April 27, 2009
by WIND


Once I read a book on creativity and found an interesting analogy described by the author. It's like this:

“Perhaps being creative is more like being involved in an automobile accident. There are some traits that make one more likely to be in an accident—being young and male, for instance—but usually we cannot explain car accident on the basis of the driver’s characteristics alone. There are too many other variables involved: the condition of the road, the other drivers, the type of traffic, the weather and so on. Accidents, like creativity, are properties of a system rather than of individuals”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1996)

lesson I learned related to my teaching in my classroom:
the system I develop in my classroom will contribute much on my students' performance. No matter how smart a student is, s/he cannot maximize his/her potential in class if the teacher doesn't develop such system to facilitate it... and the other way around

what do you think?