The educational value of creative disobedience

I find it a fine line to walk with my children in teaching them creative disobedience and questioning of authority, as it easily crosses into flagrant disrespect, but the pathway is worth it in the long-run. It's time to institute this method into our public school curricula (especially in light of the fact that we are losing our edge in in innovation)!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ ... A_facebook
The educational value of creative disobedience
By Andrea Kuszewski |
Jul 7, 2011
“The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply ofrepeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers” –Jean Piaget

The fringe benefits of teaching for creativity
In this age of innovation, even more important than being an effective problem solver, is being a problem finder.
It’s one thing to look at a problem and be able to generate a solution; it is another thing to be able to look at an ambiguous situation, and decide if there is a problem that needs to be solved. That’s a skill that isn’t really targeted by traditional teaching methods, and in fact, it is often discouraged. In order to teach problem finding, more creative methods must be utilized. Rule-breaking , to an extent, should be tolerated and encouraged, and yes—even taught.

I can look back on my childhood and see the transition from passive to active learner, at first asking questions and receiving answers, accepting them as truth, not bothering to contemplate other possibilities. I think as a child, that’s our baseline. But once I crossed that bridge over to the other side—experiencing the pure joy of solving problems and arriving at a completely novel solution—it was painful to try and cross back, just for the sake of conformity and obedience to whatever the status quo stated was appropriate behavior for someone in my position. Once you’ve taken flight with your ideas and experienced all those brilliant colors, is it fair to force a child to live back inside a box, lined with a black and white filter?

I’ve shared my own personal story, but I am not the only one who has lived it. Many children today face a similar fate, and it’s tragic. Whatever curious drive any one student might have entering school, it is pretty much beaten out of you by the time you graduate. The lucky few are the ones who are too stubborn to follow the rules arbitrarily. They suffer the consequences for their rebellion, but might have a supportive other (typically a teacher or non-family adult) that provides just enough encouragement to keep them on their path, even when it proves to be treacherous. Walking that path alone is scary, lonely, and wicked hard.

We say we want children to achieve at the highest level—to be the next generation of great scientists and innovators and artists and world leaders—yet the system we’ve put in place makes it nearly impossible for each child to reach their potential.

The time has never been more ready for systemic change than right now, and we’ve never had better tools to achieve this level of creative disobedience, to successfully prepare our children for the big challenges that lie ahead. It might be uncomfortable and take a bit of work, but our future depends on this radical change in order to survive.

CriticalBill wrote: “In much of the West, the well educated have been taught to believe that they can know nothing and that they can draw no independent conclusions about truth, unless they cite a study and "experts" have affirmed it. "Studies show" is to the modern secular college graduate what "Scripture says" is to the religious fundamentalist.”

Dennis Prager

I'm sorry but that's total crap. A well-educated, critically thinking person understands that even the most dogmatically accepted information must always be open to criticism and revisement if new information is discovered that challenges the previously held position. Educated people are certainly guilty of blindly accepting that which affirms their beliefs too, but this is another example of a sweeping generalization that only further widens that gulf of understanding between the general public and perceived "elitists" and "experts". Experts are not the villains, they provide an in-depth perspective that is worth listening to and considering respectfully. It doesn't mean that you have to blindly accept it, but neither should you dismiss it out of hand.