ABSTRACT
This, as told by comedian Mark Steel in one of his ‘lectures’ for the Open University and the BBC,1 is a great example of the ‘guess what’s in the teacher’s head’ game we so often play with children, encouraged to do so by the nature of the schooling system. As we prepare them for the right or wrong ‘zero sum game’ of the exam system, we drill them in our classrooms, almost without being aware of it, in getting the ‘one right answer’, that is to say the one answer we are thinking of to the question we have asked. I know there are many teachers out there who don’t work that way, but I’ve been in too many classrooms in all sorts of schools to ignore the fact that it happens and has a pernicious effect on children’s creativity and, linked to that, their self-esteem. The game is a quick and easy way of playing the bigger game of school,
quickly sorting out those who ‘know’ from those who ‘don’t know’ and efficiently ending up with winners and losers and a set of scores in a mark book. It is a game that is replicated in most game shows, quiz shows and crossword puzzles across the world. But can we really say that the Brain of Britain is just that? Or should it be called Memory of Britain? Along with
Mastermemory? Who Has the Memory to be a Millionaire? At least Deal or No Deal makes no obfuscatory claims about the nature of its vacuousness. But, as the title of this chapter points out, nothing is more dangerous
than an idea when it’s the only idea we’ve got. If all we are skilled in and duly rewarded for is the one right answer then we seriously narrow down our creativity and significantly reduce the opportunity we have to use the tremendous power of the human brain to take amazing cognitive leaps sideways in many different directions at the same time. American psychologist J.P. Guilford2 worked in the US military during
the Second World War, looking at ways of assessing intelligence in the air force, in particular why so many trainees were not graduating. He identified eight specific cognitive abilities that were needed to successfully fly a plane and later went on to identify 180 different factors at play in determining how ‘clever’ someone is. These ranged across three ‘dimensions’ he called ‘operations’, ‘content’ and ‘product’. ‘Operations’ related to aspects such as memory and evaluation. ‘Content’ related to aspects such as visual or auditory inputs or semantic understanding. ‘Product’ related to units such as single items of knowledge or relations. So, your ability to recall visual memory about things as a police officer might do is a different sort of intelligence from your ability to, say, evaluate the implications of group behaviour as a psychologist might have to. It was Guilford’s work that really brought out the idea of ‘convergent’ and ‘divergent’ thinking, linking the latter with greater creative ability. Consider, then, the following list (that I have just made up as I typed it):
Hamster Radio Caravan
Convergent thinking would ask the question, obviously, ‘Which is the odd one out?’ Equally obviously, the answer would be ‘Caravan’ because no-one wants the owners of radios or hamsters shot. Divergent thinking would ask the question ‘Why each one is the odd
one out?’, with a bonus ball for anyone who can both explain why none of them is and why all of them are? And, if you really want to stretch their brains even further you could ask them what the fourth item in the sequence would be and why? They are using the same three items you could also ask children why
your, let’s say, geography lesson is like a hamster or a radio or a caravan; what profession would use all three; what you would get if you combined all three; why all three should be legal tender in Norfolk; and how would the world change either for the better or for worse if all three were banned (and not just the obvious one)?
