew out of wanting to play anything – understandably.

BF: Understandably, but somewhat tragically, don’t you think?

RLF: Absolutely. And I think many children who display talents that are slightly unusual, or don’t fit with the norms and conventions of the culture within which the child is being brought up, not only do not get any encouragement, but, like my friend, actually get actively discouraged from developing that talent.

BF: That is just such a shame, isn’t it?

RLF: It certainly is, but it probably still goes on today, at certain levels and with certain classes of people, if I may use that somewhat old-fashioned term.

BF: Then Sir Ken Robinson was right when he said that we actually squander our children’s talents, quite ruthlessly.

RLF: Yes, unfortunately for the world and everyone in it, I think we do.
Robert Leslie Fielding


6. Instead of asking \"How Intelligent Are You?” We should be asking … \"How Are You Intelligent?\"
Discussion


7. One of the surest paths for finding the Element is to understand the intimate relationship between creativity & intelligence.
Discussion

8. The Element describes a place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together.
Discussion


9. The Element is about discovering yourself, and you can't do this if you're trapped in a compulsion to conform.
Discussion

10. Creativity is a step beyond imagination because it requires actually doing something rather than lie around thinking about it.
Discussion


11. The Sequence of the Element: •I Get It •I Love It •I Want It •Where Is It?
Discussion

12. Perhaps the most important attitude for cultivating good fortune is a strong sense of perseverance. perseverance
Discussion


13. Connecting with people who share the same passions affirms that you're not alone
Discussion

14. We get multiple opportunities for new growth & development, & multiple opportunities to revitalize latent capacities.
Discussion


15. Our best hope for the future is to develop a new paradigm of human capacity to meet a new era of human existence.
Discussion

16. And when you find something you’re passionate about… it no longer becomes work!
Discussion
Robert L. Fielding

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